A very cute family!

Got your nose!

Week 46 has been another elephanty week, with 3 ID sessions and 1 full day of identification, along with 3 sessions in the park out looking for them and the giraffes. Our first drive (Tuesday morning) was less than successful, with no sign of any elephants or giraffes anywhere, but that is actually fairly expected during morning sessions these days. It's too cold - the animals don't want to come out of hiding until later in the day. Similarly with the birds on bird survey, we only counted 1 new species to add to last Friday's list. Friday's morning session was slightly more successful, catching a glimpse of 2 adult males, but unfortunately they were right at the part of the road that we couldn't follow them as the sand became too deep for our car! Stupid wildlife.... Why can't they just come out in the open and pose nicely for photos?! We then got a flat tyre halfway back, still stuck on the tiny side road that no one else comes down, with a car jack that wasn't big enough for the car! We spent quite a while collecting rocks to sit the jack on, so that it would be big enough to lift the car up! The rest of the waiting time we spent amusing ourselves by watching an ant-lion attempting to kill a tiny beetle, and the beetle trying to get out of the ant-lion's pitfall trap... Wasn't quite so exciting but good enough to keep us occupied until our driver had fixed the car! Thursday had the best elephant and giraffe research session of all. We started out as normal and quickly found lots of fresh elephant tracks, but all heading back in the direction that we had come, so clearly they had already got to the accessible areas of the park and moved on through. Eventually we found a set of tracks heading up the hill to "Elephant Baobab" so we tried following them. We got to the top of the hill and drove around to no avail, but from the top we were able to spot a group of about 5 giraffes down where we had previously been! We raced back down and counted a total of 18 in one herd which was awesome. We spent a long time with them, before heading on further up Zambezi Drive. We drove on and on, and were close to reaching our time limit so asked the driver to turn around. He decided to go around the corner to turn around, and there they were! A herd of 13! Lucky timing! There were 4 little calves that were unbelievably cute, all playing together. Their mothers were slightly less cute considering that they were really not especially happy to see us...!

Mummy and Baby

Other research activities this week only consisted of Game Count and Hyena Den Monitoring. Den monitoring is definitely not as exciting as it was previously.... This was the second session in a row with no sign of the hyenas! We've now obscured all the tracks around the den and in a few weeks, if we still haven't seen them again, we'll go and have a look and see if there are any new ones. Game Count was not especially productive, but was good for Elephant and Giraffe Research! We went down a road that we don't use much, and found 2 herds of eles, and a herd of giraffes. Other than that there were 3 warthogs at the main park gate and nothing else! To do a Game Count and not record a single impala is impressive...! There was the cutest little tiny baby with the second group!

And now for Saturday. First thing to say is happy birthday and congratulations to my sister for graduating vet school today after 5 years of hard work! Woo! I'm celebrating her birthday with a litter pick, then a lion walk with Lila and Liuwa, an afternoon of relaxation (and maybe some elephant IDs if I can be bothered though I'll probably spend all day tomorrow doing them so that's my 6th work day of the week!), and then tonight we're having a 4-days-late 4th July party for the American volunteers! Spending a significant amount of time this afternoon making punch, sangria and peach cobbler! Looking forward to dinner of burgers....

African Road Crossing!

Lila and Liuwa taking a drink

47 weeks down, 5 to go!

This has been another slightly crazy week with 4 days of work, and then 2 days of touristing at Antelope Park with another intern. Antelope Park in Gweru is the third place that ALERT has projects and we both wanted to go and visit before we leave.

U61, now named Bon Jovi!

Monday was an early start as usual, this time for Occupancy Survey in Chamabondo. For the second time in a row we had fresh leopard prints! No sign of the leopard though... We saw elephants while on the road which we hoped meant that the big herds would have returned to the vlei, but there was no sign of them. On the way to breakfast afterwards I spotted our FIRST lion of the week, really close to the road but it took me so long to point her out to everyone that she was gone before I got the photo! Not making THAT mistake again! Game Count in the afternoon we saw warthogs, giraffes, waterbuck, elephants, kudu, impala and zebra. We saw so many elephants!

Giraffes crossing the road

Tuesday started with elephant IDs, and then we headed out in the afternoon on elephant and giraffe research during which the animals were being extremely helpful - one small group of waterbuck, one small group of kudu, a few warthog and impala, and other than that nothing but elephants and giraffes! Just alternating between species sightings! A good session! 

Wednesday was Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation first, visiting all of the homesteads and checking the lights and cameras. It's a very long drive and normally can be quite dull, but thanks to the new BirdLasser app that I downloaded for bird survey, I had some more fun than usual because I was able to practice my bird knowledge and also was able to do some research mapping. We got back quite early, and I spent my afternoon doing elephant IDs and then trying to sort out my camera. Not a problem with it in terms of actual function, but my memory card is full, as is my laptop, so I have no way to empty the card! HELP!

Lions on the Road in front of us

Thursday was a very interesting morning when we went out on elephants and giraffes. No actual elephants and giraffes, and only a couple of sightings each of impala and warthogs.... and 2 separate lion sightings?! The very first animals we saw when we entered the park were a group of 4 lions (3 adult females and 1 sub adult male) just walking down the road ahead of us. We'd been watching their tracks as we went along and knew they were fresh, but hadn't dared to hope they were THAT fresh! We went way up along Zambezi Drive, then turned back and came along Chamabondo too, and there we saw another adult female (much further away this time) walking away from the waterhole. By the time we reached the end of the drive I didn't know whether I should be extremely happy for the volunteers that they saw so much, or disappointed for them that they saw so little! In the afternoon I stayed back to do IDs, and get as many of my remaining photos off my camera as possible! We got on the bus and headed to Antelope Park after dinner, leaving Chinotimba bus terminus at 9pm, and not arriving until 5:45am... OUCH!

Sub-adult male lion in the park

Baby Zebra!

Sunset over Zambezi National Park

Baby Shaka!

Meeting Jeche at Antelope Park

Antelope Park is extremely different from the other 2 ALERT projects. There are far more lion, and many more activities to do there, but very little environmental research since it's a game park not a national park. Personally the research is obviously my favourite part, so I'm glad I'm not based there, but I can see that as a lions volunteer or a tourist it's a great place to be. The accommodation they gave us was great! A big tent by the river that was more like a canvas chalet than a tent! Unfortunately, Gweru is SO much colder than here that even with the heater on and 2 blankets on my bed, I still ended up sleeping in my thick walking socks and jumper! Also with 114 lions on the property, you tend to wake up to a lot of roaring which does sound awesome. The first day we went out on an Elephant walk, helping to move them from their nighttime boma to their daytime one. Maybe it's just that I'm normally always in a car, but I swear that all 4 of those eles were HUGE in comparison to the ones here! Jeche is the male, and I swear we could've just walked underneath him without bending if we'd wanted to! After breakfast we went to join in with meat prep for the 3 oldest cubs. Having been told that we weren't going to be doing any meat prep, we didn't have gloves with us so didn't join in, but that meant we were able to watch as the cubs ate it. The meat was all put in the trees for them to jump up and pull it out. 2 of them were up for it, but there was 1 that couldn't deal with the effort and just waited for the others to get it out and eat their fill so she could go in and finish up the leftovers! Lunchtime was followed by a walk with Shaka, their 6 month old cub. He's SO CUTE! He just comes running over and bounces on you: ATTACK OF THE FLUFFBALL! He thankfully hasn't yet worked out claws or teeth, so it's just a headset in the calves by a fluffy mass. He's just the sweetest little thing. In the afternoon we went out to the release site and we got our first view of the Ngamo Pride. 

AS5

They are a seriously impressive bunch of lions! AS5, the oldest male of the lions born in the site, is just stunning! He's enormous! We went out again the next morning where they were playing about in the long grass before it got too hot. We did activity budgets each time to see what they were doing and to observe their interactions with another. We headed back to camp for a full English breakfast, then we were off to do a horseback safari through the game park. It's been a long time since I got on a horse, and I was far from a good rider before! The instant I got on the horse it was clear I was the least experienced... They all rode off and it took me a minute to even make "Carly" move! Even as they were riding away my horse was trying to turn back and go back to the paddock. Eventually once we were further away from the stables she was ok and while slow, we kept plodding along. Unfortunately we only saw wildebeest and impala, desperately looking for the giraffes but we couldn't find them. We finished with a swim, riding the horses into the water. Again, Carly was determined not to go in so only my feet got wet, but honestly with how freezing the water was I can't complain! Heading back she suddenly sped up - I really don't think that horse wanted to go out! Lunchtime we had no activity planned so we took the canoes out on the river and had a laugh about how useless we were at going in the right direction! We were supposed to be going on a cub sit with Shaka in the afternoon but unfortunately that was cancelled so we headed out to the Ngamo Pride for the third time in 2 days. Third time lucky! We finally were able to get photos of them without the release site fence in the background, and they did a big pride roar which was amazing even without them being all together when they did it! Back for dinner and a chat with the volunteers there, before coming back to the bus station and time for another 8-hour bus journey home. Got back at 5:30am and went straight to bed!

Out for a walk with Shaka

In the Ngamo Release Site