Week 45 - what's happening?! This week seemed to be going by slower than usual, but it still seems like only yesterday I was finding my best photos for last week's post...! More importantly, it's 1st July...  I GO HOME NEXT MONTH?!!

The Team out on Occupancy Survey

Zebras that decided we were a terrifying predator!

Monday was a very exciting morning. We started off with occupancy survey along Minesfield Drive, which is a road through the park that we frequently use but rarely see anything on: a few giraffe, some wildebeest, buffalo a couple of times, and on one occasion lions. Clearly we should be using it at night! We found tracks for lion, hyena, painted dog (which I still haven't seen... a group went to Chobe last week and saw a pack of them take down a kudu then fight off a BROWN hyena! AAAAHHHH!!), and leopard! Why do we never see the actual animals?! We then went around and collected the trail cameras that we set up a couple of weeks ago (with the necessary cartwheels and stupid faces to set off the cameras one last time before we collected them of course!) and they had caught some awesome stuff! (Since it's not my data I can't say what, but there were several species that none of us had ever seen on there!). Afternoon was Game Count on which we saw 6 species: giraffe, elephant, warthog, impala, bushbuck and waterbuck. Game Count has somewhat been the bane of my life this week - there was a whole lot of data input that needed doing, and since I needed that data for elephant research, I ended up first inputting it all, and then going through analysing it too! Took me hours.... The problem with the elephant data, was that it turned out that the GPS format converter I was using was completely useless! Was just giving me random locations that weren't always even in Zimbabwe when it came to plotting them on the map of the park, so I had to go back through and find every entry that I had taken from Game Count and reconvert them, as well as going through and checking every other GPS point to make sure they came out in the right place. After almost an entire day on this, I finally got it all figured out... Phew! There's still some wrinkles that need smoothing out with the elephants, but in general we seem to be on track. I'm still over 2 months behind on my IDs, but I'm currently blaming that on the fact that every ID session I've tried to do this week I've ended up doing Game Count data work instead! 

Kenny the Elephant peering through the branches at us

2 sessions of elephants and giraffes this week - Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning. The elephants are apparently not in a friendly mood, and have decided to hide away in the areas of the park that we can't reach rather than coming out to let me count them... We saw none... We did however find 4 on the way back from Friday's Bird Survey, and they were seen on both Game Counts (the second of which I skipped to do another ID session) so they are definitely still here somewhere! Seen quite a few giraffes this week though so still good sessions. Bird Survey on Friday was a bit different for 2 reasons. Firstly we went to Chamabondo this time, so there was a different selection of birds than we normally get. We still saw the standards: Cape Turtle Dove, Grey Go-Away Bird, Emerald-Spotted Wood-Dove and others similar, but we got several that we couldn't identify on sight, and have had to photograph and bring back to identify. We saw a Lizard Buzzard which was exciting, and 2 Cinnamon breasted buntings that were particularly nice sightings. The second reason it was different was because we were using a new system - SABAP2 (the South African Bird Atlassing Project 2) has an app for writing down bird locations, so as well as our old pencil-and-paper system, I was inputting data directly into their database. This allows far more information to be collected quickly, including recording behavioural information, locations of nests, numbers of individuals, and information on population dynamics. It's both very interesting, and quite scary - it feels a lot more official! Good fun though, and I like the birds. I'm definitely going to be putting in a lot more effort on my birding (and plants, and insects, and reptiles, and mammals....) knowledge when I get home. 

Southern Red-Billed Hornbill eating a seed

Lilac Breasted Roller in flight

Buffalo blocking our path

Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation on Wednesday was quite fun, particularly at the homestead with tiny puppies that come and jump all over you and lick every hand they can reach! We've found a new route to get to the communities, so it's a bit shorter and a much more scenic drive, and the roads have to be driven more slowly which makes it more comfortable too. Definitely a nicer way to go.... There were several reports of lions from the homesteaders this week, though they all said the lions simply walked around and moved on to somewhere else - a good sign that the lights are still doing their job! 

Last activity of the week was Kids Club on Saturday morning. This was both very nice, and slightly frustrating - we were there for about an hour playing with the children and that was good fun (if exhausting and somewhat painful at times!) but then another group turned up with donations to the orphanage. Of course this is fantastic, and the children were all delighted with their new rucksacks full of presents, but it did rather put a stop to our games! One little girl spoke no English, and it took us a long time to make her understand that while we were happy to keep pushing her swing, she'd get a bag if she went over with everyone else. It was really heartwarming to see how much donations make a difference.