Zambezi: My African Adventure

Another very good week in my life here! Almost scared - at some point I’m going to have to come down off of this high!

Male bushbuck

Cute little family...

The best high - the elephants are back! Having not seen them on this side of the river for over 3 weeks, they’ve finally reappeared. Friday was the first good one - a mixed herd consisting of 2 adult females, a calf, a juvenile, 2 pubescent females, and an adult male. They were really close to the road and totally calm with us watching them. We saw them again on Saturday afternoon, this time without the adult male. They were REALLY close today! One of them literally within about 8 m! We got a fantastic view of them, plus some good photos. The morning was the more exciting part though - we headed out of the office, and were just about to head up towards Simoonga, when our driver realised he didn’t know if we had enough fuel to get back again (of course the petrol gauge doesn’t work!), so we headed back to the office and refilled. Good thing we did or we wouldn’t have found our herd of 37! They were a very frustrating group - they kept changing direction so we’d drive around to get ahead of them, only to spot them in the distance heading the other way… such a pain! We eventually decided they were going to head west, and from there the only way they could get out was through the gap in the fence where the railway line goes through. We sat for a while, and almost gave up thinking that they must have turned again, when they appeared coming towards us. They certainly weren’t happy with us being there, so we reversed slightly, and while they seemed nervous they did continue through. The first few were particularly uncomfortable, but that was quite useful because they all gave us full jazz ears! Makes IDs so much easier when you can see both ears and their tusk configuration simultaneously. It was a particularly fun sighting for me, because I recognised several of the elephants which is always a very good feeling. I'm starting to get a new favourite elephant - Colin (M43) was my previous favourite, but I think Harry (M151) may be going to take over! Both of them have very obvious ears, but Harry's is practically half missing! He has 3 huge notches in his right ear, one of which is also a very distinctive M shape. As a general rule the males are far ore recognisable than the females. Maybe because they are more boisterous as pubescents, and because they will fight perhaps, the males often have much more obvious and recognisable ears than the females. The calves are more of a pain. We've had a lot of calves to try and ID this week, which sounds cute but to be honest is really just annoying! How are you supposed to tell apart 2 elephants which are about the same age and size, neither is obviously male or female, and neither have any marks on their ears or tusks?! The really young ones don't even have tusks! AAAHHH!!!

Ssh! I'm pretending to be a buffalo!

The 37 on the railway line

Giraffe

Female bushbuck

The rest of my week has consisted of studying bushbuck and buffalo while out on elephant drives, studying elephant dung, a day of trees and a day of lions. Trees was good this week - the group that had been out the previous day hadn't finished their plot, so we started with that, finished quickly, and headed and managed to complete a second plot too! Good teamwork required for that... and easy plots definitely helped! The mupani bees were back out in force though, so we have now christened the newly chopped up mosquito nets that we've started taking with us for protection! Dambwa Research was another great day. I really do love the lions - they're so majestic, and equally lazy! We did an activity budget on the Dambwa Pride, and I was watching Zulu, the big pride male. He really is a magnificent animal, but considering he was having quite an active morning when he put his head up twice in the hour, it can't be said that he's especially exciting to do an activity budget on! The second session I was given the Socialising Survey to do, that is used to determine if the lions are interacting like a wild pride, and monitor the relationships between individuals. Are they interacting like a wild pride? None of them moved so I have no idea! None of them greeted each other! Not to worry though - previous surveys show that the lions have extremely healthy relationships with one another, so the work is showing great promise for the future lion conservation. The afternoon we did enclosure cleaning and feeding which I love doing! Watching the lions race for the meat and then fight each other for whatever they decide makes this piece the best one is great - funny but also scary seeing how powerful they are. We had a pair this week who had a good 5 minute stand-off, both of them refusing to let go of the hunk of meat, despite the much bigger bit just sitting less than 10 m away! Enclosure cleaning means picking up of bones from previous feeds, removing dung, and this week, also cleaning out their water pools. The water has to be completely removed by the bucket, replaced, the pool scrubbed, and then the water thrown out again. That happens at least 3 times before the pool is eventually refilled. It's slippery too! I managed to remain upright, but I think I was a special case - normally everyone falls over at some point I think!