Another busy week, and now for the last post in a while - going to be 3 weeks before you get another update!

The Big Tree!

Week started with Large Predator Occupancy Survey on Monday morning. We saw loads of lion tracks, and one very old hyena one, but as usual no sign of the animals who left them there! We finished up with breakfast by the river in the park - possibly one of the most beautiful breakfast spots I've ever been to - then came home via "The Big Tree". This is a Zimbabwean National landmark, which is a 18 m round, 23 m tall baobab of 1000-1500 years old! The afternoon was really great doing game count in the park, giving us some particularly great giraffe sightings. 

Young giraffe

Tuesday we had hyena tracking round one, followed by Giraffe and Elephant research. Hyena tracking was fun, but very long and didn't get us all that far. We got off the car at the closest point to the GPS location they'd last been recorded at, but that was still over 4 km from the further point! We had to walk a full hour and a half, and when we got there there was absolutely nothing to see! Oops.... Ah well, it's still useful to get an impression of vaguely how close they are and how much they're moving around. Afternoon we headed back out into the park for a research session, but no elephants... 

Zebra!

3 species in 1 photo!

Wednesday was a very long day, but it was great! We started off by joining the photography volunteers on their sunrise shoot, which was awesome - the sunrise was gorgeous, and the spray from the falls was beautifully tinged pink. The baboons only ruined it slightly by being extremely overconfident with us, leaping all through the trees above us and screaming. They got so close we were really quite scared for the safety of our cameras! Being Wednesday, most of the day we spent doing Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation survey. Having had no rain at all this week, the roads have dried out a bit so we were able to get to 2 of the 3 homesteads that we've been missing out. We got back early, so went to the dump to set up a trail camera looking for hyenas, before going out at 7:30 pm for our early night drive. We saw 5 hyenas, but all on the way back - we drove for a full hour and saw absolutely nothing! Lots more identification work to do!

Dragonfly at sunrise

Sunrise over the Zambezi

Sunrise over the Pink Spray from the Falls

Stunning sunrise 

Elephant on Chamabondo

Thursday was both frustrating and awesome. Started off with a research session, where we tried to go to the Chamabondo Flay - a new area of the park for me - but thanks to wet roads we couldn't make it. We headed back into the normal park and saw some giraffes and a herd of zebra, but no elephants. This was the frustrating part.... The afternoon we went out on hyena tracking again, but the hyena had moved to Chamabondo so we headed back onto the flay using a different route.... and we found about 50 elephants and some giraffes! It was so brilliant to see, but as I wasn't doing elephant research at the time I had to just let them go. SO ANNOYING! Even more annoying, is that due to the elephants being there, we couldn't do the research anyway since there was no way we could get out the car and walk up to the GPS point! Oh dear.... The point is, it was a totally awesome day, and even if I couldn't do any research I still saw some awesome stuff! Finished off with sunset drinks at the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, where we saw a squirrel, 7 elephants, and a hyena! May not get anything when we're doing research, but we certainly get stuff when we aren't!

Purple Roller

Grey Backed Camaroptera

Friday was another fun day. Started off with bird survey, on which we saw 15 species, including one brand new one - the Grey Backed Camaroptera. We saw a huge number of zebras too, and a big male adult hippo on the road! I really enjoy bird survey - only way to quickly improve my bird knowledge, a beautiful drive through the park, and we see some great stuff. Came back from bird survey, and we went out looking for more birds - back to the vulture feeding, where we saw hooded and white backed vultures. A particularly awesome feed, and afterwards we were able to get a camera set up so that next time the hyenas show up we'll know who they are! I tried to check it this afternoon, but thanks to my camera malfunctioning, I know that 1 of the 75 pictures on there is indeed a hyena, but that's all I could see. Ah well - we'll find out next week! 

Hooded Vulture in flight

White backed vulture

Today has been a good morning - we had seedling project first, followed by a lion walk. Seedling project we go out into the town (and also the park but not on this occasion) and plant trees along the side of the road. We planted about 50 trees, slashing the area all around and then digging and watering the Zambezi Teak seedlings in. It was good fun, though insanely hot! Headed straight to Masuwe afterwards, where we took Lekker and Liuwa for their walk. It was good fun, but less exciting than normal - the lions were fed yesterday, and again it was really hot so they were just pretty inactive. 

Slashing on Seedling Project

Lekker

One of these weeks I'll manage a short post.... Not this time though! And next time will be covering 3 weeks so that's going to be even longer than normal!