Ok this is getting scary now... I swear it was less than 2 days ago that I was last writing this! How does it all go so fast?!

Elephant blocking the road

So what have I been up to this week? Well as usual the main answer is elephants. I've done several ID sessions, and am now up to 14th April, which is a really HORRIBLE sighting where none of the elephants were close, or had big notches, and most importantly, none of them were looking in the right direction... The kind of sighting that takes forever, but at the end of it you really don't get anywhere. Not much fun but eventually it will be over and I'll get to nicer ones. As for the sightings this week, barely any have been actually in the park. They've mostly been around the Big Tree - the largest baobab around at 18 m girth. I've never seen them right next to it, but they've broken the fence down that protects the tree from people going up and scratching their names into it. Hopefully not too many will take advantage... We also saw a large group in Chamabondo Vlei on Friday afternoon during a research session. There were over 40 of them (though unfortunately only 7 came close enough to get decent photos) and I got so excited by the tuskless matriarch leading the group... but no it wasn't my favourite girl, Sierra... 

And his friend!

White fronted bee eaters

Human-Wildlife Mitigation survey on Wednesday was not especially fun this week, as the road was even bumpier than usual. We were sat in the back of the car getting our teeth shaken out of our heads! Not quite sure how we managed it, but somehow we got back by 3pm despite only skipping 1 homestead because they weren't in. Spent the afternoon out at the golf course where we went to take some photos. There were warthogs, impala and waterbuck there which was cool to see, and we managed to get pretty close to them, particularly the warthogs which were almost all cute little sub-adults. The waterbuck however we had a problem with - they weren't aggressive at all, but they're skittish, which means that to get close enough for photographs you have to drop down to the ground and crawl along on your stomach... Which is fine when there aren't ant nests underneath you! Gets very itchy at times.... The night drive on Wednesday wasn't so successful as the morning research and afternoon photography session however. Seeing nothing but one small duiker was frustrating enough for us when we've been loads of times, so we felt really bad for the new volunteers who have never been out or seen hyenas. It didn't help that the usually freezing night had warmed to just very cold, so we were all bundled up even more than normal, which then led to everyone being so warm and cozy that over half the car was struggling to stay awake! It was unfortunate that we didn't see anything, but as we always say - it's what makes the other times more exciting. 

Emerald spotted wood dove

3 sessions of non-elephant research this week: bird survey, hyena tracking, and game count. Game count wasn't brilliantly exciting on Friday - we saw 2 bushbuck, 2 waterbuck, warthogs and impala. Not a bad session, but obviously we always hope to see predators, and of course I love to see my elephants! Hyena tracking was a very fun session this week. We had several new volunteers with us, so when we got to the point and found lots of tracks of different species, we had some fun going through them all, discussing what they were, and making various estimations as to how old all the different tracks were. The area was a dried up stream bed, where we saw tracks for civet cats, hyenas, lions, and zebras. We then moved on to a dried up waterhole, and there we tracked several hyenas, confirming our suspicions that they use the same route over and over to get from the park to the dump, where they scavenge on human waste. Finally bird survey - it was just the 2 of us which meant fewer eyes for looking around for them, but then that also meant we were able to spend less time pointing things out to new volunteers!

Sable antelope blocking our way this time!

Saturday morning was completely different. We started off with a litter pick along the roads outside the hospital and the school. It was so much better than last time - we actually managed to make a noticeable difference when we did this 2 weeks ago. However, we still collected about 5 bin liners full of litter. Having said that, I can't believe how much had accumulated there already... We headed home briefly, then went out again, this time to the lions, where we went for a lion walk with the clients. We took Lekker and Lala out, and walked them down to the river. Lala was totally mad - she was leaping all over Lekker and attacking him, keeping hold of his tail in her mouth when he tried to walk away, and generally being as much the annoying little cousin as I probably used to be to my big cousins! (Sorry guys...) There were a couple of elephants wandering around the area too - captive ones from the elephant back safari company next door - which was just slightly surreal... walking 2 lions with elephants in the background? Awesome!

Waterbuck