Week 43 has now been and gone, meaning that if I was doing a normal-length placement for the university this would now be my last week coming up! Scary! As it is, this time next week is my 2 month mark, leaving me 2/3 of my way through my time in Zimbabwe.

"I'm flying without wings!"

A Lioness on Minefield Drive

So what has week 43 consisted of? PREDATORS! With 3 (possibly 4) sightings of wild lions during this week’s projects, and another one last week, there’s been a lot of talk of them in the volunteer house. I was there for 2 of the sightings, and for the 4^th possible sighting, during which time I was out of the car and stuck in a ditch… Litter can be a problem in the parks and there was a plastic bottle in the dried-up streambed that has been annoying us all for weeks. I finally insisted on just stopping and picking it up, and having had a quick check for dangerous animals, I got down into the ditch to pick it up. As soon as I was out of the car, 2 girls at the back started saying “lion”, but as that’s something of a common joke we all just ignored them... It was only once I was back in the car that we discovered they were being serious! We didn’t get a good enough look to be sure, but it seems likely that I was merrily picking up litter with a wild lion less then 30 m away… Whoops! Talk about the boy who cried wolf? We talk about the volunteers who cried lion! Besides the lions, we’ve also had a good hyena week. Occupancy survey was the busiest I’ve ever done, and a lot were hyenas. Not only did we start off with our first lion sighting (a big male on Chamabondo Vlei) but we had to start a second data sheet because there was so many spoors and scats to record. We even found evidence of Painted Dogs, which I am still desperate to see so fingers crossed for my remaining 2 months! Somehow that seems a lot shorter than it is… As well as Occupancy Survey, we also had 2 excellent sessions of Hyena Tracking. The first one was frustrating as we were SO close to the hyena but never actually managed to get a glimpse. We walked out to the point that they’d been when the last GPS signal was sent (about 1.5 hours previously) and instantly picked up a very strong signal from the VHF radio collar. 

Hyena pups

We steadily followed it through the brush, always getting almost to where we should get a look at it before it ran off again. After a while however, we spotted a pattern that was not just hyena-running-from-humans, but rather that we seemed to be following a herd of giraffes. We’d seen them from the road when we started tracking, and found that each time the giraffes ran away from us, so did the hyena. The hyena was not running from us, but rather running to keep up with the giraffes who could see us coming from much further away and ran! After nearly an hour they separated and we were forced to admit defeat as the hyenas ran away much faster than we could follow, but still it was a very exciting session! 

Are you watching us?

The second session was even better, although it can’t technically be classed as “tracking”. Last week during game count we found a place that we suspected was very close to a hyena den, so on Thursday afternoon we went to go and try to find the den itself, and monitor any individuals we saw going in and out. We found it extremely easily - it was actually very close to the road, right at the point that we’d glimpsed them. How did know instantly that it was the den? There was a little head poking out of the ground watching us! There were 3 sub-adult hyenas using the burrow while their mothers were away. They came out above ground, and spent most of their time just napping in the afternoon sun. After nearly an hour, they were chased underground by 2 warthogs who were extremely funny to watch! We were clearly parked across the path they’d been planning to take, but since we couldn’t risk scaring the hyenas halfway through our monitoring session, we couldn’t turn on the engine in order to move. The poor warthogs hung around for another hour trying to decide what to do next! Apparently walking around us was not a viable option… The pups were very interested but smart enough not to get too close! They did however come very close to us. Once the warthogs had gone and it had become very dark, they crept along the same path that the warthogs has been desperate to use, sniffing the air and getting closer and closer, trying to work out what we were. In some ways it’s a shame it was so dark, as we were unable to get photos of how close they were, but at the same time, I’m glad it was. I’m so obsessed with my camera that I often forget to actually just sit back and enjoy the experience of being that close to a hyena pup, or just enjoy watching the river and the bee eaters, rather than trying to get the perfect photo. The pups were adorable - how can they be classed as part of the “Ugly 5”?! I often think that about all of the “Ugly 5”… Apart from the Marabou Storks…! We had breakfast on Monday being watched by a herd of wildebeest - another one of the group that I think are actually quite fun-looking!

Waiting for Mum to return

Our breakfast view!

My charging friend!

Ok what have I done besides watch the large predators of the park? Well I also thought I was going to be killed by an elephant! Elephant and Giraffe Research (or “Gireles” as we now call them!) has been fairly successful this week, though we seem to have developed an annoying habit of always finding the elephants just as they’re leaving to head back into the bush, and never when they’re nicely out in the open! Makes counting them and identifying genders and ages very difficult, and taking photographs even harder! After one such encounter, we drove around to try and catch up with them, where we met a bull elephant on the road. He didn’t seem to mind us, and was ignoring us quite well, until another car arrived and that became too much… Unfortunately the moment that he decided to charge was right when I was stood precariously on the roof of our car, and not safely out of the way inside it! I’ve never dropped down from there that fast! Thankfully, it turned out to be just a mock charge, and he stopped about 15 m away. If he hadn’t, I don’t think being inside our open-topped vehicle would have actually given me much more protection…! (Don’t worry, the lion and the elephant are all of my near-death experiences for the week!) I spent Wednesday nice and safely tucked up in my room doing elephant IDs for 17^th April. The first of the sightings took me almost the entire day as they were yet again bad photos from unhelpful angles, but I finally straightened them out. I then proceeded to do the following 4 sightings all within the space of the next 20 minutes - I do love it when it’s just a single male with a nice big distinctive notch! 

Baby giraffes are so cute!

Sable Antelope

This morning was one of those days that manages to be both more relaxing than normal, and utterly exhausting! More relaxed because the responsibility of normal research is removed, but exhausting but children don’t get tired! We started off with a nice calm lion walk with Lila and Liuwa. They were fed yesterday so they weren’t in the mood to play or even walk much, so we only went a short distance, then sat down and let them just play and sleep by the river. It’s a very nice way to spend a Saturday morning, just sitting in the sun by the river, chatting to new friends, and watching lions sleep! They’re getting so big now too! I don’t come on lion walks very often, and haven’t seen Lila for ages - she’s starting to look like a real lioness! She’s HUGE! It won’t be long now before the walking stops for these lions. They’re getting too old, and could potentially do some damage if they were to decide that no they really don’t want to go on another walk! The time is coming for them to progress to Stage 2 and join some other lions in a new release site. After the lion walk we drove to the Rose of Charity Orphanage for Kids Club. I’ve given up teaching them volleyball there for 2 reasons. A) They’re already quite good, and B) They seem to have a knack for puncturing the balls… I only have 5 for them, having left another 5 in Zambia, and of those 2 are already punctured from 2 sessions… We’re going to hopefully do some more controlled sessions during a school lesson instead. The problem with not having a specific aim for the session though, is that instead of playing certain games or drawing pictures, we simply become human climbing frames which is fun at first but after an hour of having 3 kids trying to climb on you at once, while you’re also pushing the swing for another child, and the one on your back is yelling “run away, he’s going to eat me” in your ear every time a boy comes anywhere within 10 m of you, it tends to be quite exhausting! All good fun though, and while an hour is often enough for us to be ready to drop, I’ll still miss these kids when it’s finally time to say goodbye to Africa. 

Giraffe crossing the road

Kudu and Baby

Sorry for yet another crazy-long post! One day I might learn to write concisely (I’ll have to for writing my university report for the year!) but for now I hope you don’t mind reading my long-winded ramblings! Have a good week!

King of the Skies