I came back yesterday from 4 days spent in the field with the buffalo. We were very lucky with the weather and only had a spattering of rain. The ground was dry and sandy for the most part, although there were a few pans in the open mopane, which seem to be starting to dry up with the recent sunshine. We got stuck once, driving over a large log that got stuck on the front diff, but we got free with a bit of jacking. The vehicle has suffered a little from all the mopane bashing, with scratches along her side and a bit of bent body work. I dread to think what she will look like after two years of this!
We found the buffalo without too much difficulty, although staying with them was a different matter, especially in the mopane, where they spent most of their time, as I scared them when I came crashing through, which made them run away and was very counter productive. After 4 days of us following them, however, they became quite used to the car and only some of them ran for a short distance and then relaxed again. They were mostly curious about us, as opposed to aggressive, although some of the bulls tossed their horns at us. But several times they came to investigate us, from about 10 m away. The first night that we camped, they had headed off in another direction but 20 minutes later they came walking up to our camp and had a good long look at us from about 20 m away. Something spooked them and they ran away, luckily away from our camp and not straight through it!! The second night that we camped, one came and stood next to me tent, breathing quite heavily and sniffing around. Laura (my assistant) fell straight to sleep and was completely oblivious to the large curious animal right next to us. We heard lions roaring yesterday morning, but that was the only sign of any carnivores around. In fact, apart from steenbok, we only saw buffalo, not even any impala, which was interesting.
Luckily they did not move too far over night and we were able to pick up a signal every morning and find them within an hour or so. We tried to stay with them throughout the day, but inevitably lost them for a couple of hours each day. This has made me think about revising my data-collecting protocol, which I will be discussing with my supervisors next week.
The map shows the recent movements of the collared animals. Two sets of two buffalo are in the same herd, the northern ones in NG32 and the western ones in NG34, which is why there are only 4 red dots (current location) in the overall map. The three in NG34 were all in the same herd for a few days, but they have split up again. We will be heading out towards the end of next week to follow another individual (or two if they are together), probably in NG34 again, as NG32 will take longer to dry up.
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