I went across the Gomoti last Sunday morning to collect data from one of my herds. Most of the points were fairly close to the road going down the Gomoti side to the fence and there were no major issues with water, which was nice. I had a rather close encounter with eleven elephants as we were sampling the last point on Sunday evening. We heard them coming through the mopane, so we got into the vehicle and sat tight. They didn't notice us at first, but when they did they all came over towards us with their ears out and their heads up. I did not want to provoke them, so I just sat very still and hoped that they would eventually leave us alone. They got to within 20 m of the vehicle, at which point I realised that I did not have many options if they all decided to do something. However after looking at us for a while, they all moved off into the bushes and we finished our sample.
I finished off the last of the points early on Monday morning and then tried to find the actual buffalo herd. I radio-ed for people at HQ to download the most recent fixes from her, but it seems that she was moving a lot over those couple of days and I managed to miss her, despite going all the way across to the Santantadibe side and along the fence. She just slipped by me somehow, which was rather frustrating, so I gave up and came back across the Gomoti on Monday.
On the Santantadibe side I did bump into a few lions though. There were two big blonde males and a young female. I found them just next to the road when I was checking for one of the collared lionesses for Dog Camp (Elle). She is also across that way, but was not with the three that I found, and was quite far off road so I did not see her. However, I showed the photos to the guys at Dog Camp and they reckon that the three lions are usually with the collared female.
No comments:
Post a Comment