Tracking flight

I have been keeping an eye on my buffalo herds via the Televilt website to see when they move close to a road so that I can go and collect population dynamics from them, thus minimising wear and tear on my lovely vehicle. I saw that Bambi was close to the twin palms road last week, so went out to find her. We got a double signal at first, which was rather distressing as the collar was only put on in October and the batteries on the collars that have been on for more than a year are fine, so this one should be too. As we found the herd, they got spooked and moved off, so we followed them to try and get a good visual on them. We could hear them for most of the time but were unable to see more than a vague movement of tails as they were in thick bush. We persevered and got a couple of counts, eventually performing my first successful outflanking manoeuvre, resulting in the herd walking through an open space slowly enough for me to count them and see the collared animal, looking healthy. Unfortunately we only saw around 30 animals, after several hours following them for 3 km. We turned and headed back for camp, stopping on the way to record a few more small groups and individuals that we came across.

Jennifer left last weekend, and Janette arrived the next day, sadly minus her luggage. We came out to camp anyway, leaving my lovely former assistant Laura to check on the bag the next day. I went up the next morning for a tracking flight to try and find the GPS-collared herds that I have not had a signal for in a couple of months. We flew down to the fence, picking up Chanel and Lasanya on the way, then up the Sankuyo Road into Moremi, striking out across the mopane towards Mboma, then across to Chief's Island, down through the Stanley's area, where we picked up Bongolo and B7 and back to camp. We covered the entire extent of the area where my satellite collared herds have been and only picked the signal from one of the GPS collars. Needless to say, this is not good news. It is possible that one or two of them could have moved into a different area entirely, but seems unlikely that all the GPS collars would go to one area, leaving all of the satellite collars in a different area. All of the animals were collared on the Gomoti, so they should all return there once the rainy season is over. It is very difficult to spot a collar in a herd, but I will have to try and find a GPS collar without a signal to confirm that they are not working. Unfortunately there is very little else that I can do.