Island hopping in Chitabe

I came back yesterday from 3 days of fieldwork. Bambi crossed from our side of the Gomoti across towards Chitabe, then walked northwest so we went after her to sample the sites that she used along the way. There were several in the middle of the Gomoti that were inaccessible, and the Gomoti itself is far too high to cross, so we drove all the way down and up through Morutshe gate and NG32.

We picked our way around the flooded areas and got to several sites along the Gomoti in the very top of NG32 then followed the edge of the floodplains further north. The herd seemed to have walked along the edge of the land, so we were able to access most of the points along the way. Once we reached the top of the main land mass, I walked a crossing that I used last year and knew to be sandy. It almost came up to my waist, but given that I am quite short, this meant that it was still shallow enough to cross and the bottom was very stable, so we drove across, with just a dip that went over the bonnet. I expected the other side to be mostly flooded, but was pleasantly surprised that we were able to drive around fairly happily, with just a couple of muddy patches that I don't think anyone other than me noticed.

We found ourselves thwarted by a large floodplain at one stage, but managed to find a way around it and cross the channel at a narrow point, where buff had crossed, which was also lovely and sandy. We made our way from island to island, hopping channels and driving across mostly dry floodplains, sampling several points on the way and only upsetting a few hippo. However, we reached a point where things started to get a little wet, so we decided to call it a day and head back south. We spotted a small herd of buff on the way, but they were across a large floodplain, so we just got a quick count. We did not pick up any signals from my collared animals, but Bambi had just kept moving north, so that was not unexpected.

We stopped off at Chitabe on the way down, where they kindly invited us to spend the night, which was very pleasant. They have been making ID kits of the leopard in their area, and have 21 individuals identified with photographs, as well as rough territories from the roads that they have been seen on. They had some interesting information about one of their males babysitting cubs for several hours, which I had not heard of before. The next day we continued back to camp, going all the way around again. We sampled a few more points on this side of the Gomoti and arrived back in camp just before sunset.