Rhino

On Monday, Roz (my new assistant) and I headed out with the intention of sampling from three different herds of buffalo, ranging from the fence close to Daunara gate up to the top of Chief's Island. We managed to find Pandora, the first of the collared buffalo, close to the fence, in a herd of close to a thousand. When we found the herd, they were in dense mopane, but after a few minutes of following them, they relaxed and headed out into the open. Pandora was in front, leading them slowly in single file right past us, and all was well, until some at the back decided they were too far from the front and then several hundred buffalo were running and soon became invisible through the dust. I managed a decent count though, and left them to go back into the mopane.

We continued on, sampling along the way, and made it up to Stanley's camp, overtaking some trucks as they were stuck in a crossing. We went on a supposedly brief excursion with said trucks (once freed) to Baines Camp, as I was curious to see the camp and meet the managers. We spent the night close to Stanley's, after realising that there was too much water to go off-road in that area. The next morning we started up Chief's Island, only getting stuck once, when the ruts from the trucks were too deep and the diffs grounded out. We dug ourselves out fairly quickly though and continued most of the way up Chief's Island. We went off-road at a spot that I had found on Google Earth, which looked fairly clear out to the edge of the floodplains. We took a few samples, and then stopped in at Chief's Camp to visit some of my friends who are managing there.

We then started to sample at the top of Chief's Island, aiming to make our way down along the edge of the floodplains. The first part went well, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get around. We managed to reach quite a few sampling points, although we had to drive around numerous logs and elephant holes. Most of the time we were stopped by a channel to the north, but we found a good sandy crossing point and drove through. We went a few hundred metres, and then I stopped at the sight of my very first white rhino in the Delta. He was relaxing under a tree, but got up and moved off when we arrived. We continued sampling, and managed to disturb him again a bit later on. We crossed the channel again and continued along the edge of Chief's Island. Unfortunately it became both wet and loggy so we moved inland a bit to try for a clearer space. The vegetation became denser and denser riparian, with lots of fallen trees and huge elephant holes. After battling for several hours, still being 4 km from the closest useful point and heading in the wrong direction because of ridiculously dense bush, I decided to cut my losses and try for some points at the bottom of Chief's Island.

The next morning we drove down, only to find huge expanses of flooded grassland turning into floodplain covering the road as far as we could see. So, reluctantly, I decided to leave the area and headed back to camp, arriving back last night.

Collar issues

One of my collars had stopped sending me GPS fixes at the beginning of September, but I was not sure if it was still on a cow or not. Kris, the new pilot, took me up tracking to find the collar. We had a very strong signal almost immediately, but we could not see a herd, so I took a GPS point and drove in the next day. I spent an hour listening to varying volumes of double beeps, eventually managing to locate the collar, which had exposed wires and had obviously been ripped off the animal. Although this meant that the collar was broken, that is still better than the animals neck being broken.

Another collared cow was spending some time at Hippo Pools, and Roz (my new assistant) and I went out to get population data from the herd. After an hour or so, they cooperated nicely and walked calmly in front of us so that I was able to get a near total count of the herd.

Another of my collars, which was put on in June, stopped sending me fixes on the 7th October. I went out the next day and found the herd and got a visual on the collared animal. However, whilst I was with the herd the VHF stopped working. I tried to get hold of a vet to come out and dart her, but there was no one available for several days so I had to leave the herd. I was hoping that the VHF would start up again, but several tracking attempts have resulted in failure, so the collar appears to be completely lost.

I organised a darting trip that I hoped would allow me to remove the collar described above, among other reasons. We were able to remove the collar from Bongolo, which had been on for just over a year, then put that one and a refurbished one onto new cows, Fury and Jezebel. Everything went smoothly, but there was no sign of the malfunctioning collar.