I have been spending far too much time in front of my computer over the last couple of weeks, but I have developed a protocol that I hope will work. I have looked at the last two weeks of fixes for the three herds up at Stanley's and have tried to work out their activity patterns for each fix. I have also worked out the habitat that they were in from the vegetation map. I will be heading across there tomorrow for a few nights to check that this will work, and to take vegetation samples from the sites that I have identified.
I am still quite worried about the volumes of water over there, but I think that I just have to realise that I will get stuck, probably several times, but that is just something I have to deal with. Some of the buff have spent most of their time in what should be accessible places, but there are also plenty of fixes in floodplains and on islands, so I will definitely have to hire a boat and mokoro soon after this trip to go and collect the remaining data from those sites. Can't say I am very keen on that idea, but hopefully will avoid the hippos and not fall in to be eaten by crocs!
We had very little sleep in camp last night. Yesterday, some lions killed a zebra right next to the pan in front of HQ. I did not see them myself, but apparently it was a female and 3 cubs. They stuck around all day yesterday and last night the hyaenas came in. They were calling very loudly most of the night, until at 4.15 this morning one of the lions had enough of it and roared at them, in a way that I interpreted as telling them to shut the hell up! There was one whoop after that but then everything went quiet and we all got a couple of hours of sleep.
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