On Thursday, Shavaughn (my assistant) and I returned to camp after spending four nights in NG31 and NG32 sampling sites used by some of my collared buffalo. We started on Sunday in NG32, at the bottom of the Gomoti, on the buffalo fence. We were able to make our way up to the crossing between NG32 and NG34 without any difficulties. We got several samples on the way and negotiated quite a few muddy patches without getting stuck. As we set up our camp on the Gomoti, we were watched by the Matthews pack of wild dogs - eleven adults and 6 pups. We had spotted them a few minutes earlier as they chased an impala, but it appeared that they failed to catch it and decided to just watch us from a distance for a while.
The next day we continued northwards along the Gomoti through NG32 and into NG31. The sites used by the herds were similar to some used previously in the area, so I could use the tracks that I had recorded previously to find my way between islands. The water had also dropped significantly, which made everything easier. We saw two buffalo herds, one of around 50 and one of about 300, but they were both quite far away and moved off across floodplains too quickly for me to get much data from them. We camped along one of the main channels in NG31, which in retrospect was probably a bit close to several hippo pods. Shavaughn got a fright from one that came out to graze, but she managed to scare it more and it ran back into the water.
We kept travelling up the Gomoti, stopping to watch about 20 crocodiles ripping into what appeared to be an elephant's foot, although it could well have been something different. I thought that the crocodiles would therefore be suitably distracted and not in the spot that I found to cross the channel, seeing as I had to walk the crossing before driving it. It was a lovely sandy crossing to an island that I had wanted to visit for a while and have now found the best way to access it. We saw lots of elephants in that area, but none of them bothered with us too much.
We went back across the channel and drove up to the top of the Chitabe land mass. There we found another suitable crossing and passed into Moremi, into an area that I had not previously visited. It appeared that the area had only recently dried out, but was quite easy to drive around. We found a nice camping spot and were just cooking dinner when we noticed another camp fire in the tree line about 500 m across the floodplain from us. Soon after we spotted it, I watched through binoculars as someone hurriedly put it out. We concluded that they must be poachers, which made us slightly nervous. We got in touch with Guy (my camp manager) and gave him our GPS co-ordinates, arranging to contact him in the morning to check all was well. We did not have any problems, but the next morning a bush fire was started very close to where we saw the camp fire.
We spotted a few buffalo as we were packing up camp and headed over to investigate. It turned out to be a herd of over 1, 000 animals, including my recently collared cow, B2. I managed to age and sex 777 of the buff, which took a while! We headed back out of Moremi and sampled a few more points before stopping for the night close to a big lagoon.
The next morning we sampled our last few points (making a total of 40 sites sampled from 3 collared animals on the trip) and stopped off in Sandibe and Chitabe to say hello before heading back across the Gomoti. We were then called on to help with a zebra darting before we got back to camp for a well-deserved shower!
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