More migration

Last week, Roz and I went out to sample the migration route taken by Valkyrie and Jezebel. We started close to Hippo Pools, but after only 8 points sampled we fell into a hole that we failed to spot and unfortunately broke all but one blade on one side of my suspension. We crept back to camp, after managing to get hold of Gabriel, who was in town and agreed to bring a set out. We borrowed the TDi and sampled until dark, before coming back to camp, only to find that Jezebel had turned around and come back to the Gomoti when I checked the website for buffalo movements. Two of the tyres on the TDi had slow punctures the next morning and we were pressed for time, so unable to fix them and we had to borrow the cruiser. We finished off sampling the next day, taking 71 points on that route.

We high-tailed it back to camp to pick up my car, which Moses had kindly fixed while we were busy sampling, and get straight into town in time for a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) course organised by the University of Botswana for the next four days. During that course, the drag link arm on my vehicle fell off so that I had no steering, but I managed to get that fixed by the end of the course. My supervisor from the University of Bristol gave us short notice that he was coming to visit, so I met up with him and arranged to take him down to the Makgadikgadi for zebra darting with a colleague. Unfortunately the zebra refused to play and spent hours staying just out of range of the dart gun.

Two days ago, Jezebel changed her mind again and moved eastwards. Valkyrie finally decided to stay in the east, whereas Fury, the third collared animal on the Gomoti, is still showing no signs of migrating as yet.

Migrating Valkyrie

Valkyrie, one of my collared buffalo, decided a couple of weeks ago to migrate, which turned out to be a little early. She spent a few days in the wet season home range, then returned to the Gomoti. A couple of days later, after a storm, she left again, this time taking a much longer, more circuitous route before eventually returning to the Gomoti, not far from HQ. I wanted to sample the entire route that she had taken, to see where she had decided to stop as well as the areas that she walked through. Roz and I started this endeavour on the 6th November, following the first back and forth mission. However, we were unable to complete it because my vehicle was giving me problems, refusing to idle and consuming a lot of fuel. I decided to take it to Maun, where I hoped (in vain as it turns out!) that it would be fixed quickly. While we were in Maun, I was monitoring the movements of the buffalo, and saw that Valkyrie had set out on her second mission.

We eventually got the vehicle back on the 20th November, with a new carb, new manifold, a refurbished cylinder head and a variety of other repairs, and headed straight out to finish sampling. We spent the next four days retracing Valkyrie's route, coming out of it with close to a hundred sample sites and a decent level of exhaustion.

We were sampling along the main Moremi road when we bumped into Goose, one of the collared leopards. We followed him for a little while, as it was the first time that Roz saw a wild leopard, and she was very excited. He was checking around, but seemed more interested in marking than hunting, but when we saw him suddenly stop and look interested, we approached cautiously to see what he was checking out, and saw a herd of about 50 buffalo in front of him. He lay down and watched them, and they eventually just moved past him without worrying him at all. It was an interesting interaction, but we then left him and continued with sampling.

I have just checked the website for the latest fixes from my collars, and I see that while we were sampling, Valkyrie has gone again, this time taking Jezebel with her! I believe that I have managed to collar the most indecisive buffalo in the Delta, although it is very interesting. She (and her herd) responds almost immediately to rainfall, whereas all the other buffalo that I have collared have waited for several weeks after the first rains. I am now hoping that the rains come, so that she stays that side and I will go to sample from her latest meanderings.

Cheetah hunt

Last week, Roz and I went out to do some sampling not too far from HQ. When we got up to Hippo Pools, I spotted a cloud of dust that could only be from a large buffalo herd, so we went to investigate. After a few attempts at counting the herd, I managed to see the collar that had stopped working entirely, still on Harpy, the buffalo cow. I got hold of Rob Jackson the vet and Peter Perlstein the helicopter pilot, who were both free, and arranged for them to come out to help me remove the collar. I stayed with the herd, and after a few hours, the helicopter came in and landed to pick me up. Harpy was in a herd of around 500, with no working VHF, so just spotting her from the helicopter took a while. The wind was gusting so we could only dart in one direction and the herd was running all over the place. We finally managed to get a dart into her, and she went down fairly quickly. We recovered the collar and reversed her, then Rob and Peter headed back to Maun.

The next day, we went the long way round to Chitabe, to sample from a few points along the Gomoti. The area has dried up nicely, and we were able to get around without any problems, even bumping into one of the collared lionesses from Dog Camp, Chanel. We went to say hello at Chitabe, where we were well received, as always, and managed to find the wild dog pack of 22 animals before heading out.

Yesterday we went again to sample from areas close to HQ, as the previous trip was shortened somewhat by the darting. We went to Hippo Pools, and found three cheetah: Franky, Fredericks and Flojo's cub just by the side of the road. They got up and slowly walked off, so we followed and watched them climb a tree and deposit their scent marks. They kept walking and spotted some impala, which seemed entirely oblivious. They were behind a riparian tree island, and at first the three cheetah all approached together. Then Franky and the cub went to the right, while Fredericks sneaked round the other side, picking up to a trot to get round more quickly. We stayed with the others, and watched the cub hang back while Franky walked slowly towards the impala before stopping right out in the open about 100m from them. We caught a glimpse of movement and saw Fredericks trotting round the back, then the impala saw him and ran away from him, straight in front of the car with Franky in hot pursuit. Unfortunately sage got in the way of my perfect photo! The other two cheetah ran, but they all gave up a couple of hundred metres later and the impala ran off. It was an incredible sighting, both for the tactics and the proximity to the chase - the sound of their feet pounding the ground was amazing.

Valkyrie, one of my collared animals, decided on the 31st October to walk 30 km east towards the wet season range. This was after about 20 mm of rain fell over a couple of days. After spending 3 days there, she has realised her error and has returned to the floodplains. I will be going out to see if I can work out what changed her mind.

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.

Elephants

Last week I sampled from a couple of collared animals that have been spending time on our side of the Gomoti. The southern section, past MTC, was still very wet, but we were able to get to a couple of points and find a herd of around 300 buff, although they were in fairly dense riparian, so we could not get a very good count from them.

The next day we headed past the Moremi cutline, towards Hippo Pools and the Gomoti northwards. We found three lionsses and two young cubs, very close to Hippo Pools. Interestingly, they had made their way down to HQ by the next day, which is at least two kilometres. We tried to reach some points towards Black Pools, but were stopped by primary floodplain. We went back around Hippo Pools to the other side, where we were able to access several points, as it was not quite as wet as I thought it would be. We also found a lovely little swimming spot, which was lovely and refreshing in the midday heat.

We made our way to the Gomoti, where we discovered hundreds of elephants. We had to wait for about an hour for a group to move away from a mud hole. One of them had a tiny calf, whilst two males were testing each other's strength. They moved off eventually, and we were able to make our way around to sample several more points. We found a beautiful big baobab that I had not noticed on previous trips, but decided to camp closer to the water. This turned out to be fortunate, as we later saw lots of elephants under the baobab whilst we were treated to fifty elephants crossing the little channel right in front of us as the sun set.

We made our way back down the next day, again dodging elephants, although there were fewer around then than during the heat of the previous day.

Janette has reached the end of her time, and is leaving today. I have managed to find another assistant, Roz, who will be arriving on the 2nd October from the UK.

Waiting for Harpy

Harpy, one of my collared cows, has been spending a lot of time close to HQ lately, so on Wednesday Janette and I went out to collect some samples from areas that her herd has been using. We found the herd close to Peter Katz' old camp, in fairy thick palm scrub. We spent a while trying to be sneaky and position ourselves so that they would walk in front of us, but of course that did not work, and we only succeeded in causing the buff to run into elephants, creating a bit of a kerfuffle. We decided to give up and drove back along the road, only to find ourselves about 20 m from the closest buffalo, who seemed to have relaxed. We were able to get a modest count, but decided to come back later when they might have moved into more open habitat.

We were able to get close to the new hunter's road before our way was blocked with water. We made our way through fairly thick riparian to the water's edge, but were unable to drive along the floodplains. We sampled several sites down there, then tried for the buff again. The Gomoti is dropping, but is still very wet, and the lovely buff had decided to cross the back channel in our absence, so I decided to monitor them for the next few days and catch them in the open at a later stage.

This occurred the next day, when they found themselves in fairly open riparian along the Gomoti north of the Moremi cutline. We drove out to them and were with them within an hour of the latest fix. They were fairly relaxed, and were fine with us manouevering ourselves into a position where we could see most of them. I got a good view of Harpy, who is looking lovely and fat and happily bullying lesser individuals. We became quite familiar with several animals in the herd, and they were completely relaxed with us being 50 m away, so much so that it took them 5 hours to move. Three elephants and four giraffe came through in that time. Eventually they decided to move off, although it was in the one direction that I couldn't quite see all of them. So we tried an outflanking tactic, sneaking through the palm scrub further up and lying in wait for them next to the Gomoti. Surprisingly, this paid off and we were able to get a near total count of 147 animals as they slowly crossed some shallow water.

On Thursday, we went out to collect baseline samples further east. The day was mostly uneventful, but we did come across a group of vultures at a pan at the northern boundary of NG43. When we went to investigate, we found a little buffalo calf, only a couple of weeks old, that must have died the day or night before, as it had barely been touched and there was no smell of death. There was no fresh evidence of a herd, so I think that she was separated from the herd and had been wandering around for a while.

Lions at Chitabe

On Monday, Janette and I went across into the Chitabe area. The water outside of the fence is still rising, but several well-maintained bridges have been built, so that only small patches of water need to be crossed. Further north, the water has started to drop, and the buffalo are using the floodplains more now that the fresh grass has been exposed.

We started off sampling from one of the collared animals that is currently in the very top of the hunting concession bordering on Chitabe. We worked our way northwards along the floodplains, skirting the water, but I could definitely tell that the water is dropping, and relatively quickly. We sampled a total of 24 sites, and were able to access almost all of the points that we tried for.

At one grassland point, Janette came walking swiftly back to the car, as she had spotted a large elephant bull walking aggressively towards us. We got into the car, and he did seem to be fairly upset, and was in must, so we drove away from him to give him plenty of space. He went up to a palm and shook it violently, as if to prove to us that he could do the same to us if we got in his way again, but he then moved off.

Later on, we were driving along the edge of a channel, and came across a pod of hippo. There was a big male that yawned at us and launched himself out of the water, although he did not quite want to make the effort of coming out and charging us fully. We stopped to watch him showing off, but eventually left him to his little patch of water.

We drove off from the hippo pod and a couple of hundred metres later we startled a young male lion lying behind a bush right next to the road. He was with a sub-adult female and an older adult female. We took some photos and drove another kilometre to get to the next point, only to come across two very large male lions relaxing under a tree.

We finished off the last few points, then stopped in at Chitabe on the way out. I am hoping to try to get into the Stanley's area soon, since I have not been able to access the herds there for two months now, but I am not sure that the water has dropped sufficiently before the fence for me to get through.

Water still rising

I returned from Namibia a few days ago, where I had a lovely time and saw, amongst other things, a black zebra in Etosha .

A friend of mine, RosAnna, is going to be assisting me while Janette has some time off, and although she arrived fine, her bag did not. We spent a couple of days in Maun hoping for the bag to arrive, but I had to do some fieldwork for the end of last season, so we had to give up for a bit and come out to camp. The day after we arrived in camp we set off to collect samples from the Chitabe area. Since I was last there 3 weeks ago, water has come up across the access road outside the fence, and is now well above my waist. I looked for places that other people had crossed, and eventually found a small bridge that had been built, so we used that and continued. We camped on the boundary with NG32, and were serenaded by lions from the moment we set up camp until about midnight. Two elephants walked fairly close to our tents, but did not bother us.

The next day, we found three separate herds of buffalo, two with collared animals in them, and reaching a combined total of around 1,500 animals. We collected samples from several sites, although there were quite a few that I was unable to get to because of water. That was the last of the season's sampling, so I now have to wait for a couple of weeks before I can start with the next season's sampling.

Water problems

I have been struggling to carry out fieldwork lately, given that my lovely study animals have been spending most of their time in wet, inaccessible areas. However, two of my animals were considerate enough recently to spend some time in the Chitabe area, which is mostly dry enough to get around. Therefore Janette and I went out this week to collect samples and try to meet my target for the season.

We were driving up to the closest fixes when we came across fresh buffalo faeces, so we followed the trail for a while. We were still quite far from the last fix from the collar, but when I checked for a signal I picked a strong one up straight away. The herd was at least 300 strong, and fairly relaxed, so that we were able to get age, sex and body condition for more than 200 of them. We also managed to see the collared cow, looking healthy and fat.

We continued up to the vegetation points, and after we had been sampling for a while we were approached by a vehicle, which was being driven by a friend of mine who works for Afriscreen. He invited us to stay at their filming camp that evening, which was very kind and much appreciated. We headed there as it was getting dark and spent a pleasant evening swapping stories.

The next morning we headed out as soon as it got light and sampled intensively to meet our target. I wanted to cross a channel to get to some more floodplain points, but it turned out to be rather deeper than I had hoped, so I abandoned that plan and decided to call it a day, after we collected samples from 20 points. We passed through Chitabe, where we were given a warm welcome, as always. They told us about a collared cheetah that they had seen that morning, so I passed the information onto Dog Camp.

Darting again

Last week I made arrangements for darting buffalo and putting out the collars. Larry Patterson the vet came up from Gaborone and Peter Perlstein flew the helicopter for us. On Thursday, I asked several of the charter pilots to call in buffalo herds that they had seen, which helped us to find the first herd, a few km south of Stanley's airstrip. We put the first collar out, then searched for more herds. We found two more at the bottom of Santantadibe island, and put the next two collars out without incident. We then returned to Maun, as I was hoping to re-collar two animals the next day and Tico kindly agreed to track them for me on the Friday morning.

Tico found two of the collars I had been looking for, but from their positions I thought that they had probably broken off already. One was close to the Gomoti, so we went to check that there was not a herd there, before heading back to the Gomoti to collar two more animals. We found a large herd of around 500 animals fairly far up the Gomoti, where we decided to put two collars, to save time. We darted a cow and flew higher to watch her as she went down. We then noticed a young male lion crossing the water after the herd.

We monitored the herd, but they went through some thick palm scrub and we lost sight of the cow. We kept an eye on the lion to make sure that he did not find her. Unfortunately he spotted her at the same time as we did, and as we flew down towards her we saw him with his paws around her. He was only on her for about 30 seconds before we used the helicopter to shoo him away, so was unable to do any damage. When Larry examined the cow, he told me that she was very old, as she only had one very worn tooth left, and he was unsure how much longer she would live for. We decided to let her go and collar more suitable animals. We reversed her and kept an eye on the lion to ensure that she made it back to the herd without incident.

We targeted a second cow, who was much younger. Just after Larry put the dart into her, we caught sight of a leopard that walked across an open area and jumped up into a tree next to the buff herd. The darting went smoothly, as did the last one, and we headed for Maun. The buff herd were watching the lion then, though he still seemed determined to get something!

I have been monitoring the collars since they went out, and have been somewhat dismayed to see that the second two collars that we put out on Thursday joined up and have since walked 30 km up Chief's Island. I do not know why they have done so, as I have not observed such long movements apart from the migrations, and can only hope that they stop soon, before they reach Mombo! The other newly collared animals have moved only a reasonable amount, and are all in areas that I hoped they would stay in, although with the high water they are still largely inaccessible..

Rising waters

The highly unusual rainfall that we had a couple of weeks ago, with close to 90 mm falling in 3 days, disrupted my planned fieldwork somewhat, since I had to give the ground time to dry up before driving off-road. Once it had stopped, I got a couple of reports of buffalo herds which I found to record age, sex and body condition. Once I had recorded the age and sex of most of the second herd, numbering around 400, I went in to collect faecal samples. The herd was still fairly close, so I was leaning out of the car to pick them up. I then spotted a lone cow on the other side of my vehicle to the main herd, looking rather upset. I saw movement, and realised that there was a very small calf next to her. I moved out of the way so that she could rejoin the herd, but she moved back towards her calf. I kept going, collecting faeces, only to see the cow again, looking very agitated. She charged towards my vehicle and veered off at the last minute, but then decided she had had enough, and put her head down, connecting with my car on the back right hand corner, where I now have some extra dents. I moved out of her way quickly, and saw that she still had afterbirth coming out of her, so she must have been giving birth whilst I was counting the herd. She rejoined the herd, and brought the tiny calf over, at which point several other animals came to greet the new arrival. I got the last couple of samples and moved off quickly to avoid disturbing them any more.

On Wednesday last week, Janette and I went out to collect data from Bongolo, one of the collared cows that has been hanging out on the Boro. When we reached the Thamalakane, we found a BDF truck that had managed to drive off the admittedly narrow bridge there. We were roped into assisting them, and lending them my highlift jack, which fortunately allowed them to free themselves after only an hour and a half. They went off to rescue another vehicle that had gotten stuck.

We made our way along the road that we usually take, which is barely visible and very little used, until we found it to be flooded. We cut inland to some other points that needed to be sampled, making our way around flooded areas on the way. As we were finishing with one point, I tried to start the car and the starter motor seized. I swapped it for the spare, but that one just whizzed in a very un-reassuring manner, so I took the first one apart, sprayed some lubricant, and put it back in. Luckily that did it and the car started, but by that time it was starting to get dark so we camped there. There were lions calling all night, but they seemed to be staying in mostly the same place the whole time. The next morning we headed further north, but soon came across long stretches of flood water. The road was sandy, so we drove through, but were thwarted by yet more water and had to give up on samples on the other side. We spent the rest of the day mostly being stumped by floodwater, where 2 weeks previously it had been bone dry, and was now up to my waist with a strong flow. As we were making our last attempt to get to sample points, we came across water yet again and were about to turn around, when Janette spotted something moving in front of us, which turned out to be a pangolin! We got a few pictures of it then let it go on its merry way.

We drove back to the Thamalakane, only to find that in 30 hours it had risen from the top of our wheels to being well over the bonnet. If the water continues to rise, I will not be able to cross that river, and my herd will become inaccessible. However, I am hoping to put out 5 more collars at the end of next week, which will help with finding sample points that I can reach.

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.

Starter issues

Janette and I went across to the Boro a few days ago to collect samples from Bongolo . We got into the area where she had been and started tracking but did not pick up a signal, so went to the first sampling point and started collecting grasses. I called HQ and got a fix on the herd, only to realise that we had gone past them earlier. We returned to that fix and did not pick up any signal from Bongolo, although I did get a weak signal from B7. We played hide and seek with them for a bit in a riparian band, but eventually managed to age and sex around 220 of them, including seeing Bongolo, so she was definitely in the herd. I wanted to get a visual of B7 to see if the collar still had its GPS unit on it, but were unable to get a sighting of her.

When I went to start the car again, the starter motor made a strange noise and refused to engage. I called camp and was told to change it for the spare that I carry, so I did that and she started, slightly reluctantly. By this time, it was starting to get dark, so we quickly collected some wood and set up camp. The buff had moved off, but they decided to come and have a look at us while we were cooking. It was slightly eery, to shine a torch and get hundreds of eyes staring back at you, but of course I was happy.

The next morning the car took a few tries to start, so I decided that we would leave her running all day and get as many samples as possible before heading back. So we set off to see where we could get to in the floodplains. We got a total of 11 samples, which was not as many as I had hoped, but quite a few were inaccessible, although if my car had been 100% I would have taken a few more risks. We bumped into the herd a couple more times, and both VHF signals were strong on those occasions so I guess it was just a temporary problem.

We called it a day after the last sample and headed back down the main road from Stanley's airstrip. Some water crossings had dried up completely, whilst others had appeared. The longest crossing was over the bonnet for a while, but it is very sandy, so I have never had any problems getting through. There was a new one that looked like it had a road going around, but it petered out after a bit. I reversed to turn around, then something caught my eye and I noticed a large male lion hiding in a little bush.

We continued down the road without incidents and were coming up the road towards HQ when we spotted a lioness at Elephant Pan. The radios were not working, so I could not call her in, but I thought it might be useful to Dog Camp to get ID pictures of her. By this time it was dark, but we had a spotlight so we made our way across to her and got pictures of both sides of her face for whisker spot IDs. I then pulled off to go home, and fell straight into the largest hole I have ever had the misfortune to find myself in. The front wheels came out again but the back wheels got stuck and the car stalled, which was something that I had been avoiding all day. Luckily she started again with a bit of persuasion and popped out of the hole quickly, otherwise we would have spent a rather uncomfortable night in a hole next to a lioness, since the radios were out and there would not have been anyone available to answer any telephones!

Flying in the SkyJeep

Kevin arrived on Sunday in his lovely yellow SkyJeep, and took me up tracking on Monday afternoon. We picked up all the buff whose location I was already aware of, but failed to pick up any signal from the last three missing animals. Unfortunately I have not been flying much lately so am not used to it and felt fairly nauseous at some points, but generally enjoyed the flight.

On Tuesday, Janette and myself went to sample sites used by Chanel before she moved further west. She walked approximately 10 km over a day, stopping on the way. We sampled twelve sites used before the movement and a couple of the points that she walked through on the way. She has stopped in grasslands on the other side of the Moremi cutline, so has not completed her walk back to the floodplains. I will wait for this before completing the sampling for the migration. I have had several reports from pilots that they are seeing more buffalo on the floodplain systems, but the grass is still quite green in the grasslands, so the buff should not be in too much of a hurry to leave them.

Janette is currently flying with Kevin to check that B74, the double-beeping collar, is still on a buff, since all of the other collars from that original batch have fallen off. It would be useful if this one did the same, since it is not functioning properly anyway.

Finding Bara

Last week I had another attempt to dart Chanel to remove her defective collar. A vet came out and we followed her for several hours, sighting her a couple of times. However, she moved away from us continuously and ended up in dense mopane, where we encountered the same approach problem as previously, being unable to get close to her without a great deal of noise and disturbance. We had to give up after 3 hours without getting close to her. I managed to break one of the springs on my vehicle at the same time, so had to avoid bumps and off road driving until I got that fixed.

I am using baseline vegetation characteristics from habitat types collected by a colleague to compare sites selected and avoided by buffalo to general availability. There is one habitat type that my colleague did not encounter in her study area that has been used extensively by buffalo during the wet season. I have been calling it Low Mixed Woodland, it occurs in sandy areas, and is widespread across NG43. Yesterday, I went across NG34 into NG43 to collect some baseline vegetation samples from this habitat type.

There were a lot of elephants in the area, so a lot of my time was spent creeping round corners and suddenly accelerating when I heard a trumpet from right next to the car. We escaped unscathed, and were able to find a couple of the store on board collars that had gone missing. B6 (Bara) was still wearing her collar, and I was able to get a good visual of it. Unfortunately that confirmed my fears that the GPS unit had been ripped off. The VHF is still strong, so hopefully she will keep that collar until my satellite collars are returned to me and I can replace the store on board with a satellite so that I can track her movements next year.

B5 (Vice) was emitting a rapid recovery signal, so I went to find the collar, which had conveniently dropped off right next to a road. This one had also lost its GPS unit. This morning I tried to retrieve the data from the collar, but it has stubbornly refused to give me anything. I have contacted the manufacturers to see if they can suggest any ways to access these data, since I do not know when the GPS unit was lost, so this collar may have taken fixes including the wet season locations.

Darting Bambi

I obtained a darting permit last week to remove the collars from two buffalo with malfunctioning collars. A vet agreed to come and try to dart these cows from my vehicle. I was not sure that this would be possible, as they can be difficult to get close to, especially in dense vegetation.

On Monday, we went out to where we had got a signal from Chanel's collar. We went into very dense mopane to find her. It took us 3 hours of tracking a deceptive signal that bounced from the mopane on all sides. Eventually we managed to see some buff, only to realise that she had been close to us the whole time, but was in a tiny group, consisting of 2 bulls, 2 cows and 2 calves. Needless to say, they did not hang around for us to get to them. They ran from us for a while, and the dense mopane made it impossible to get close to them without spooking them with crashing through trees. They headed off after a few more hours, crossing the Sankuyo road and disappearing off into more dense mopane. We decided to call it a day as we had made no progress at all.

On Tuesday, we set out for the area where Bambi had been most recently. We found three lions on the way, an adult female, a sub-adult male and a sub-adult female. These were thought to be the remnants of a pride that had a collared female in it until she died a few months ago. I radio-ed Dog Camp, then continued on our buffalo mission.

We did not manage to get a signal for the buff, but asked someone else to track down a different road for a couple of kilometres to see if he picked her up. He did get a signal, so we headed down that way. We found the herd fairly quickly and then spent 3 hours following them until they got to the point where they were comfortable with the vehicle being within darting range. It then took us a further hour to get a good visual on the collared buffalo. We spotted her in the herd, with other animals blocking the line of fire, but I kept her in sight and told the vet which rear end was hers so that he darted her, even though we could not see the collar at that point. She flinched slightly when the dart went in, but only started to move when she started feeling the drug. We think that she was one of the dominant females, since she was usually close to the front, and when she started to move the rest of the herd followed her, which made things a bit more difficult, but we had the signal from the collar to follow anyway. She went down after 12 minutes, but was still trying to get up, so we left her to settle for a bit. We went in and the vet gave her a top up, but it still took all of us to keep her in a sternal position at first. Most of the time she was kicking with her back legs, which made things a bit tricky, but we changed her collar and got blood samples from her. We reversed her within 45 minutes of the dart first going in, and she was up and moving within a couple of minutes.

We then went back to the lions to see if Dog Camp wanted any of them darted. Unfortunately the sub-adult female was too young and the adult female was in poor condition, so the decision was taken to leave them, which I think was the most sensible thing to do.

On Wednesday, we went back to Chanel to try again. She was in a larger herd, but still in the same dense mopane. We managed to get within 12m of some buffalo, but spotting the collar was very difficult and getting a clear shot was not possible. We spent about 4 hours trying to get to her, but had to give up in the end.

Another vet will be in the area next week and he said that we could try then if he gets done with zebra darting with time to spare, so we may have another shot at it.

Recovering collars

I went out on Tuesday to collect the last of the samples that I need for this season. Janette was not feeling well so I left her behind. I had checked on the fixes from Lasanya and found that the collar had not moved and had given a mortality signal, so I went to find it. It had fallen off in the middle of a large grassland, so was very easy to get to. It looked like it had been chewed a little, but otherwise no damage, simply a failure in the remote release mechanism. I continued northwards towards the last three points that I needed to sample. I managed to collect all my samples without problems, although it took slightly longer without an assistant. I came back along the main Khwai road in Moremi.

When I returned to camp, I found Janette being tested for malaria. I told her that it would be highly irresponsible of her to get malaria having only been here one month, and on anti-malarials, so she listened and the test was negative. Good assistant.

On the way back to camp, I developed a sneaky suspicion that Bianca's collar was also off, which was confirmed when I checked the fixes. It had not sent a mortality signal, but the fixes were very close together, so I set off yesterday to collect that collar. Janette told me that she felt better but I refused to let her come with me in case she decided to feel worse again. This collar was in the middle of the NG32 area, between the Gomoti and the Santantadibe. Given the high level of the Gomoti, I decided to go all the way around, which took a lot longer, but is better than drowning my car. I drove up the middle road, stopping to move a leopard tortoise out of the road, then struck out off road for the 2 km to reach the collar. I went through a riparian tree island and bounced over several logs before coming out into fairly open mopane with lots of grass hiding yet more logs. I made it to the fix for the collar and drove to a tree to leave the car in the shade so I could look for the collar, when I saw it lying next to the tree. It was more battered than the others, and the fabric connecting the release mechanism was very frayed, but it was still the release mechanism that was the weak point. I returned to the road and made my way back to camp.

Unfortunately, this means that I now have only one working satellite collar out. I hope to dart next week and replace Bambi's collar with a refurbished collar, so that I will have two collars, but this is still a very low sample size, especially as I want to collect migration data from when they move in the next month or so. However, there is not much that I can do, and the collar company has said that they will be as quick as possible in getting the collars back to me to be put out again. They will remove the release mechanism and shorten the belting, so hopefully the collars will not fall off again!

Wild dogs

My supervisor, Prof. Steve Harris, came out to visit myself and his other students for a few days, so I have spent a fair amount of time in town over the last week or so. He was generally very happy with my progress and made several very useful comments, which should help me to produce a better PhD. He spent several nights in Maun, so was understandably keen to get out to the bush, so he came out to HQ last night for a visit. We had a little potter about in the evening, going down to the Gomoti, which I have not visited in about a month. I was amazed by how high the water was - it has burst its banks in several places already. This morning we went to find the dogs, who were close by, and found them to be engaged in a bonding experience, which was very interesting.

B4, one of my store-on-board collars, one of the ones that had gone missing, has been picked up during a tracking flight. It was quite far east, which was the direction that I thought they may have gone in if the collars were still working. This is very good news, and hopefully means that the others will come back from wherever they went as well.

The collar that I sent off for repair has arrived, so I will check it out, then apply for darting permits to replace Chanel's collar, which is still double beeping.

Avoiding pans

I have just returned from two nights camping out for field work. Last week we had a lot of rain, so it was not until the weekend that I felt that field work would be worthwhile. The roads are definitely drier than they have been, but all the pans are a lot fuller than they were a few weeks ago.

One of my collars, B74, has not sent me new fixes since the 10th, so I needed to find the herd to check whether the collar was still sending a VHF signal. I have been in touch with the company, and they said that the data and battery seem fine, but there could be a problem with the wires in the collar, potentially with the wires leading to the GPS unit so that it cannot take fixes or send the data. I managed to find the herd because the collar was still giving off a strong signal, although it is double beeping. The collar did not look particularly damaged. She was very co-operative, since the one time that I wanted to get a good look at a collar was the longest time that a collared cow has stood in my field of vision. She also had a young calf, which was lovely to see. My contact at the collar company said that the VHF should be ok for a while, but I should send it back to them to be fixed. I should shortly be receiving the repaired B76 collar that fell off at the end of January, so I will try to replace 74 with 76.

After finding Chanel, we continued northwards to collect samples from Bambi, who has been spending time in Moremi, north of the very top of the hunting part of NG34. It is not an area that I have been to before, but we made our way up through NG34 to the cutline, finding a small herd of buffalo on the way. We made our way through 2 km of mopane, which was not a particularly pleasant experience, but we finally broke through into grassland and from then sampling was relatively easy. We picked up a signal from Bambiand tracked her down, but of course she was in some of the thickest mopane that we found up there. The herd was fairly relaxed, although we did have to follow them for a bit before they settled. By the time we had counted them, we had made our way fairly close to the cutline, so we just continued, only to find that the cutline was fairly flooded. We got around that and came to the inside cutline so started down that. After a few km, I noticed that my GPS had a waypoint called 'Waterhole', right on the road. We found it, and it was indeed a very large pan stretching right across the road and flooding the mopane as far as the eye could see. At that point it was starting to get dark, so we camped just off the road.

This morning, after a night spent thinking of options, I decided to drive the 1 km through mopane to the main Khwai road in Moremi. This turned out to be a good idea and we did not have any detours after we reached it. I thought that I could be useful to Dog Camp by tracking a few animals around that area and the Xini area, but only managed to pick up Darkness, the lion. The last two times that he was tracked the collar was double beeping, but when I picked up the signal it was fine. The big old elephant bull with the torn ear has been hanging around camp with a few friends in the last several days, which adds a little spice to walking to the office in the morning.

Getting stuck

A few months ago I received a complaint that my blogs were not as interesting as they used to be, since I have stopped getting stuck and whacking myself on the head. So I decided to listen to the constructive criticism and take this advice on board.

Janette (my new assistant) and I set out to the NG32 area between the Boro and the Santantadibe on Saturday morning, having obtained the latest fix from Bongolo just before leaving camp. We managed to find her fairly easily, in the same herd as B7, the only GPS collar that I have managed to pick up. We got a decent count of around 80 animals, althought I think that the herd was much bigger. We collected faecal samples and left them to their buffalo ways.

As we were driving back along the road to start sampling points, we came across a lovely herd of around 200 relaxing in grassland. This gave me the best count of the whole season, as they were very helpful, moving slowly in one direction, allowing me to get good visuals of most of them. We also collected faeces there, then moved on to vegetation sampling. That area seems to have gotten quite a lot of water in the time since I was last there, and a lot of the roads were flooded. Janette thought that flooded acacias were pretty, whereas I was slightly less impressed since I know what the ground turns into.

As we drove to our first point, a rather small elephant trumpeted at us and ran towards us from fairly far away. Janette was a bit concerned, but I just drove on and told her that she should only start worrying when I start swearing. We did a couple of sample points and were heading to another when we came across a section of the road that was particularly nasty-looking. There was a dry game trail going around it and lots of sage growing, so I foolishly thought I could go around. We went off the dry ground and straight into cotton soil, promptly sinking. Janette was a star and got stuck in straight away with the spade, while I jacked, keeping well away from the arm. We managed to get out within about 45 minutes, which was rather efficient of us, and was a good thing as it was starting to get dark by the time we were out. We hurried to a decent campsite, after turning around on the road and going back the way we came.

We heard lions roaring, followed by a gunshot, which was a bit disturbing, but I would have thought poachers would be going for meat as opposed to lions. There were also hyaenas and hippos calling, which pleased Janette. As I was cutting vegetables for our evening meal, I managed to slice the tip off my finger, which was foolish but not too painful. I eventually stopped the bleeding and got a bandage onto it. It rained pretty much all of that night.

The next morning we sampled a few more sites, then got ready to head into another area to collect samples from another herd. As we were driving towards that area, the sky was growing progressively darker and I heard someone on the radio talking about a storm at HQ. Given the already flooded state of those roads, I felt that an additional storm would probably lead to more time spent getting stuck than collecting data. I made the decision to abort and come back to camp. That was the right decision, since it rained all that afternoon, night and the next day. Today it has eased off a bit, but the skies are still overcast, so everyone is waiting for things to dry up before venturing off-road again.

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.

Collecting samples in the dark

Last week, Jennifer and I went out to find a few herds of buff and collect some samples. We found Lasanya fairly quickly and got a decent count, although it was definitely more difficult than usual to find sufficient faecal samples. We went down to where Chanel has been for the last few weeks, which is between our main access road and the main South Gate road. Unfortunately there are not many roads in that area and, as I found out, the bush there is fairly thick. We got a recent fix for the herd from Keren, but by the time we got there we could not get a signal, meaning that the herd had moved at least 2 km further. We did a few points in the area and headed back to the road. We spotted some buff along the fence, but they ran away into fairly dense bush and we lost them.

We went back up to sample points from Lasanya and bumped into the herd again, several km further south from where we had left them. We had had a storm already and the sky was looking ominous at that point and it was getting towards evening time, so I decided that we would head back to camp to avoid trying to cook food in the pouring rain. We headed back out early the next morning to do some more samples and found Lasanya again. For some unknown reason she has always been the easiest buffalo to find, and I am starting to think that she follows me as much as I follow her!

We continued up to collect samples from points used by Bambi Whilst sampling one of these, we heard buffalo fairly close by, so we finished quickly and headed across to find them. They were fairly skittish and we were only able to get a small population dynamics count, but it is all useful. They disappeared off into thick mopane at a rapid pace and we left them to it. We got an updated fix for Bambi from Keren and headed in that direction and picked up a fairly strong signal. Right next to us we saw a small group of bulls and cows, but they did not seem to associated with Bambi's herd. We followed the signal, which was an active one, indicating that she was moving. We were slowly catching up to her, but it was obvious by the signal and the tracks that the herd was on a mission. We followed their tracks through dense mopane and only managed to catch a glimpse of a couple of animals. By that time it was around 17:30 and a rather large thunder storm hit us, forcing us to abandon the tracking idea. I am not a big fan of holding up a large metal antenna when lightning is hitting fairly close by!

When the storm passed, it was past 18:00 and the herd had moved further still. I decided to leave them and head back to do some more points. As we were doing the last point of the evening, we again hear buffalo calling not too far away. We finished quickly and headed towards them. They were very relaxed and I was able to get a good count of the herd, since they were grazing and checking us out from about 15m away. After I had gotten a decent count, I wanted to collect faecal samples, but they seemed to enjoy my company so much that they were reluctant to move off and I didn't want to disturb them after we spent that time getting to know each other. Eventually the main herd moved off and I got out my torch to look for fresh faeces. Obviously I was aware that the buff were close by, so drove around looking for samples and did not venture far from the car, but all went well and I managed to find all the samples that I needed. We camped close by, since the herd had moved off by the time I found all my samples, and spent a lovely night under the stars. We headed back to camp the next day, sampling points on the way. By this time, my vehicle was stuck in low range and the steering rod was not quite as straight as it had been, so the rest of that day was spent fixing her up!

While we were out sampling, the wild dogs came through camp and killed an impala, so we were sad to have missed that, but it can't be helped - the buffalo are the priority for me!

Crossing the Gomoti

Last week I went out on Wednesday to find Bianca. She has been moving around in the area between the Gomoti and the Santantadibe. When we crossed, the water came up to the windscreen and came close to pouring in the windows. I managed to keep the vehicle moving, but there were several seconds where I thought we would get stuck. Needless to say, this was not an experience that I wanted to repeat, so we returned via the Morutshe gate, which is a longer way round, but much less river infested.

Before leaving camp, I had obtained the latest fix from the collar, taken earlier that morning. We drove down the road but failed to pick her up. I radio-ed Keren for a more recent fix, which turned out to be close to the road at the same time as we were driving it and tracking. I am concerned that the VHF has stopped working on that collar, as the point was less than a km from where I was tracking. We drove to the most recent fix and found fresh tracks and faeces. We started to follow the tracks as an alternative to using telemetry, but I drove over a small stick and then smelt a rather strong petrol scent. Upon investigation, I found that the pipe running out of my reserve tank and into my main tank had been damaged, so that petrol was coming out fairly rapidly. I managed to make a plan with a clamp so that the leaking stopped. However, I did not want to risk it happening again, particularly as most of the area is covered in mopane. I therefore headed for home with only 4 samples and no buffalo sightings. Louis and Duncan helped me all the next day to fix the problem, which has been sorted.

The next day I had to go to town to extend my waiver, which was done without incident. I spotted two chameleons mating in a tree at a friend's house in Maun, proving that there is wildlife in Maun as well!

Duba Plains

I managed to arrange a visit to Duba Plains with Wilderness Safaris last weekend. I went up on the Friday and came back on Monday. It was lovely to spend three nights there, going on game drives and managing to see lion and buffalo on each one. I spent a good deal of time talking about buffalo, which is always exciting for me.

The lions were following the buffalo for most of the time, but did not manage to take one down. The best opportunity would have been on the last day, when the whole herd crossed a channel, but there were no lions around at that time. On the first morning I did see a chase, but happily it was some buffalo bulls chasing a lion and not the other way around!

The structure of the lion prides up there seems to be very disrupted. There are two prides sharing a dominant male and the females have been systematically killing all their cubs for the last couple of years, including some killing and eating their own cubs. It was very interesting to see the different dynamics of the buffalo herd up there as well. There is only one herd, close to 1,000 strong, that lives in a relatively small area dominated by couch grass. There are hardly any daggaboys and lion predation is the main cause of death, although the pressure from lions now is far less than it used to be.

I have just found out that one of my collars (B76 - Nokya) is sending out a mortality signal, so I will go out tomorrow to recover it and collect some samples from the area.

Between the Boro and the Santantadibe

I went across into NG32 a few days ago, between the Boro and the Santantadibe, to collect sample from Bongolo. I was pleasantly surprised by the low levels of water, especially compared to last year. I got a total of 16 samples over 2 days, as a lot of the points were in grassland and I did not want to oversample that habitat type. Unfortunately I did not manage to find the herd in whose tracks I was following, as they managed to stay more than 2 km from my position at all times, which puts them out of range of my telemetry equipment. I did however manage to track down one of the GPS only collared cows, who was in some fairly dense mopane but with a few open areas allowing me to collect some population dynamics data. I did see a very young calf in that herd as well, which looked rather unsteady on its feet, so had probably been born the previous night. The range on those collars is much better, and I was able to pick up the signal from the collar from around 4.5 km away.

Most of our time was spent off-road, but we were able to stay in grassland areas between mopane and had very little bashing to do, although I still managed to crack my rear window and stub my toe. We saw quite a few elephants and heard lions and hyaenas close to our campsite but no one came to visit us this time.

Dog Camp had a vet out for the last few days, mostly to try and replace collars before they go down, or to swap collar types. On the first day they darted Frankie the cheetah and changed his collar. Rio (one of our staff) had gone across towards Kazikini to look for Barros but bumped into what he thought were 3 male lions. Gabriel asked me to help out since my vehicle is closed and safer to dart lions from. We drove across and realised there were actually 4 males, but they got quite nervous and kept running from us. There were a couple of opportunities but they were in very thick mopane, so even if we had managed it would have been a bit nerve wracking working on one male knowing there were 3 others out there that we couldn't see. We had to give up because they were just running as soon as they saw a vehicle. So we headed back to camp and I bumped into a herd of buffalo on the way, so it was a useful trip for me as well!

Dog Camp also managed to change collars on Vera (hyaena), Priya (cheetah), Apollo (hyaena) and Barros (lion). They found Claire (lion) looking very ill and injured, so have been keeping an eye on her in case she dies so that they can recover the collar. They almost got Tori, the hyaena that has proved rather elusive in the past, but somehow the dart went through a very small twig and missed her.

Gabriel left yesterday and we went across before going out for fieldwork to say goodbye to him. We spent a while at the pan at the back of Dog Camp, because an elephant has died in the middle of the pan. When we were there, there were 14 hyaena all around, swimming out to the carcass and fighting over the meat. It was amazing to watch them in the water and to have them all around us. Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me, so missed the photos.

Tracking buff

Last week Jennifer and I went across to the eastern part of NG34 to collect some data. We found Nokya fairly quickly but she was in very dense mopane and it took a while to actually find the herd, which made it very difficult to count them. We operated mainly off road, though we stumbled onto a road partway through the trip so we used that a little. There were quite a few elephants around and a couple of times we got into the car during a sample because we heard them coming our way, but they did not come within visual range of us. Sven helped us out with getting a recent fix for Lasanya, and we were able to track her down as well. She was fairly relaxed, but also in dense vegetation, so it was very difficult to get any population dynamics data and pretty much impossible to estimate herd size.

We kept heading north and during a sample we heard buffalo, so when we finished we went to find them. They were in a slightly more open area and were relaxed enough for me to position myself on top of the car in a location that they were walking past, so we were able to get a better sample from them. They turned out to be with Bambi, meaning that we found all of the herds with satellite collars in the area. We did not get any signal for any of the GPS collars.

We camped not too far away that evening since the sun was setting as I was collecting my last poo samples from that herd. During dinner an elephant rumbled fairly close by so we got into the vehicle and finished eating in there. I never saw anything, but Jennifer was a bit confused as she thought the sound was a vehicle quite far away. She also didn't wake up when there was an elephant walking past our tents just before midnight. My tent flaps were down as it looked like it might rain, but I heard him walking towards the tent, blowing air out of his trunk and shaking his head. He moved off after a few minutes. The next morning I checked his tracks and he must have been about 10 m from the tent. We also heard lions roaring in the evening and the following morning but did not pick up any collared animals.

We continued our sampling missions the next day and managed to finish everything by around 5pm, so I decided to head back to camp as I had things to do the next day. We drove all the way back and ended up in camp just in time for dinner.

This morning I had a slight surprise as I saw two female waterbuck in front of camp. They quickly ran off so I was unable to get photos, which I guess means it didn't happen! The vet at Dog Camp arrived last night so they are all gearing up to dart various animals over the next few days.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! I was in bed early for New Year, but I did catch my first ever fish on the Gomoti beforehand.

I went across the Gomoti last Sunday morning to collect data from one of my herds. Most of the points were fairly close to the road going down the Gomoti side to the fence and there were no major issues with water, which was nice. I had a rather close encounter with eleven elephants as we were sampling the last point on Sunday evening. We heard them coming through the mopane, so we got into the vehicle and sat tight. They didn't notice us at first, but when they did they all came over towards us with their ears out and their heads up. I did not want to provoke them, so I just sat very still and hoped that they would eventually leave us alone. They got to within 20 m of the vehicle, at which point I realised that I did not have many options if they all decided to do something. However after looking at us for a while, they all moved off into the bushes and we finished our sample.

I finished off the last of the points early on Monday morning and then tried to find the actual buffalo herd. I radio-ed for people at HQ to download the most recent fixes from her, but it seems that she was moving a lot over those couple of days and I managed to miss her, despite going all the way across to the Santantadibe side and along the fence. She just slipped by me somehow, which was rather frustrating, so I gave up and came back across the Gomoti on Monday.

On the Santantadibe side I did bump into a few lions though. There were two big blonde males and a young female. I found them just next to the road when I was checking for one of the collared lionesses for Dog Camp (Elle). She is also across that way, but was not with the three that I found, and was quite far off road so I did not see her. However, I showed the photos to the guys at Dog Camp and they reckon that the three lions are usually with the collared female.