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.