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!