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.