Santantadibe

Shavaughn and I went across to NG32, along the Santantadibe, for a couple of nights this week. From plotting the GPS fixes onto Google Earth, it looked like most of them were on the western side of the channel, so we first drove to the Thamalakane crossing. As soon as I caught sight of it I doubted our chances of crossing. We found a truck stopped in the water at the crossing point and very few tracks going into the water. An old man was on the other side and he waded across to show us just how deep it was. I tried to walk across at a shallower section, but the water was higher than my waist. I know I am not the tallest person, but I thought that was still a bit high for my car.

So we headed back up to the gate on the eastern side of the Santantadibe, without crossing any of the anticipated water. We followed a road along the edge of the floodplains and came across a herd of about 300 buff in lovely open grassland. At first we thought they were going to run for it, but they relaxed very quickly. In fact as we drove towards them, they stopped walking away from us and turned to walk right past us, about 50 m away, in a slow manner, which was perfect for working out age and sex ratios. I got quite a high percentage of the herd, and was then able to collect fresh faeces from the ground while they watched. By this time the sun was setting, so we drove a km or so and camped. The wind was howling that night, but it stopped eventually and we were able to get some sleep.

The next morning, we started sampling points used by Bianca. It was relatively easy to drive around and most of the points turned out to be on that side of the channel (not quite sure how, but will have another look at Google Earth) and quite easily accessible. We got ten points done before lunch and a further 7 after lunch. We found a lovely campsite in front of floodplains with pools. The next morning there were waterbuck and zebra splashing through the floodplains.

We continued sampling, but by that time had almost reached our quota of samples for the area. I want to avoid oversampling areas on trips, as that leads to a bias in the data. We found a few more sites, bringing our total up to 20. The second to last one was in riparian woodland, and I managed not to see a log that unfortunately cracked my windscreen. I am still upset with myself about this, and will endeavour to be much more careful in future.

I radio-ed camp and they kindly agreed to look up the latest fix for Bianca. I plotted it on my GPS and realised that she was on the other side of the channel. I think that there is a crossing for the Santantadibe, but I was not sure where it was, so decided to leave Bianca for next time. We obtained population dynamics data from the other herd, and I now know which coordinates will mean that Bianca is on the east of the channel.

We drove back to camp and arrived just in time for the end of lunch. It was a short trip, but would have been highly satisfactory if not for the windscreen incident.

Sampling on the Gomoti

Last week Shavaughn and I went back up the Gomoti on a day trip to collect some data from sites used by Nokya. There were several sites that we could not get to because of water, but I was really trying to continue the trip we started before having to hurry back for the fires. I somehow managed to delete some of the habitat photos that I had taken previously, so I wanted to take those again before it changed too much. I was actually amazed by how much the habitats had changed in two weeks. The grasses were quite similar, but the leaves have really started to come out in the trees. I managed to scare several giraffes by walking around without them being able to see me!

We came across a lovely little herd of buff, around 75 of them. They were very relaxed and content to watch us work and pose for photographs. Usually when we get close, they move off, but this time they stuck around. I needed to collect some faecal samples, so got the car as close to fresh poo as I could and collected it, keeping a wary eye on the buff of course. As I was counting them I saw a female with a young calf running about 50 m behind them, but she showed no signs of having seen the herd and just kept running, which was quite odd.

We saw the 4 resident reedbuck that don't seem to move from a patch of floodplain, quite a few lechwe (an indicator that we will probably not reach a site) and a lot of elephant. I darted through a gap in a herd only to find myself in between those elephants and the rest of the herd that were crossing the river. Shavaughn was enchanted by a couple of them submerging themselves completely, but I was keen to get out of the herd before stopping to have a look.

We went to town on Saturday morning to collect the collars that have been refurbished and returned to me. DHL had promised me they would arrive on Saturday, but this failed to happen, so I thought it would be easier to wait until Monday rather than come in and out of camp. The collars did arrive on Monday, and I did not have to pay any fees, despite what DHL in Gabs told me. I had realised by then that the older style collars needed a few more bits and pieces to be programmed. I decided to take a few more days rather than rush on with the darting that was due to happen yesterday, so it has been delayed until next week. I have been switching all the collars on this morning and decorating the area outside the office with them. So far they are behaving very well.

Still burning

This week has again been quite busy with fires, not leaving me much time for research. The days have sort of merged into one, so I cannot remember what happened on which day. The most memorable episode was when large columns of smoke heading towards camp called us back from where we were back-burning at another camp (MTC). We got back to the fire break at our camp (HQ) as quickly as possible. The main parts of the fire passed between us and MTC at quite a pace, but the wind was changing and we decided to back-burn along the road from the fire break towards Roan Pan. We went slowly, but the changing wind made the fire quite unpredictable. Suddenly, it shifted and blew the fire straight across the road, where it continued at terrifying speed. I had been lighting the back-burn, so ran in front of the flames and was fine. The vehicle with the water bowser was in front of me. The hose (which one of us had been holding) came trailing along the road, which was by now covered by flames. We shouted to another guy to grab the hose and spray the flames. The guy who had been holding the hose thought we were shouting because we were in trouble, so ran along the road, straight through the flames to get to us. We managed to get that fire under control, but had to head back to try and deal with one coming towards the fire break from another direction.

A plane flew for us, which was very helpful, as the pilot pointed out several additional blazes that we would not have known about. Eventually, we managed to get everything under control. The fire flared up again in a few places over the next few days, and by then everyone was completely sick of it. We took to beating out all the flames, then spraying down logs with the bowser, and then burying those logs to make sure no sparks would fly.

Then Shavaughn and I had a couple of days break in Maun, when I also arranged with some pilots for them to record all buff herds they see over the next week.

Most of the buff have stayed in similar sort of areas. Chanel has moved south, away from the few islands that she has spent the majority of the season on. Chanel, Lasanya and Nokya have been overlapping in their ranges, and have spent some time in the same herd, but have split again quite quickly. Bianca is still in a different area to the other three.

Hopefully things will calm down now and I will be able to get out and do some fieldwork, as these fires have definitely set me back, although that is just part of living in the bush!

Fires!

At the beginning of the week, Shavaughn and I went flying with Guy to get an idea of the sizes of the herds that my collared animals were in. They were in herds ranging from 250 - 700, and we saw a few herds that did not have any collars in them as well. There is a lot of water out there, but we were also able to determine which areas I should still be able to access despite the high flood. Hunting season is also over, so I can now get into all the concessions again.

Shavaughn and I headed up the Gomoti on Wednesday into Moremi to collect some data from points used by Nokya. We saw a herd of buffalo on the way, and were able to age and sex around a quarter of them before something upset them and they took off. We headed further north than we had been before to try and ascertain whether we could cross onto a rather large island that has been used quite a lot by a couple of the herds. Unfortunately, the channel there is rather deep and muddy, so we will leave it for a while and try again when the water has started to subside.

We were able to collect data from a couple of sites before we had to return to HQ in a bit of a hurry. There have been fires around camp for a few weeks, but this week they started to get a bit too close for comfort. We were monitoring the radio, and when Dog Camp said that the fire was reaching them, I decided to abandon fieldwork and go and give them a hand.

By the time we got back there had already been one back burn lit, but we were on hand to try again that evening. Unfortunately there was not much wind, so that plan was abandoned. On Thursday night, we tried to back burn along the road towards Rhino Pan. We were going quite well, but again the wind died so we did not complete the whole stretch.

On Friday, we went out around midday towards Dog Camp, where the fire was getting close. We dragged acacia trees along the road for several hours to try and create a fire break. The wind then changed to our favour, so we back burned again, moving along from the place where the fire had stopped earlier. When the wind died we headed for home again.

Yesterday, we again went out around lunch time and just made it to the fire in time to stop it jumping the road and heading straight for Dog Camp. Again we dragged acacias to widen the fire break. We had to use the bowser to stop big flames and sparks from flying across the road, and we were beating the fire out when it reached the shorter grass. We managed to get that section under control, despite a small scare when a patch on the wrong side of the road started to burn. We then went to another section and waited for the fire to reach the road before beating it out. Once that was under control, we headed back to a patch between two burns that had not burnt itself. We lit a back burn there and got rid of that threat. That was when Keren exclaimed that we would be home early. However, on our way back we found another section that was heading straight for the road, so we called everyone back in and beat that bit down as well. Then we went home.

Today, there are still some fires to the south of camp that are flaring up, so we are keeping an eye on them. There are others further away, but they seem to be heading away from all the camps so we are happy to just let them burn! Fire is an important part of the natural cycle of the bush, after all.

Hopefully the fires will die down soon and we can all get back to work, probably after a day of sleep. The the entire effort has been highly successful so far, and is by far the best team-building excercise I have ever experienced! (And I have discovered that setting fires for back burning purposes is a lot of fun!!)

Counting running buffalo

Earlier last week, Nokya made her way to our side of the Gomoti, so Shavaughn and I went out to get population dynamics data from her herd. We found her close to Black Pools in a herd of around 200-250. This herd was on the move, so we kept trying to outflank them to be in a position that they would walk past us. We were able to count the last quarter and some of the first ones. However, they spent a good deal of their time running, even when we were several hundred metres away. We followed them at a distance to try and get them to relax, but had to give up when they crossed water and just kept heading north into really wet areas.

We headed back down the Gomoti to the usual game drive areas and spotted another herd close to the crossing point, but on the other side. That herd was very relaxed and we were able to age and sex most of them (around 150-200). We started to head back but had to wait for a large breeding herd of elephant (at least 100) to cross the road and let us through.

Stuck on the Gomoti

It has been a little while since I added a blog. My parents came to visit and we had a lovely few days on mobile safari, with some really good wildlife sightings. It was lovely to have them out and show them where I work.

One of my collared cows, Bianca, that was seen on the Gomoti before I got back to HQ crossed back to the Santantadibe, but Shavaughn and I were able to collect some vegetation samples that they used on our side before they left. We sampled 9 sites in a morning, with a little off-road island hop to get to the last two, past some black herons using their wings to create shade and attract fish. The crossing we used was a bit sticky and I correctly predicted that we would get stuck on the way back. This was Shavaughn's first experience at getting stuck, but she started digging with gusto and we had gotten one wheel onto a rack when one of the local game drive vehicles drove past on their way to turn the water pump off. On their way back they came over and without a word other than Hello, they towed us out, which was much appreciated, although we would of course have done it ourselves with a bit more time!

Leopard

This last week I crossed the Gomoti and went into NG31 to get samples from Nokya, who has been spending most of the last month on the other side of the river and has just come onto this side in the last couple of days. We managed to get samples from several quite wet areas by island hopping and wading around trying to find non sludgy routes whilst keeping a wary eye out for the many hippos in that area. I now realise why using a mokoro in that area would be rather dangerous - there really are hippos everywhere! We found a non-collared herd of buffalo that were not hugely co-operative. They hid in bushes and when they did come out they ran straight across water in a big bunch, which was not conducive to accurate counts of sex and age. We camped out on an islands surrounded by hippos that were calling all night - I never realised quite how extensive their vocabulary is.

The next day we drove further north along the Gomoti, looking for places to get across to the sites that I wanted to sample. Unfortunately every time that I thought we might reach one we came up against a rather large hippo-filled channel. We stopped off at the Afriscreen filming camp as we were driving past and asked them about crossing the channel. They took us further up to where they thought was a crossing for that large channel. Unfortunately it turned out to be a backwater and we found a much smaller crossing on the way back. We sampled a couple of sites on our side of the channel but unfortunately had to give up on the other ones. It was useful to find out where we could get to for future reference. And on the way back we found a beautiful, very relaxed male leopard in a tree.

We came back across the Gomoti but I think that will be the last time I cross until the flood water starts to go down, as the sand bar in the middle is almost underwater and the water came up to my fuel cap. Nokya had crossed over as well, so we went to get population dynamics from her herd, close to Black Pools. We found another herd close by and managed to age/sex 500 animals between the two herds. As I was calling out age/sex for the first herd, I spotted a male lion sticking his head up from sage behind the herd and looking rather interested. However, by the time I had finished my count I could no longer see him and when I went to look for him could not find him. The second herd managed to leave a calf behind, so the lion might have found him a bit later but not while we were there.