1st February
Research 1 ! was our activity today. We were taken down to the research center in the morning, unfortunately as there was a school group staying at the farm, we didn’t have a vehicle to go out in, so Burton took us on a 10 mile round hike. We saw some beautiful birds & antelope of varying sizes, but mainly we looked at footprints & poo, plants & trees.
Lunch was pizza, then back to the research center, this time there was a vehicle, but we had to take some of the students with us, so a couple of girls who had been to the research center before stayed behind & went through & documented camera trap pictures.
We went out with Eula who is quite new & Chevoux, who has been there a while & knows the land, the drives & is good a tracking, he has a degree in Human ~ Animal conflict !!
When you get to a certain point you have to start looking out for game & record it on an app, species, sex, adult or young, amount in group, basic geographical point, this is to see that you have enough game to sustain any carnivores & enough fodder to sustain the game, plus obviously to see that everything is thriving. We caught a glimpse of giraffe, antelope, a warthog, an ostrich & hundreds of guinea fowl which we don’t count. Eula hadn’t gone along the tracks which we were ~ which was interesting when we came to bits that wasn’t nice & flat lol & then we was running late for the research team to attend their meeting on the farm, so she drove flat out, now, I didn’t realise that deserts could be quite so stony, on the back of the truck it felt like being on a vibration plate ~ just glad we hadn’t eaten !!
Diner was a delicious stew & rice, the meat was on the bone, possibly goat or beef, VERY nice !!
Thunder started, then the rain, not much rain, but the ground started to smell of rainfall, before a drop had even fallen, it was amazing, the thunder rumbles on for hours there.
I now have a tent mate, Christa, we retired to our tent & I spent the rest of the evening listening about her relationship woes – oh well !!
The Wildlife Volunteer 