Week 4

Week number 4, one month in, I can’t believe it.

Monday started easy. I didn’t go out in the morning as I had some questions I wanted to ask to Grietjie in my individual meeting before I went out. After the meeting I had the info I wanted and I went on my way a couple hours later. This time with a camera trap, ready to take pictures of the animals that (may) use the burrow I chose to trap. After a while of trying to get the right angle on the camera it hung there snugly in the tree, my first trap! May all the animals use the burrow and be captured on tape!

Tuesday I went out in the morning to place yet another camera trap on another burrow. This one should make videos of the stuff it sees! Aimed right at the entrance of the burrow, attached to a tree, I left the camera to do it’s thing. See you in 2 days! 4 of us went to Alldays to do shopping (this time not in Polokwane as there weren’t any students arriving or leaving). In the afternoon I went out again with my rake, now named Rupert, to, how I like to call it, do some gardening around the burrow. The reason not being removing weeds, but to clear the ground of tracks, so I can keep track (haha) of what animals go in or out of the burrow. I found a new burrow and logged it in my trusty GPS “A”, alongside with all the other burrows from the previous year, where another student had to find all of them (I'm just using her coordinates, thank you very much).

Wednesday I had nothing more to do other that gardening again, so I went out with Q and Grietjie on their round of checking the Hornbills, a bird species, in the reserve and use my trusty rake around the burrows in that area. There’s nestboxes placed in the reserve which the Hornbills (and sometimes other animals) use for nesting. While walking we found some Hyena and also Leopard(!) tracks! Grietjie logged the location of these tracks for Kevin, because he is working on a carnivore project and he needs the locations of Hyena tracks, however, not without dropping her phone in the track, destroying it. In the afternoon I went on my second walk and found a new burrow, which seemed not active sadly. And of course, Wednesday night pizza night!

This pic has a leopard print, but it can be hard to see as the actual good one was destroyed :)

Thursday morning I went and collected my first camera, quite excited to see what it had captured. When I got back I started going through the photo’s and it captured the most exciting thing ever: moving grass! After quite a disappointing morning I went into the field in the afternoon to do some more gardening, hoping to get better footage on Friday, when I collect the second camera trap. In the afternoon we played some volleyball and then it was time for dinner.

Friday has arrived and I collected the camera in the morning again. After plugging in the SD-card I found out that the camera hasn’t filmed anything at all! Not even moving grass. However, on my way to the camera I found tracks on another burrow close to it, so after the Friday meeting I went to trap this burrow, leaving it over the weekend.

Saturday 4 people went to Polokwane to attend an event of a bird club where they would catch birds and ring them for identification. This left the bush camp for just 3 of us. This day was very relaxed and I worked on my report quite a bit, played some ping pong and also watched a movie. Sunday wasn’t much different, with a lot of relaxing. In the afternoon we played some volleyball again and after dinner we watched the documentary ‘Jane’ about Jane Goodall. The documentary wraps up this week, so it’s yet again time to say goodbye, and until next week!