News Update from
May 2004
Our May course started off with only 7 students, again from all parts
of the globe. Their ages varied from 18 up to 50. On the second day of
the course though a telephone call from an interested student resulted
in
the numbers
increasing
to
8. Having
only started the course it was decided that Beanie would probably be
able to catch up on the two days of missed lectures, and she proved us
right. Unfortunately by the end of the first week Jessica decided that
she really wanted to return to a Lion project on the other side of the
country and so we sadly had to say goodbye to her.
Anyway the course progressed well and everyone passed the course at the end of the day. Some of the students achieved remarkably high marks and all their efforts of late night studying paid great dividends. Mel and I both admitted too that this course was probably one of the best catering group we had ever had pass through the centre. The food that was prepared by the students on a daily basis was always of excellent quality. Maybe this was due to the fact that many of the students were more mature.
Unfortunately the game viewing again was not superb although we did get to see some large herds of up to 45 waterbuck on occasions. The elephants have still not made their presence felt on the reserve again, although we did see the odd signs of them down towards the river, we never got to see any. I expect that as we move further into winter they will re-appear. We were lucky to have a number of days when we could view a pod of about 24 hippos from close by.
We also had a couple of frustrating days towards the end when we could hear a leopard calling from close to the centre but it was on the neighbouring property and we were not able to traverse there to find it. Also towards the end of the course, the students were subject to some amazing scenes of flocking red-billed quelea, possibly up to 100 000 birds altogether. Although these birds can be considered as a pest by many farmers and the like, for us it was a spectacle to be appreciated. The noise created by all their wings can only be appreciated at the time.
There were many occasions where we got to study insects up really close. Andrew was determined to turn over every rock he came across and we found many examples of scorpions, and centipedes and all sorts of other small organisms. Unfortunately for him he never turned a rock over and found a snake underneath it- or maybe that was fortunately as he did say he wasn't sure how he would react if he had done so.
Yet again the last week of the course proved invaluable to the students. We once again visited Mtomeni Tented camp in Letaba Ranch just to the north of Phalaborwa. On our way in through the reserve we had a fantastic sighting of several herds of elephants, including a grumpy old cow that decided to give us an official welcome to the reserve. I can quite gladly say that I was happy the entrance road is in good condition. If this had happened on any of the other "roads" we may not have been able to make good our escape. Some of the roads in the reserve leave a lot to be desired but they do offer a truly memorable off-road experience for the students.
The other highlight was finding 2 lionesses defending a buffalo kill. Whether or not they had killed the buffalo will remain a mystery as they never seemed to feed on the carcass for the two days that we monitored it. However the first encounter with the one lioness was enough for some of the students and the camp guide. We were trying to locate the kill through some dense Mopane scrub when the lioness informed us of her whereabouts from about 2m away from the front bumper. As you can imagine this was not a quiet and hospitable welcome and many of the people on board shifted several feet to their right in the process.
We also continued with our regular monitoring of the bird species present on the reserve and managed to identify over 100 species again, which for this time of year was great. In 3 visits there we have now confirmed over 165 species and there are still some notable absentees from our list which we will continue to search for in the future.