News Update from September 2007
We had 6 students on this course, all of them from South Africa. There was one lady amongst them and their ages varied from 21-35. All but one of them passed the course. All 6 students succeeded with their FGASA qualification at both theory and practical level, which was a great success.
The course started off really well from a wildlife aspect with a herd of elephants putting in an appearance in the first 2 days. Some of the students were also treated to an extremely rare sighting of 2 servals that visited the bird table one evening. Other wildlife sightings throughout the course were the normal sightings of wildebeest, giraffe, buffalo, waterbuck and a host of others. Bird sightings were good too including a rare sighting of a Pel's Fishing Owl. 2 of the students were extremely interested in the bird watching and this possibly accounted for the increased awareness of the group to what was around them.
There had been reports of a pack of 9 wild dogs coming onto the reserve too but we never got to see them. The elephant herds seemed to disappear for the rest of the course and only put in an appearnce towards the end when we were treated to a breeding herd of 17 animals, including a couple of small babies, drinking at the waterhole.
We came across a few reptiles and some spiders and scoprpions on the walks too. For some of the students this was to be their first encounter up close and personal with some of these animals. In fact some of them overcame their fears to a large degree after being able to handle them in the wild! The regular visit to khamai reptile park also proved very beneficial in that respect and was enjoyed by all.
The Kruger Park visit was again a huge success and for the third course in a row we saw Roan antelope. I had never seen Roan in the Kruger before this year and this was now becoming something really special to remember 2007 by. We also saw all the Big 5 eventually, although we had to wait until 30 minutes before leaving the park before we found the rhino and her baby. We also saw Grey-Backed finchlarks ( a bird species normally only found in the more arid areas to the west). We had some good sightings of Kori Bustards and a pair of Secretary Birds too. One of the students was lucky enough to see his 2nd leopard of the day when he was sitting watching the river at Letaba camp in the late afternoon, the 1st having being poited out to us by another visitor. Although it was a long way off the road we had a good view of the leopard up the tree with its kill. All this made possible because of being in the open game viewer. Other visitors to the park did not get such a clear view being lower to the ground.
The veld was in really poor condition for the whole course. Our rains had not arrived and there was scarcely a blade of grass to be found. The trees to were devoid of leaves to a large degree. Just before we left to go to the Kruger in the final week we had our first rains which brought welcome relief from the heat and dryness that we had been experiencing. Over the enxt 10 days we had almost 100mm of rain and although the students started to see the veld changing colour before they left it has only really been in the week afterwards that the bush has really come alive again. This obviously had its drawbacks from teaching the identification of plants, especially grass species, but it did mean that other species such as birds were more visible.
I suppose we can only really appreciate our small area of paradise in the bush after we have experienced the harshness of the winter periods.
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Dry,
Winter conditions during 1st aid course
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Paradise
starting 2 weeks after the 1st rains
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