Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.

Recently, we had the pleasure of meeting Lars and Ragnhild Jacobsson, Sebastian Sandberg and Claes Norin from Gothenburg, Sweden who came up to see the project we run here at Dibatana Research and Monitoring Camp.

From left: Lars, Sara, Sven, Claes, Ragnhild and Sebastian.

They own and run Volunteer Travels (www.volunteertravels.com), a non-profit organization that sends volunteers to both humanitarian and wildlife/domestic animal projects. Lars and Ragnhild, as well as Claes and Sebastian brought with them the most amazing cheer and encouragement for Sven and I and brightened our week like no visitors have before. They brought with them much comic relief in the form of Sebastian and Claes, much like the Thompson twins, making us laugh at every possible moment. We often meet people that we get along with, but it is not often that we meet people that we click with, that you share a passion with or who think the same way that you do. Those meetings are special.

Lars and Ragnhild’s passion for wildlife, nature and the environment was revitalizing and uplifting. They all had such a genuine interest for everything they saw here, from the predators and herbivores, to the trees and grubs. They have an interesting and inspiring story of retiring early, finding life boring and a bit meaningless and with that in mind going out there to change that. Now they spend their efforts and time finding out about the problems our environment faces and doing their part to fix it as well as educating others to want to fix it. Like Nelson Mandela said, “There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” They have realized as we have, that it is about changing the mindset of people from consumer to preserver and the only way to do that is to get people to understand what is happening, not just tell them about it. Check out their website www.theperfectworld.com and join if you too want to know and understand what is happening to our animals and our environment. Everyone together can make a difference.

The Perfect World.com - check it out!!

Wild Dog vs Zebra

Recently, we encountered Matthews pack, the pack of wild dogs often found in our area, on the hunt. They are a large pack with approximately 19-20 adults and about 4 pups from this years litter have survived from the original 12 that were born. A number of the dogs in the pack are collared by the nearby predator researchers who spend alot of time collecting data and watching the dogs. While following them, we watched as they came across a zebra stallion on his own.

Zebra are quite large prey for wild dogs, although they often go for kudu which are also large herbivores. However, the blow from a zebra could be lethal to a wild dog. We were uncertain whether they would pursue the stallion, however, he was clever and held his ground and did not run, which might have proved to be a bad decision.

A number of dogs tried their luck but they appeared to be more interested in teasing the poor guy than actually making a meal of him. Eventually they left him alone and continued on their hunt, chasing a few impala but not succeeding.

They rested for awhile and we sat with them, enjoying their social dynamics and especially the pups who were fooling around with each other, occassionally getting a hiding from one of the adults when pushed too far. When evening fell they all began the hunt again but we lost them when they moved into Moremi Game Reserve.

African Wild Dogs are classified as endangered, with an estimated population of 5,000 individuals left in the wild. These amazing canids have been classed as pests in many areas, particularly farming areas and have been shot, poisoned and snared as a means to get rid of them. More recently, a bigger threat to these predators is human population expansion. As humans expand their range so contact between Wild Dogs and domestic animals becomes more frequent, increasing the spread of introduced diseases, now the biggest threat to wild dogs populations. A number of researchers work towards stopping the decline of these social carnivores in southern africa and are coming up with new ways to protect and preserve the African Wild Dog. Check them out:

Rosemary Groom - African Wildlife Conservation Fund - Zimbabwe http://www.africanwildlifeconservationfund.org/ - see her blog about her work with the Wild Dogs. OR check out their facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=hp#!/pages/African-Wildlife-Conservation-Fund/311031642244260

Save the African Wild Dog - http://www.save-the-african-wild-dog.com/painted-dog-research-kenya.asp

The Wattled Crane certainly has much to wattle on about...

Classified as “critically endangered” by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), the Wattled Crane's single largest population occur's in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. Destruction, alteration and degradation of wetland habitats are the most significant threat to these endangered cranes. Human and livestock disturbance, power line collisions, mass aerial spraying for tsetse flies and illegal collection of eggs, chicks and adults for food, are also significant threats to Wattled Cranes.

These cranes are the largest in the family of cranes found in Africa. The total population of Wattled Cranes now stands at approximately 7700 in Africa, found across 9 countries. These birds are highly dependent on wetlands as they feed, breed and roost in this environment. Wattled Cranes are also highly territorial and once a pair has chosen a breeding site they will remain there for the rest of the year.

Two projects that aim to protect the remaining Wattled Crane population in Africa:

EWT – African Crane Conservation Programme - http://www.ewt.org.za/WHATWEDO/OurProgrammes/AfricanCraneConservationProgramme.aspx

International Crane Foundation - http://www.savingcranes.org/wattled-crane.html

BirdLife Botswana - www.birdlifebotswana.org.bw

Here at Dibatana Research and Monitoring Camp we record each and every sighting of the Wattled Cranes. We record the location they were seen, how many there were, what habitat they were in and what they were doing. We send this information off to BirdLife Botswana who uses it to keep track of numbers of these critically endangered cranes in Botswana. They are most commonly found down by the floodplains, which is where we saw these cranes featured in the photos, but can also be found at some of the inland pans during the wet season.

If you want to make a difference and help one of Africa’s many declining species…get involved!

In the wild...the same rules do not apply!

Sometimes living out here in the bush you have to come to a quick realisation that the same rules just don't apply. In human terms, killing a baby is brutal and unfair. Here...the weak and the young are preyed on. Recently, due to the FINAL arrival of the rains we have had many babies of all species running around, enjoying new life. Impala fawns, wildebeest foals and lots of elephant calves have been gracing the dry plains with their presence, bringing smiles to our faces and a new look to the bush. Unfortunately, this also brings smiles to the faces of many predators which make easy prey of these new arrivals. It is difficult seeing these helpless youngsters fall prey to short life. However, we have to come to a realisation that the fittest survive out here and we cannot interfere. It is the way of the bush.

Recently, we watched as Chellak caught an Impala fawn and made a good meal out of it.

This morning, we found the carcass of an elephant calf that obviously lived for minutes. We could not figure out how it had died or if the mother had birthing complications and it died in the process. However, some predators took advantage of this. The surrounding bush looked like its angry or upset mother had done her best to protect her youngster. However, due to its injuries or inability to move it died.

Invasion of the Lions!

Over the last few weeks we have been invaded by lions not only in taking over our camp, drinking from the pool but also keeping us awake at night with their roaring. Samurai (the male in the pictures below) was on the floodplain in front of camp yesterday with a young female from the Santawani Pride. That night the other male who he prowls the area with, joined him and they continued to keep most of us awake the whole night with their shouting. It appears that with added males in the area towards Moremi has caused these males to spend more time in our area and may also have led to an increase in roaring, which has thus led to less sleep!!

Samurai gazing at the sky, looking for vultures! Love it when they look up at the sky scanning for raptors.

A paw shot of Samurai while he was passed out in the heat.

There is an art . . . to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss!

Yesterday Sven decided to go over his safety procedures in the Cessna and I went along for the ride. I wanted to share these pictures with you as I was amazed at how much the water levels have gone down recently and it shows just how dry it is here at the moment! We eagerly await the rain and respite from this draining heat...

The floodplains still have water but a much decreased amount. However, where there was water is perfect grazing land for the wildlife.

This shot shows the incredible contrast between the vegetation away from the river and around the old floodplains that were recently covered in a substantial amount of water.

One of the pans near the airstrip that hasnt seen a drop of water in quite a while.

Day 3 - Ive succumbed to stalking birds?!

Today was quite an uneventful transect. We did however see a number of new birds such as the Golden-breasted Bunting, a nesting Brubru and a Red-headed Weaver. The mopane transect is by far the hardest of the transects as it is the thickest vegetation in the area and includes some serious offroad driving. We also had to contend with quite a hefty wind which of course does not help with the spotting of small birds. However, it was still great to be out in the bush and we thoroughly enjoyed stalking birds through the thick mopane.

A breeding male Red-headed Weaver making a nest in a mopane tree.

Day 2 - Its Still Rock and Roll To Me...

After a serious swotting session of the bird book and bird calls, we were ready to rock this morning at 5:30am when we set out for our 2nd bird transect for BirdLife Botswana's bird population monitoring programme. After crashing through thick islands of Northern Lala Palms that line the river and not seeing much, we finally broke through onto some old floodplains. Here we were able to actually see the birds instead of relying on our hurendous bird call identification abilities! A treat today was seeing a Purple Roller (Coracias naevius - the least common roller in the roller family) and a pair of Broad-billed Rollers (Eurystomus glaucurus - smallest in the roller family), which I have never seen before and are incredibly pretty birds. These rollers are migrant birds and only occur here during the summer months. The female, identified by the bald patch on her stomach from incubating eggs, was spotted in an old palm tree cavity. We were able to have a look and found two small white eggs in the nest about the size of dove eggs. We were very excited as we have not seen these birds in the area before and finding a nest was an added bonus.

The female Broad-billed Roller, in the palm tree cavity. In this photo you can clearly see her bald patch from incubating the eggs.

Taking flight from the tree cavity. The Broad-billed Rollers are the only rollers with a yellow bill and are the only breeding migrants in the family.

The breeding pair sitting in a tree watching us check out their nest. Was such a special sighting and always nice to see new birds.

We were also able to locate new raptor nests which we have been looking for, for the last few months although they do not appear to be active. Additionally, we were able catch up on our breeding pair of African Hawk Eagles, who now appear to be incubating eggs in their nest after a couple weeks of no activity which is great news.

DAY 1 – They should be called Stupid Little Brown Things (SLBJ's)

LBJ’s (little brown jobs) is a great name for all those small brown birds that look exactly the same, yet are many different species. In case that didn’t make the job of identifying them difficult they also like to hide in dense bushes and shout away, letting you know that they are there. So instead of having to page through a bird book for hours comparing all the different LBJ’s, now you also have to also listen to all their calls and attempt to distinguish between a “krak-krak-krak” and a “tsee-tsee-tsee”, when really they all sound the same. It is amazing how after a few transects you just don’t hear them anymore and suddenly only hear the ones that you can identify. In addition, birds like the “tsee tsee tsee” start appearing on the species list…Needless to say the bird book has been thoroughly studied and dissected so that tomorrow does not prove as difficult…time will tell and so will the LBJ’s.

An Arrow-marked Babbler - love their bright orange eyes, so striking!