BALULE: Part One!

Balule.

Balule is a dangerous game area, so we had to be extra careful and aware of our surroundings whilst doing work here. Balule Private Game Reserve is near Kruger National Park.
This was by far my favourite place as it was a lot warmer, our accommodation was better and the wildlife there was beautiful!

Lilac-Breasted Roller

This bird was beautiful. the top of its head was turquoise, its breast lilac and it's tummy light blue.  The pictures just don't show off how bold the colours were, especially when It was caught by the sun. 

White-Fronted Bee Eater

The bee eaters are richly colourful birds. They had a curved beak as well. They eat mainly bees (hense their name), however they also eat other insects too. We saw a few species of bee eaters however this one was most memorable to me. I wasn't expecting to see such brightly coloured birds.

Grey Go away Birds

Before we left I was really looking forward to seeing these birds. I thought the tufts on their heads were cute. How wrong could I have been. These birds were so very annoying. First of all their calls were really loud and annoying and not forgetting, you could hear them everywhere! Secondly, They were everywhere. Doing waterhole observation was when I really discovered how much they aggravated me. For the waterhole survey you have to record what animal is doing what at what time. Well, these birds, about 10-15 of them, were always at the waterhole and they would constantly be moving from tree to tree, which got tedious to write down, let alone going through it to write the results up. 

Impala

Impala are medium sized antelope. Theyre rather common and live in herds. 

Above is a female Impala and below are two males.

Vervet Monkeys

Vervet monkeys live in the trees in and around camp. They were extremely cute (especially the baby ones). They did however get very brave as they were always looking for food, or anything really that they found interesting enough to steal.
Whilst I was sorting out a mist net, a monkey decided to steal my orange I had left on my chair. My lecturer proceeded to chase it up the tree, by which point, the monkey had dropped the orange. It all happened so quickly that by the time I looked around all i could see was my orange on the floor and my lecture sat about 20m up a tree...

Olifants River

Olifants river was at the bottom of our camp. It was home to crocodiles as well as hippos, But more on hippos later...
Fortunately we only ever saw crocodiles on the other side of the river or on a sand bank in the middle.

The river was beautiful. Pictures cannot show how beautiful and peaceful it was. 

MANUHA: Part One!

Manuha

When we arrived at Manuha, there were lots of dogs running around for the first night, until the owners left the next day. My favourite was a Beagle. He was adorable, playful and a little soppy.

Meercat Colony

On our first walk, we saw a meercat colony. There's only one meercat colony on the reserve, however there are three burrow systems. Meercats are very clean and very territorial and so when ground squirrels move in their burrow (bringing external parasites with them), the meercats move off to another burrow. The squirrels will eventually follow. When they do, the meercats will then move on to another burrow system.

Giraffes

We couldn't believe our luck when we stumbled upon 6 giraffes almost straight away into our first walk. We were extremely close to them, the trick is to move around them  slowly getting closer and not moving directly towards them. An easy way to distinguish between males and females is that bulls (males), normally have very little/no hair between their horns on their head. This is usually worn away from fighting.

Above: A Juvenile Giraffe checking us out.

Small-Spotted Genet Tracks

These tracks were made by a small-spotted genet. The track is very circular and small, usually being easy to ID because you can usually cover the track with a single finger.

Gemsbok, Kudu and Sable Antelope

Below is a gemsbok.

An antelope that I loved seeing was Greater Kudu. Kudu are brilliant antelopes. we usually saw small herds or bachelor herds. I love the way the males horns spiral round above their big ears.

Sable are a lot of peoples favourites. The males are black, whereas the females are more brown. They have beautiful  curved horns and they move very gracefully. 

These photos were taken of bachelor herds.  Males will often travel together away from a breeding herd of females and they're young which will usually be driven by an alpha male.  When the males of the breeding herd reach a certain age they will leave that herd and form new bachelor herds until they're older and begin to establish and defend a territory of their own.

Mist netting

We put up more mist nets and caught a lot more birds than we did in the Karoo.

This is a Red-Eyed Bulbul. We caught A LOT of these!  They would often drink from a tap that was dripping in front of where we set up a mist net and so was common for them to fly into it.

Another bird we caught was a Speckled Mouse Bird (below). We saw probably, hundreds of these birds, however this was the only one we caught. Many of the flew into the net, but managed just simply fly out of it. This bird is grey and has a crest and although the name may suggest that it may have speckled, it has none at all.

When the next bird flew into the net, the person getting it out wasnt best pleased and let out a few bad words. This is an Acaia Pied Barbet and can b nasty if it wants to nibble you. 

As the picture below shows nicely, its beak is sharp and can easily draw blood (and it did).

Below was another that I liked; a Cape Robin-Chat.

Finally put photos of South Africa on Flickr!

So unfortunately I've had some technical difficulties and so I have only just been able to put all of my South Africa photos onto Flickr.

I know I've shown you guys a few of them on here, but I took many, many more!

So if you want to have a look then just go to my Flickr!

This should Take you onto the album of South Africa, where they
 will be in order. If you look on my Flickr photostream they'll be in reverse order!

I do warn you, there are A LOT of photos.... but its easy to skip through them pretty quickly if you need.

  

Thanks!!!