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.