I'm going to Borneo!!!

Next month I am going to be jetting off to the wonderful island of Borneo!

This is for my Tropical Field Ecology module. This is one of the modules that I was most looking forward to this year. I'm only there for 2 weeks and the trips split into 2 halves. The first half will be by the coast, looking at coral reefs and the second half will be based inland in the jungle/rain forests.

This trip has crept up on me a little bit, I have had a crazy workload recently and I've realised just how soon I actually leave! Luckily I have most of what I need for the trip, including a new Go pro to play around with!

So now I just have four weeks, four pieces of coursework, one lab book, two tests and two presentations to get out of the way before I leave! And then I'm allowed to get excited ;) !

Oh and so many fish to learn! 

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 Two!

More Giraffes!

You can see how much smaller this juvenile giraffe is here. Again, they were rather close to us, but not nearly as close as before. 

Kudu Dung Games

Below, some of the guys are seeing who can balance a Kudu dropping on their nose for the longest. After they also had a contest for who could spit one the furthest.

My Favourite Antelope: Nyala

There were a herd of Nyala that would always pass through our camp. These are by far my favourite antelopes.  I love their markings and their little puffy tails that tuck between their legs. The males are even more lovely looking but I didn't get a snap of them until Balule...

Animal Behaviour: Giraffe.

I did my individual animal behaviour on an adult, female giraffe. This consists of basically watching a giraffe and writing down what its doing every minute for an hour. Giraffes don't really do much other than browse; eating leaves and just walking around. My giraffe went out of sight and so I then started observing the juvenile giraffe. I then could compare the two giraffes activities and see if they spent a similar amount of time doing each thing (eg. browsing).

Herd behaviour

Another  of our animal behaviour sutdies was 'Herd Behaviour'. We did this on a large herd of  Red Haartebeast. This was similar to the Individual behaviour with the giraffe, however its recordig what the herd was doing every minute. This included recording what percentages of the herd was doing what; running or grazing for example.

After we were done for the day we got a group photo of us in the truck!

... And on to Balule; the dangerous game area...

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.

LITTLE KAROO: Part Two!

Vegetation Survey

Our first survey was a vegetation survey in a quartz field. This area is an area of Scientific Interest. many plants can only grow here because the quartz can lower the temperature by about 10°C.  As the area is semi-arid, it gets rather hot during the summer months. Spingboks are known to come lie in quartz fields to cool down during the hottest parts of the day.

We had a 10x10m square grid area. During our survey we recorded the abundance of species in the area we were looking at as well as mapping out where each individual plant was within the grid. The height, width and length of each individual was also recorded. the idea of mapping out the plants on a grid is so that it can be compared to previous years and years to come and see differences between and to get a bigger picture of this particular area of the reserve.

Above: Easily distracted on breaks; especially when your lecturer is into ants and termites. This an entrance to a termite mound.

Aardvark Burrow

We ran out of water and beside from needing it for washing, we were starving and needed dinner! on the way back from sorting out the pump at the dam, we stumbled upon an aardvark burrow. This is a feeding burrow as it below a termite mound. The termite mounds are underground and the easiest way to distinguish where a mound is, is to see the ash bush that grows on the fertile soil of the mound. The aardvark (that feeds on termites), will burrow below a mound, use this mound for feeding for a while and then move on to another. 

Mist Netting

We learnt how to put up mist nets. These nets have to be set up properly, otherwise you wont get anything flying into it, making it pointless. Mist nets have to be set up in shaded areas with a backdrop behind it (eg. lots of trees/bushes), not in an open area and set up where flight paths are. if you dont do these things then the birds will see it and avoid the net. 

After getting it out of the net safely (this has to be done by somebody trained, or will risk injury to the bird). Its wings were checked for feather mites. If there was any, the number of mites and which feathers they were on were recorded and a small sample taken of one feather.

This particular bird is a Karoo Chat (Cercomela schlegelii).

Starry Nights

As with the views, pictures just cannot capture how beautiful  the night sky was.  The moon was glowing!

Babys Bottom

This plant is called;  , however its nickname is Babies Bottom, I think its pretty obvious why...

This is one of the plants that is found in the quartz fields.

Bush Rats

I saw many Bush rat nests, one of which was right outside camp. We could often see them scurrying about whilst sitting for lunch or doing work outside. 

Springboks

Springboks (Antidorcas marsupialis); are medium -sized antelopes. They are South Africa's national animal. They are easily distinguishable and we saw rather a lot of them, though not to complain as they are very graceful.

Starting off our 16 hour journey

In the UK you drive along a motorway and you will more than likely be able to stop and get a coffee, go to the toilet and get some fast food not 20 minutes tops when you feel the urge. however in South Africa, if you need a wee, you could be waiting a long while until any sort of shop or toilets (which I had to wait for A LOT!). One place we stopped was a waterfall. It was extremely pretty and was hidden in some valleys which were beautiful and made the 16 hour drive a lot more bearable.

The pool below the waterfall was open to swim in, If it wasn't so chilly and we weren't on a time limit I'm sure we'd all be straight in there! It was so beautiful picturesque.

On the walk back down, there were a couple of malachite sunbirds. These metallic looking sunbirds have ling tails and beaks. They have long beaks as they feed off of nectar of flowers, so they need to be able to get their beaks in.

Being Immature

We stopped in a small town to get petrol opposite a butchers, and the sign on the building gave us a giggle.