Week 6 at Ulovane

We are allowed an 8am exam this morning - written as well as practical identification of grasses, trees and flowers. Afterwards a quick shower and then we get packing for our next sleep out on the Reserve. I'm driving us there and on the way we stumble across a gorgeous male lion (see picture below). We're camping at boat side and have to gather wood as we arrive that will last us the whole night - it's hot and humid work and we all go for a dip in the river afterwards. As we sit there a herd of elephants that we passed earlier starts wondering through our campsite one by one! Kyle (our instructor) handles them very well as they can be dangerous and destructive - they even shake the land rover at one stage and one of them grabs a blanket and throws it over his head and walks off! Very exciting and nerve-wrecking at the same time! We don't sleep very much during the night as it starts raining and we can still hear the elephants are close by. On our drive back we see "duggaboy" - the big old Cape Buffalo and then due to taking an alternative route to see him closer (I was able to take a video of him crossing the road), we unfortunately get stuck in the mud and "break" the landie (starter motor) - oops! (p.s. it wasn't me!)

 

This week we're doing reptiles and birds and have to also identify all the local birds by vision as well as sound. We do many wonderful birding drives and walks in addition to the hours of power point slides and on one of our walks Kyle's eagle eyes spot a Jackal buzzard nest (above) on a cliff side with one chick in it! Due to the fact that we can start identifying birds by their sound we are now able to see the smaller birds more easily and get much closer to them i.e. this greater double collared sunbird doing a mating display - see the little yellow feathers protruding out of it's neck!