By Jackie Tauberman (University of Vermont)
Today started out like any other transect day. We got up before sunrise and had oatmeal and tea around the fire. Lindsay, Maya, and I were excited to be going out on one last bird point count since we were supposed to have left for Maun this morning. We piled into the truck and took off. Before we even got to the start point of the transect, we saw a huge herd of African buffalo, an elephant, a giraffe, and impala. We saw a greater number of individual animals than I have seen on any of the herbivore transects I have been on here in the Chobe Enclave.
The sunrise as we drove to start our bird point count.
We got to our start point and there was a plethora of birds waiting for us. It must’ve been stressful for Maya, who was recording, as we were calling out birds that we saw and heard for the full five minute time period. Everything was going well and we were seeing lots of cool birds including a green-winged pytilia, a pale chanting goshawk, a juvenile grey-headed kingfisher, and an amethyst sunbird. We were moving at a leisurely pace from one point to the next, stopping whenever we saw an interesting bird, flower, track, or aardvark hole.
At bird point 7 (there are 10 points in a bird count, each 1km apart), Genifer got a call from the other instructors. There were 3 male lions at the pan next to camp! She could hear the lions roaring in the background. This was a huge deal because we heard lions every night and saw their tracks but hadn’t managed to spot one. And now they were out and being seen by our classmates! We wanted to race back to camp to see them too but we only had 3 more points to do. We finished those 3 points in record speed, no longer meandering from one to the next, and took off toward camp. We were all so excited about seeing male lions. We had all seen plenty of lionesses when we were back in Khwai at Magotho but only a few of us had seen a male lion.
But when we got to the pan, they were gone. We were all bummed to have missed them. We drove into camp sad but glad the other group got to see them. As we parked the car, Sixteen and Vehi, our instructors and resident trackers, told us they would take us to go look for them. We were ecstatic! We jumped in the truck and headed out to find them.
We started by going to the pan where they had been seen originally and then drove off-road in the direction they had walked off in. We saw their tracks on an elephant path and followed it for a ways. By now, we are all pretty good at spotting lion tracks since we see them so often around the Enclave. We followed the tracks until they disappeared. We stopped and looked around. Suddenly, Sixteen spotted a lion running! We drove towards where we had seen it and Sixteen said he saw 2 more! Three male lions! We couldn’t believe it. They ran off though, and we soon found ourselves back on a main road.
We turned to the direction that the Red-billed Francolins were alarm-calling. Sixteen spotted the path where the 3 males had crossed the road. We backed up a bit and drove into the scrub in the direction where we thought the lions had headed. Sixteen spotted one! It was lying down under a bush about 15m from the car. It was majestic. It turned its large head and looked at us. Lindsay spotted the other 2 males lying down a little ways away, but they were better covered by the brush and we couldn’t see them very well. We sat and watched the male lion closest to us until he got up and walked off. We noticed that he was missing part of his tail. We were so excited that we had gotten a chance to see the male lions that we had heard so often. We counted our lucky stars that we hadn’t left for Maun this morning.
Sixteen pointing out the difference between Grey Jessebush and Knobby Combretum on our natural history walk. Photo by Rebekah Karimi.
For the majority of the afternoon, we all worked on finishing our Grinnell journals and species accounts. Maya and I made an apple bread dessert which turned out pretty well. In the late afternoon, we did the final run through of our species list and determined what we would need to know for our natural history exam. We took a natural history walk to get a refresher on some of the plant and bird species around us. We had a delicious dinner made by Genifer and Sixteen: pap, stew, and sausage. We sat around the fire and enjoyed the sounds of the bush. Tomorrow we leave for Maun. I have loved my time camping out in the bush with nothing but wildlife all around me. Going back to Maun will be another chapter in our Botswana adventure!
Top photo by Eda Reed