by Eleanor Silver, of University of Vermont
This past week, we were in Phuduhudu conducting wildlife transects. We did different transects to record either herbivores or birds. I participated in one bird transect where I got to see a paradise wydah, which is a bird with a really long tail. At the end of the transect, our escort guide directed us to an old borehole. It has been unused for awhile, but it was really interesting to see a place where people used to get their water. There was also a small dam nearby, which I loved because it was cool to compare this dam to the ones that are in the United States. This dam was really small, and looked more like a wall than a big dam. This is a picture of the dam:
The most common animal that I saw on herbivore transects was steenbok. The Setswana word for steenbok is phuduhudu and they are monogamous and territorial. They were skittish around the car, but would only run a few meters away from us when we approached. We saw one steenbok jumping in circles and we think it was playing by itself, which was cute.
We also got to see giraffe, buffalo, elephants and zebra! Since a lot of the time we were driving through flat grasslands we were able to see elephants and giraffe really far away. Here are some pictures of the herbivores we saw:
We also took a day trip to the Nxai pans and got to see baobab trees that were over 1000 years old. It was incredible to see such old trees and they were really massive. We also found an unripe fruit on the trees that we got to open up. This was one of my favorite days because it was also our first time actually going into the park and there were huge herds of zebras and it was my first time seeing ostriches!
