Waterbuck, Waterbuck Everywhere

...but not a drop to drink?

Happy belated Father's Day, Dad!  I hope everyone at home enjoyed the holiday weekend. 

Update from Chitengo:  I am officially going to be looking at various aspects of waterbuck behavior/diet for my senior thesis project.  This weekend I talked with Rob and figured that out, and then Jen and I made up a tentative schedule for the next 6 weeks.  There will be several pieces to my project, with the main one being behavioral observations in the field of waterbuck.  I got out yesterday with Kaitlyn and spent the day testing out different methods for watching waterbuck (which was surprisingly exhausting).  Questions I'm currently thinking about:

- How do you define and count a group of waterbuck?  (If you can see 200 waterbuck at any given point but they're really spread out, is that one big group?  If not, how do you tell which individuals are part of which groups?)

- How long should observation bouts last? (If they're too short, you're not getting a lot of information from each bout, but if they're too long, you can't do that many on any given day and you're not going to get a large enough sample size)

- Should you observe a focal individual during each bout, or try to get information from the whole group? (Focal individual might be a little easier and would probably be more accurate, but focal group would give info about more of the group)

- Should you try to observe each animal continuously, or do point sampling--like every 15 seconds, 30 seconds, minute? (Continuously is probably more precise, but point sampling is probably more accurate)

If anyone has any experience with behavioral studies or thoughts on any of these questions, please feel free to comment here or email me.  It'll be a process getting to a final observation protocol that I'm happy with/that will work and yield good, analyzable data. 

Today, Jen and I are going to start setting up another component of my project: camera traps. 

Waterbuck...running away.  They tended to do that a bunch.

That's pretty much what's going on here.  This weekend I got into Villa, a small town that's about an hour away,  with Kaitlyn and we went to the market.  All of the food was so inexpensive: big avocados were 5Mts (36/37 Mts to the dollar, so less than 16 cents), cucumbers were 10 Mts, loaves of bread were 5 Mts.  It's very nice to have some fresh fruits and veggies around.  

Other stuff from the weekend:

Sundowner on Saturday night.

One of the vehicles had driven through an area with a lot of super tiny frogs, so there were about 17 of them left on the car in the evening.  They were so little!

 Bye!

On Fire

Happy weekend!

On Thursday, I went out with Josh and Fredrik (another undergrad doing his senior thesis work who just got here, from Dartmouth) to look at a recently burned site.  Josh thought that it had been burned in the last week or so.  It was kind of crazy to see what had burned and what had not burned.  A lot of the grasses were ash on the ground, but many trees and things bigger than seedling-size either didn't seem to be too affected or only looked dried out.  You could see clear separations where, for some reason, the fire had reached a certain point and then not gone farther.  Sometimes that seemed to be random, but we also saw that most of the termite mounds had not burned, so there was a line of black-not black around their bases.  

One of the fire's boundaries.  You can kind of see that it's totally black on the far left of the photo, and the line of fire-no fire is somewhere in the middle. 

New growth coming up, even after only maybe a week.

One area that was pretty well burned

We were driving out along the Urema Road, which runs along the Urema River.  (The river feeds into the lake of the same name).  We heard some elephants as we were driving, and because that particular road does not provide many easy places to get out of the way if the eles decide to charge you, we turned around and went back to camp. 

Along the river

On Friday, Jen and I went out in the morning and collected fecal samples on the floodplain.  I know I've said at least twice now that there are so many waterbuck on the floodplain, but I finally got a picture that kind of captures what we've been seeing. 

So many waterbuck

In the afternoon, we went out with a group looking at grasses in different vegetation types in the park.

Our field site for the afternoon

#fieldwork

The sunset on the way home was beautiful

Yesterday evening there was another bush dinner.  It was in the same location as the first one, and completely as nice.  I'm getting much closer to figuring out more of what I'm going to be doing for my project this summer, so hopefully I'll be able to start collecting data soon.  We'll see. 

Have a great weekend!

P.S. One of the species that is commonly seen inside the camp is vervet monkeys.  They are certainly not as pesky as the baboons that are here as well, and their babies are super cute.  I finally took my camera out yesterday and got some pictures of a vervet, so here's one of them.  I tried to get a baby picture, but those didn't come out as well so I'll post one if I get a good one.  

Story about the baboons: they are really obnoxious around the kitchen tent, and it's only a matter of time before they figure out how to open the door and then we're all in trouble.  But I was eating lunch outside the tent with Josh the other day, and there is one baboon in particular that is always skulking around trying to get food.  Josh threw a rock at him (not to hurt him, but to get him away from the tent), and he tried to catch it.  Which was pretty funny to see. 

Where's Katie?

EDIT: I usually don't like referring to myself in the third person, but I thought it was appropriate for the picture I put up in this post.

Hi hi,

How’s everyone at home?  I hope your summers are going well.

I am now halfway through my second week here at Gorongosa.  So I thought I’d do a quick recap of things that have happened this week.

On Monday morning, Jen and I went out to the floodplain to try out some different things with doing behavioral observations of waterbuck.  The animals were pretty skittish, in that they remained relatively vigilant the whole time we were anywhere close and didn't go back to normal foraging/resting behavior after their initial startle at seeing us.  So I’m not sure how continuing behavior observations will work.  But that’s something I’m thinking about and I’ll speak more with Jen about.  I know I said this in my last post, but there are so many of them out on the floodplain.  It’s crazy.

In the afternoon, Jen and I went out with Kaitlyn (a grad student from Berkley doing work here) and Greg (Carr, who’s the heart of the Gorongosa Restoration Project.  Cool article in The New Yorker about him here).  We were looking for fresh buffalo dung, and it took us nearly two hours of driving around, following trampled areas and older piles of scat to find some individuals so we could collect their poop.  We did, which was awesome.  And the whole drive around the park looking for dung was a lot of fun too.  We saw a civet, a serval, a group of elephants and two individual males, and a bunch of the antelope that are common here (waterbuck, kudu, bushbuck, etc.).  We drove really close to the second male elephant we saw, kind of accidentally because we didn't see him.  After we were past him, he turned around and roared at us.

The sun was setting just as we actually collected our sample, so we stopped on the way back for a ‘sun-goner.’  We also stopped after it had gotten dark enough to see the stars to look at them and see which constellations/planets/etc. were visible.  We saw Sirius, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, the Southern Cross, Gemini, and some others.  Oh, and the Big Dipper.  But it was upside down!  Which was so bizarre.  

Yesterday morning and this afternoon I went out with Josh and tried out some of his methodologies for his next project.  Which also involved me learning some plant names, which is always a good thing.  I also haven't been feeling so hot for the past few days, so I took some rest time yesterday afternoon and this morning.   

Where's Katie? Tee hee.  This is an example of a termite mound at Gorongosa.  It's pretty raised and more densely covered in vegetation than the surrounding matrix.  (I'm the bright orange spot on top of the mound, in case you didn't see me)

A seed I found today.  The red was so bright that it stood out very strongly from the surrounding plants.

Look at how the trunk kind of balloons out at the bottom and then goes back in.  I thought that was cool.

The view out from the top of a termite mound. 

That's about it from here for now.  I'm heading to dinner shortly and then I might do some more reading before bed.

Bye!  

Sundowner and Bush Dinner

Hello everybody,

For people who read my blog last summer, the idea of a sundowner is familiar.  Basically, you drive out shortly before sunset to a place where you can see the sunset.  Last summer, that often meant some large rock formation or overlook point.  For my first sundowner at Gorongosa, it meant the floodplain.  We drove out around 4 and hung out until the sun set.  This was my first time on the floodplain.  It's so flat and open and very different from the surrounding areas.  And there were a ton of waterbuck around, which is the species I'll likely be looking at for my research.

Sunset over the floodplain

Waterbuck on the left, a group of wildebeest on the right

The colors were amazing

Shortly after we returned to camp, we went out again for a bush dinner.  This involved driving out to a spot in the bush that had been set up for dinner.  There were two campfires with chairs and tables set up around them, a bar on one side, and a buffet dinner on the other.  The night was chilly, but the fires kept you warm.  The food was delicious.  When you looked up, you had a perfect view of the stars.  It was kind of surreal.  

The set-up for the bush dinner

Lanterns on each table

This morning I didn't have to set an alarm, so I slept until 11.  Which was glorious.  Today I think the plan is to make a schedule for field work in the coming week.    

I hope everyone at home is having a good weekend!

Bucket List

Yesterday was SUCH a cool day in the field.  I woke up super early (before 6, which is super crazy early when you’re still dealing with jet lag) to head out into the field, only to find that there was an issue and we weren’t going out until later (the issue turned out to be that one of the guys who had to be with us when we went out had to go and arrest 10 poachers.  So that was a pretty good reason for delay).  But that was fine.  I went back to my room and found my food bag crawling with ants, so it took me most of the waiting time to deal with that.

Super early start

Then we went out.  Ryan (one of Rob’s ex-post docs—ex because he accepted a teaching position at a university in Idaho) is doing collar work on antelopes of three size classes here: bushbuck (smallest), nyala, and kudu (biggest).  We were working on kudu capture yesterday.  For kudu capture, there is a ground team and an air team.  Ryan and a few others were up in a helicopter with a dart gun, and there was a whole group of people (including myself) down on the ground in a vehicle.  We followed the helicopter and had communication with them via radio, and we drove up to the kudu that Ryan had successfully darted after they’d fallen.  As soon as you reached the kudu, she was blindfolded, collared, and a whole bunch of information was collected about her (DNA sample, size stuff, etc.).  This was done as quickly as possible to minimize the time spent sedated.  There were two vets out with us during the capture work who made sure that the individuals were safe while Ryan was collecting his data.

One of the kudu we collared!

I got to hold her head (which has to be held the entire time she's sedated so her breathing isn't interrupted)

We captured and collared four kudu before lunch, which made for a very productive morning.  I got to help with some of the data collection, which was really cool.  It was crazy to be so up close to these animals that you usually see from at least a little distance away.

Then after our last capture of the morning, Mike (the helicopter pilot) was going to head back to camp while the data was being collected, and everyone else was going back in the vehicle.  Rob suggested I head back in the helicopter, and it was AMAZING.  I had never ridden in a helicopter before, and it felt like I was flying.  You literally just lift off the ground, and I got to sit in the front (so all windows in front of me) and the doors were off on either side, so I could see everything around me.  It was only a few minute-long ride, but it was still awesome. 

We flew over a herd of sable antelope on our way back to camp

After lunch, we went back out in the field and Ryan darted one more kudu.  We couldn’t stay out much past that because of the 5:00 sunset.  The evening was pretty chill, with some rest time and dinner at the restaurant here.  I got to check two things off my bucket list yesterday: be a part of an animal capture and collar effort and fly in a helicopter.  It was a good day.      

This morning we had another really early start and actually ended up coming back for a bit of a break because the kudu were not really that dart-able so early.  It was a lot harder to find/dart the animals when we did get back out, but Ryan and the helicopter team still got two individuals.  I got to ride back to camp in the helicopter again—it was decidedly as cool the second time.  I don’t know that I’d ever get tired of going up like that.  After lunch I chatted with Rob some about my project (we’re still figuring out exactly what I’m going to be looking at, and it will probably take at least a few days of trying out different things before I know anything more specifically) and then took a much needed nap. 

One of the places we were driving this morning

The view from the helicopter on the way back

I’m hopefully headed to bed soon, so good night!  

Day One in the Field

This morning I went out with Jen, Rob, Ryan and Marc, the director of scientific services here at the park.  We collected plant samples to be analyzed.  I saw a couple animals I hadn’t seen much before: a sable antelope and a few bushbuck (I think I might have seen some bushbuck at Mpala last summer, but certainly not many).  After lunch, Jen and I spent the afternoon entering data.  It was really nice to see the park in daylight.

I was (and am still) getting over jetlag/pretty tired from the trip, so I was in a bit of a daze throughout the day today.  But I’m sure I’ll be used to the different time zone and caught up on sleep soon.

In the field

Getting there

Hi!

The trip to Gorongosa is long.  Really long.  As a result, this post is long.  (...really long)

It started on Saturday evening, when my family drove me to the Newark airport for my flight to London.  We almost had a minor disaster with luggage, but everything was fine and I got checked in.  I’m not a huge fan of goodbyes, so that was not fun, but I was also really excited to get started on this trip I’ve been thinking about since about December. 

The flight to London was fine, no problems.  I arrived in London at around 10:30 local time (so 5:30am for my body) and got my carry-ons into storage for the day before heading into the city to meet my Aunt Krysia and her daughter Ellie.  We met at the Eros statue in front of the Criterion Theater, and from there we made our way to walk along the Thames River and explore a bit.  We had a really nice lunch at a sushi place, and then kept walking along.  We went to Waterloo Station, and saw both Trafalgar and Leicester Squares.  

The Eros Statue in London, where I met Aunt Krysia and Ellie

Look it's Big Ben!

Ellie and me. 

Trafalgar Square

It was lovely to see both of them and catch up, and a fantastic way to spend the day and break up my trip a bit.  Eventually it was time to get back to the airport, so we all got on the tube and said goodbye.  I had some time at the airport before my flight—long enough to see and fall in love with a Cath Kidston store, which is a brand we don’t have in the states (go check it out!).  Finally I got on the plane for the longest flight of my trip: 10.5 hours from London to Johannesburg, South Africa.

I took the tube

The flight to Johannesburg was also fine, no problems.  I got in at about 9am local time (Johannesburg is one hour ahead of London, so 6 hours ahead of NJ time).  During this layover, I only really had enough time to find a bathroom and get through the transfer checkpoint and security before I had to get to my gate.  Which I did.  And then I boarded the plane (the smallest plane I think I’ve ever been on) for my final flight: 1.5 hours to Beira, Mozambique. 

Fortunately, this last flight was also fine.  I got into Beira at about 1:10 in the afternoon local time (same as Johannesburg).  The driver from the park was there when I got through the visa checkpoint and he helped me get my bags into the truck.  I got some cash: the Mozambican currency is the metical, and there are roughly 36 or 37 meticals in one USD.  We also stopped for me to pick up SIM cards and airtime for my cell phone. 

The sign the driver was holding when I arrived in Beira

The drive to the park was a little over 3 hours.  There were points along the road that were incredibly bumpy, which worked to lull me to sleep at first and then kind of jarred me awake.  A lot of the scenery on the way here was similar to what I’ve seen in Kenya: not too many trees or wild animals (I saw a number of goats), a few busy market areas, some fires burning in the fields.  And by the time we got to the park, which is kind of an oasis in the midst of land that’s been very changed by human presence, it was dark.  It’s winter in Mozambique (we’re roughly 18 degrees south of the equator here), so the sun sets around 5pm.  Oh, winter also means it’s cold.  Not as cold as a New Jersey winter, but still cold in the evenings.  And I unfortunately did not pack for cold. 

Sunset on the drive to the park

When we got to the park, we stopped at the reception to grab the keys to my room and then drove over to where the science housing is.  Gorongosa also has a large tourist part, so there are tourist bungalows and rooms as well on the grounds.  Josh, who is one of Rob’s grad students, helped me find my little house (my room is in its own small building).  (Reminder from last summer’s blog: Professor Rob Pringle is my thesis adviser.  He was also whom I went to Kenya with last summer, although I was working with another one of his grad students, Tyler.  This summer I’ll be working with Jen and Josh more directly, both Rob’s grad students).  I desperately wanted a shower, so finally being able to take one was absolutely heavenly.  Then we all grabbed dinner at the restaurant.  There are quite a few people on the research side of the park here now, so I met a bunch of them during dinner.  Then I got back to my room, unpacked some, and went to bed.    

Finally made it!

Getting ready

Hi everyone!

So I am headed to Mozambique this summer to conduct senior thesis research.  I'll be there for two months and I leave on Saturday!  I just started getting my stuff together for packing this afternoon, so everything seems a bit more real.  I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post on here while I'm there, but I'm going to try my best to get pictures up here.

I thought I'd start off blogging this summer by sharing part of the project summary that I wrote when applying for funding to support my research.

            In the early 1970s, Kenneth Tinley surveyed the plant community on floodplain at Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique (Tinley, 1977).  He found it was grass-dominated.  The abundant grasses provided food for the buffalo, wildebeest and zebra at the park; in turn, the herbivores prevented woody species and forbs (non-grass plants) from encroaching.  From 1977-1992, Mozambique was ravaged by civil war.  Soldiers and poachers killed 90-100% of the individuals of all large mammal species for both food and ivory.  Today, restoration efforts are underway to bring back the variety and abundance of mammals that were once found there.  

Has the loss of herbivores altered the park’s important floodplain plant communities?  In 2013, members of Rob Pringle’s lab in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) department completed a re-survey of the floodplain.  They found that there had been a shift in the plant ecosystems there.  Further studies are being conducted to try to explain what caused this shift and what is maintaining it, as well as whether the new communities will continue to be able to support a large herbivores. 

Although most of the mammals in the park were lost as a result of human conflict, waterbuck have staged a spectacular recovery and now exist and roughly ten times their pre-war number.  They are dominating the recovering park’s mammal community like never before.  What might this dramatic shift in herbivores mean for park vegetation, and how might it affect the recovery of non-waterbuck animals?  The floodplain communities observed by members of the Pringle lab might not be able to support the number and variety of animals that were found there in the past.  I will investigate the role waterbuck are playing in the shift to see how they might be maintaining it.  It is important to better understand how and why this shift occurred in order for restoration efforts to be successful.  Every bit of research conducted at Gorongosa helps with these efforts, and the efforts made in the park are leading to new methods and ideas that could help with the restoration of ecosystems all over the world.    

My project will involve a lot of time watching the waterbuck feed to find out how long they spend in different vegetation types.  Observations will take place at randomly chosen locations that have both grass and forbs across the floodplain.  Following the focal animal sampling technique by Altmann (1974), an individual waterbuck will be randomly chosen for observation.  The gender of the individual will be recorded, as will the amount of time spent on different activities (i.e., feeding, resting, being alert) over thirty minute observation periods.  

That's a pretty good overview of what I'll be looking at this summer.  I'm going to  Gorongosa National Park and I'll be staying in the Wilson Lab.  Like I said, my parents will take me to the airport on Saturday, and my flight leaves in the evening.  From there I go to London, where I'll have some time to explore.  Then to Johannesburg, South Africa, and finally to Beira, Mozambique.  Then it's a few hour drive to get to the park--I should arrive on Monday afternoon (Beira time, which is 6 hours ahead of EST).  

Right now it's nearly bed time and the next time I post will likely be from Gorongosa.  Good night!