Blog Jul Wild beests arent

Blog 21 - Jul '14 - Where the Wild 'Beests aren't

The comment that started this blog was something along the lines of “so often zoology blogs tell amazing tales of the fun times and adventures had during field work but aspiring zoologists need to see the difficult and often frustrating times that zoologists all face.” I have spoken with a number of school and uni groups that have come through Etosha and am mostly asked ‘what’s the coolest thing you have done’, or ‘how many kills have you seen’ (sadly, for the record, the answer is 0) and often not ‘what’s the hardest part of your field work’. It also appears that a number of friends and family that read my blogs are under the impression that my year is going perfectly (possibly as a result of the continued Facebook posts of awesome Etosha sights). So I decided that it was time I wrote a ‘reality-check’ blog.

Up close and personal with a sleeping ‘beest

So here it is - this year has been a challenge. To some extent it was to be expected – last year was admittedly easy for a PhD student. Sure, I was changing tyres left and right, I had a slight run in with a rabid jackal and my tent was disintegrating quicker than I could patch it up but my data collection went quite well, or at least as well as I’d hoped. But this year I have felt like a mouse in wheel – undergoing perpetual movement.

At the start of the year there seemed to be a constant need to be in town whether it was to get groceries, service my car, deal with visas, or renew registration papers. Being that each day or overnighter in town meant less time to collect data (and more money spent on fuel) it was a frustrating start to the season. After town-a-lot there was the wildebeest absence – a phase which has been almost constant since April. At first, not many ‘beests had migrated over from the west as a result of very late falling rains – the rainy season is usually well and truly over by March but this year rain persisted into May – and when the ‘beests finally arrived they swiftly left, just days later. Plentiful rain has resulted in the Etosha Pan has becoming a grassy haven, with fresh surface water, and no place for predators to hide. So the ‘beests that have migrated have gone straight to the pan and many still remain westwards thanks to large rainfalls in that regions. Both areas are not only out of my study area but are inaccessible. (~15,000kms of it) with no reward.

Waterholes are the only likely place to find ‘beests lately – not helpful for grazing data!

This year the plan was to collect data for my remaining two chapters whilst bolstering data points for the first two (mostly collected last year). One aim is fairly straight forward – record all wildebeest I encounter including solitary bulls, bachelor herds and breeding herds no matter whether they are walking, resting, foraging or drinking. This is to get an idea of how they use the landscape for different activities and how this use changes throughout the year. The other aim includes playing lion roars (to mimic lion presence) near groups of wildebeest to see how their foraging and vigilance patterns change when predators are near. For this chapter I need to find breeding herds, deploy my speaker set up, record behaviour for five minutes, play the recording, and record for five more minutes. This gives my ‘beests a lot of time to decide to walk away from me or take a nap. It has also meant run ins with jackals and lions. The jackals think my playback set up would be a nice chew toy and/or needs to be scent marked and the lions come to investigate after hearing the foreign lion roar. Most of these instances have ruined a sample in progress.

Tourists are also attracted - photographs, curious looks and disconnections of equipment ensue

I anticipated difficulty in collecting this data; before coming back to Etosha this year I made a very conservative target (or so I thought) to get one playback sample per day which would mean that I could go out each morning and afternoon, as per last year, and I’d still succeed if I only got one sample every second session. Unfortunately, even after getting all my equipment working, over six weeks into my field season, I was only averaging one sample per week. Unsurprisingly during this time, sanity was reaching an all-time low – time set aside to sleep was inundated by stressed out and ultimately useless worrying and the camp was all but empty which meant little reprieve from my project. But, I knew what I was getting myself into. They always say never to work with animals because they are unpredictable and my entire PhD is hanging on the predictability of wildebeests that are proving more recalcitrant than they are predictable. But as I keep telling myself, over and over again…and again and again – if it wasn’t challenging then everyone would want to do it. After all I am constantly on safari and who wouldn’t want to do that if it didn’t come with the challenges that this work entails. So I imagine there would be a lot more people doing it if it didn’t include tents, flat tyres, limited funding and stress.

A view that makes it all worthwhile (because I was getting a much needed sample at the time!)