Amy Bennett and Millicent Wanjiku
International & Local Interns

Our last week has been incredibly busy. Iain set us up with a project analysing 10 years articles from the Elephant News Service.  We had to go through all the emails about Asian  and African elephants categorising them into deaths (and cause of death) as well as illegal activities and country.  Then we analysed this data and wrote a report documenting our findings.

When we could we went out with Chris for Long Term Monitoring. On one of these trips we saw a lioness and her two three month old cubs that had just feasted on a lost domestic donkey. That same day we were very lucky to stumble across ostriches performing a mating dance. Such a rare sight. After the rain we were expecting to see very few elephants as they can afford to stay away from the reserve for water. We actually saw very many which was surprising!

The following day, however, the elephants were missing in action.  Our trip was far from boring despite their absence. We had a “Big Cat” day. First we bumped into a cheetah hunting baby oryx. It was unsuccessful but great to watch. Then we saw three juvenile lions by the river. This was followed by a leopard sleeping in a tree (and another hunting cheetah later).

Amy had been very lucky to see cheetah, leopard and lion within two days od being in Samburu. Now Millicent was happy because she is a great cat lover and could go home saying all that she had seen.