Heather Gurd and Hannah Mumby
International interns

Our time in Samburu has been flying by!  Heather is working on a project with the Mammal census data and Hannah is working with the Long term Monitoring (LTM) database.  In addition to working on the data we have been fortunate enough to help with the data collection which contributes to both of our projects and this has really brought them to life!

Whilst driving the Samburu East transect for the mammal census yesterday evening we saw a herd of six buffalo, a solitary hyena and many impala, gerenuk and dik diks.  We hadn’t expected to see buffalo because, like many species in the area, their numbers were greatly reduced in the drought last year.  It was wonderful to see them but we kept our distance!

We also spotted a lion cowering in the bushes. He was identified as Loirish, a young male normally observed in the Westgate area. He was guarding his kill, an elephant calf which had been killed two days before.  Whilst it was still an upsetting scene it evoked different emotions to seeing the poached elephants last week, being the result of natural predation.

The staff here seem to possess an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the individual elephants in the Reserve so whenever we come across a herd we note down their IDs.  Yesterday we saw the Cloud family, the Artists, the Royals and the Native Americans.  In order to count and identify all of the individuals, we drive very close to the elephants; an absolutely breathtaking experience which makes you feel very insignificant.  So far none of the elephants have reacted to our presence and continue feeding or walking along. Take yesterday for example, we drove within touching distance of a distinctive bull elephant who is named Weird Tusk, for obvious reasons!

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Assisting with the data collection has really helped us to understand the work STE does as well as putting our own projects into context.