I am resisting the temptation to google "bat excrement" to see what hideous diseases can be caught from inhaling the fumes from it - having spent two days removing it from the inside of an old building that has become the comfortable residence of a bat colony. There was good reason for the spring clean - a party. The building is an old bar, with adjoining braai, tennis court and even a swimming pool, which was used by the staff at the Hluhluwe reserve ..... unt...

I'm back at Hluhluwe....and I can't stop smiling. I left here in early November, and it had rained what seemed like solid walls of rain for almost 2 weeks non-stop. This morning though the rain held off, and the mist clung to the hills and sank to the flat lands at the bottom of the slopes. The photograph attached to this blog is just as dawn broke and as the sun started to rise. Moving from dark to light here is like a lightswitch being flicked - a matter o...

(N.B. written Nov 2011, but posted here for ease) Last night we picked up a mortality signal with the telemetry, but it was getting dark and so we were unable to set off on foot to investigate further, and had to wait until this morning. We arranged for a Field Ranger to accompany us with his gun, and set off at 4am, knowing that at best we would find a dog in serious trouble or at worst a dog that had died. We set off walking down from the top of the ridge in...

Meet Isilo..... Isilo is the largest tusker in South Africa, and scientists agree that he may be the largest in the world. The definition of a "tusker" is an elephant whose tusks exceed 45.5kg/100lbs. Isilo, (which means King in Zulu), is a huge bull elephant with tusks estimated to be 2.6 m/8.53 ft in length, and weighing about 60 kg/132 lbs. His other statistics include a tusk circumference of 50cm, his height is 3.2m, and his weight is 6500-7000kg. So if ...

I am now so far behind with this blog, due to lack of internet connection and time, that I will now be adding updates that date back up to 6 weeks! Rather than slot them in where they should be, I will continue to use the current date so they don't get lost in the trail - apologies for any confusion. So what is missing?? Well, off the top of my head..... - walking down through forest into the valley to search for snared dogs (two dead, one we released) - amp...