Tarangire Expedition

Male elephant in musth

Do you see it? It's hiding under the tree. (It's a cheetah)

Lions napping

Lilac-breasted roller

Brothers

After five days on expedition its nice to be back in my little banda at Moyo Hill. Our first day on expedition we went into Tarangire National Park and collected data on all things elephant. This has been one of my favorite field exercises so far. We learned how to identify males and females based on physical features and even behavior, and also recorded age, tusk condition and health. The second half of the day was a game drive, giving us a chance to see all sorts of wildlife, including my first wild lion and cheetah sighting! That night we set up camp just outside the park, with little light pollution it was perfect for star gazing (not that I know any southern hemisphere constellations). The second day we went back to Tarangire and spent the morning doing transects and counting all animals larger than a mongoose. We recorded all the males, females, juveniles, behavior, and response to the land rover along with habitat. It was a long morning but I think its safe to say I have become increasingly better at identifying species in the field. For lunch we stopped at the Tarangire Safari Lodge to take a break from the heat and some of us jumped in the pool. After relaxing for a bit we headed back out into the park for another game drive. I saw more lions, wildebeest, zebra, lots of elephants, ostriches, giraffes and the list goes on. The next morning we got up and headed to Manyara Ranch to do the same field exercise. To compare what kinds of animals are in the park versus how many are in the ranch. In the afternoon we went back to Tarangire for a guest lecture from the head warden about conservation and poaching issues. Tuesday was spent interviewing locals in the villages surrounding the park about which types of firewood and fuel sources they gathered from the forests. The afternoon was spent on a bush walk in the wildlife corridor between Tarangire and Manyara Ranch. It was hot, dusty, and for a bush walk there was very little bush, but I still enjoyed it. On our last day we went to the Lake Burnge Wildlife Management Office for another guest lecture on wildlife management areas. We had an expedition debrief before heading back to campus. We stopped at Lake Burunge and climbed up on a rock where we could see Lake Manyara on one side and Lake Burunge on the other. We went to a women's basket weaving shop (cleared them out of their baskets I think), stopped briefly in Mto Wa Mbu for some snacks before heading back up the escarpment to our little hill in the clouds. Crawling into bed last night after finally feeling clean I realized how much this place finally feels like home. Today we have the day off to rest, do some laundry, and then I'm going to venture back down to Mto Wa Mbu to check out the Maasai market.