Conservation - SOUTH AFRICA Volunteer Stories

Conservation in South Africa - Jonathan Proud

Legodimo Diary - Tuesday 2nd September


'A mouse ate my spectacle case during the night. It chewed away a large area of the covering, leaving the metal underneath exposed. I hope it gets indigestion! We set off at 7am, heading back to the elephant hide we worked on the day before.

On the way we stopped to cut some mopane trees to fill the gaps in the walls. There were a lot of hyena droppings, we had stopped beside a hyena latrine. They commonly defecate on the east side of roads but nobody knows why. At the hide we unloaded the wood, Jamie and Leo worked on the water pump at the dam while we fixed the mopane tree trunks into the gaps in the hide walls.

Then we decided how the floor for the upper level was to be fitted and nailed the planks to the beams secured with wire. While we worked a herd of elephant appeared but finding there was no water they wandered off again. We could still see them in the bush circling around us to the east. Jamie got the pump working and it began to fill the dam. We packed up for the day but as the elephants were still nearby Jamie stopped the truck a short distance from the dam. Within a few minutes about 50 Impala appeared, together with a few Kudu. Close behind were a group of Zebra and some baboons appeared in the trees at the edge of the clearing.

Five minutes later the elephants returned, they gathered around the reservoir tank and filled their trunks with water. There were about 20 of them altogether, some huge, some very small. Only the babies could not drink as the reservoir walls were too high, eventually they worked it out and ran over to the nearby cattle trough. At a signal from the matriarch, the whole herd stopped drinking and followed her away into the bush. We returned to camp for lunch.

Late afternoon, when the heat of the day was abating, we went out with Nicole to a weir on the Limpopo river to carry out a bird observation session. The 5 resident hippos were there and I saw two crocodiles. In a couple of hours sitting on the river bank we had an impressive list of species, including, Egyptian geese, African darter, Pied Kingfisher, Sqaucco heron, Blacksmith plover and many others I'd never seen before.'



Jonathan Proud


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