26th April

I've had a nice lazy Saturday so far, really needed it after two weeks solid clearly not used to this work lark. I have however maintained the tradition of the mid morning tea break when in the office. Eight til one is a long stretch without a cuppa and although it may have prompted some wry smiles from my non British colleagues I notice they have now joined in. This doesn't apply to tracking mind you, we would often go from 6 am til 1 pm without a tea break (or a comfort break come to that) but I managed. I found some Earl Grey teabags,  Liptons not Twinings so standards are being maintained.
I've done some interesting stuff in the office this week. Firstly I input all Phale's tracking data which I had written on the sheets. How cool was that? Then for Jane I went back over all the camera images for 2011 and 2012 at two particular trees noting down all the animals seen not just cheetahs. It was fascinating and sometimes the first time of seeing an animal or the first time up close. Sometimes really close, just an eye or a rump especially the warthog. Be honest,  it's a face only another warthog could love and clearly they do because they were far and away the most numerous. There were lots of cheetahs, all the antelopes, jackals, a brown hyena carrying an expensive camera,  wildebeest, a wild cat, porcupines AND my burrow buddy the aardvark. It's quite tricky because if a warthog triggers the camera ten times in thirty minutes that only counts as one sighting. Once it goes beyond thirty minutes that's a new sighting, so I have to carefully watch the date and time. At some trees there are two or three cameras so even trickier to monitor the dates and times to make sure a sighting is only recorded once.
When I went out tracking with Phale although we lost two cameras there were still some photos and I'm sending you some. I also spent time this week identifying cheetahs from those photos. Their spot pattern is unique to each one and it is possible to tell them apart once you find something to focus on like a particular shape or cluster. Jane has a photo database and I was comparing with that,  like doing mug shots at the police station. I think I correctly identified them as two brothers she calls The Brothers Grimm or BG2 for short. All the regulars have names.   By the end of the afternoon I had spots before my eyes but it'll look good on my CV. Don't ask me to do it when they're going at 75 kph though. Did you know a cheetah can out accelerate any car 0-60 mph?
So office bound this week but interesting stuff.
More later...