Lake Manyara National Park

After almost a week without internet, we can finally start doing research for our papers! This past week we went on a game drive in Lake Manyara National Park to practice keeping a field journal. Our observations will form the basis for our research papers. I'm doing mine on anti-predator behavior in impala. That afternoon we saw giraffe, elephants, baboons, vervet monkeys, warthogs, so many birds!( hornbills, grey crowned cranes, flamingos, a martial eagle, a kingfisher, and tons of white cranes), zebra, wildebeest, and tiny antelope called dik-diks. Some of us went all out and dressed in our full safari gear with khaki pants, hat, vest, and binoculars. I'd put up pictures, but it takes forever for them to load. The next day, we spent the morning doing scan sampling of baboon behavior. Every time we came across a troop in the forest, we stopped and recorded their behavior every 5 minutes for as long as we could see them. We ended up getting almost 2 hours of data. The next day we had a field exercise in animal tracking. This was probably my favorite day of the week because we literally spent 4 hours identifying poop. Each group of 5 or so was accompanied by a maasai herder who could identify every piece of scat we showed him along a 1.5 km transect ending at the lake. There were a crazy amount  wildebeest, thomson's gazelle, cattle, and sheep tracks and poop so when we found a jackal paw print, we all freaked out. It was almost 100 degrees that day, but since its the early rainy season here, we were saved by a early afternoon thunderstorm. Because we were basically in the middle of the savanna we could see the rain clouds looming in the distance and see the rain come closer and closer to us. Everything is so vast here. Unfortunately, we weren't so lucky the next day when we had to spend 3 hours doing a vegetation sampling exercise (identifying grass species and percent ground cover) with no shade in the hottest part of the day. The fact that we were in the middle of a huge expanse of grassland with wildebeest and gazelle within eyesight made up for the fact that we were being baked alive. We were also treated to pizza and soda in a local village. The fieldwork that we get to do is definitely my favorite part of the semester so far. It's crazy that we get to work in this kind of ecosystem with so many animals surrounding us. I almost forgot to mention that we went on a hike yesterday to the elephant caves near the Ngorongoro crater area. The whole area (which looked like a rainforest) is used by elephants so we were all on the look out. They caves aren't actually caves any more because the elephants eroded them with their tusks. We got to climb a humongous pile of elephant poop to the top of what was once the roof of the cave. We also hiked to the top of waterfall and were able to get within feet of the cliff. The view was absolutely amazing. The stream that fed the waterfall was surrounded by these sloping hills and it seemed like we were in our own little paradise valley with the sound of the waterfall in the background, butterflies, brightly colored birds calling, and lush trees with mossy vines hanging everywhere. I've never seen so much diversity in one place in my life. I almost like the forests in Tanzania better than the savanna because there's just so much more to see---plus I could probably spend half my life just identifying all the trees and birds.

Right now we're all just trying to get all of our assignment done before the end of the week. Hopefully the internet stays alive!