MB's journal from the Earthwatch Meerkat trip. June 26th through July 11th , 2006

Background Info: The Meerkat Project is now 13 years old. The lead investigators, Tim Clutton-Brock from Cambridge and Marta Manser from Zurich Univ. were not on sight at the time of my visit. Tim owns the property on which the Kuruman Reserve is located. It includes 2 farmhouse clusters that are approx. 10 min. apart. The reserve used to be for farming (grazing sheep, cattle and possibly ostrich) It has now been stocked with native ungulates like springbok, wildebeest and gemsbok that are being allowed to increase their populations “naturally”. Herd sizes are reduced by periodic hunting and the meat is consumed by folks living on the reserve. There is a Trust that provides for the costs of maintaining the reserve and conducting the research.

The farms- or rather field stations (one below) as they are now referred to, are called Gannavlakte (pronounced hannaflakta) are managed by Tom Flowers (below on right) who has been with the project for 3 years (he is about 26 and a Jim Carey look alike – very nice and very knowledgeable)

Helene (pronounced Elena) Brettschneider works for the Meerkat Project but her job is the Earthwatch coordinator and she is more like a cruise director, making sure we are all comfortable and “getting along”. She is originally from Namibia . She speaks fluent Afrikaans and English.

There are 9 researchers currently stationed at the one farmhouse. They are all in their 20's, just finishing their undergrad or master's level programs. Most are British, one American, one French and two Australian. They are called “volunteers” because they only get a stipend and they do this more for experience. They each have signed up for a year in the field and their start dates are staggered throughout the year for continuity and training purposes. Since I think of our earthwatch team as “volunteer”, I refer to these guys as the “meerkaters” in my journal entries.

We Earthwatch volunteers are housed in the 2 nd farmhouse away from the meerkaters – more on that later.

The local folks who work on the reserve speak predominately Afrikaans with a bit of English. They are all black. The researchers are all white.

June 25, 2006 - Uptington, South Africa ( it took way too many hours to get here, but that's a different story)

5:15am. How is it possible that I am here by myself in a room in the southern hemisphere so far from home?

I was brave and ordered a pizza for lunch/dinner last night. That doesn't sound so brave until you look at the menu, I had to avoid the “monkey gland sauce”!!!! I ordered plain cheese.
I spend one night here in a very nice B&B, Le Must, that I would recommend to anyone! Tomorrow I head for a bit rougher accomodations.

June 26, 2006 - Helene picked me up at Le Must and we then picked up the remaining three Earthwatch team members. After a quick lunch that allowed us to meet each other, we were off..

Paved road for 80km and then dirt/and road for 170km. Andre, a support staff member was with Helene and he drove us (110km/hr on the dirt road made me a bit nervous)

8:00 pm Yikees, I'm too tired right now to list the animals, birds and stange nests we or to try and describe the landscape – mainly flat, shrubby and brown. It reminds me of what I think the Australian outback looks like with the intermittent sheep farms and endless wire fencing.

Cloudy and cool all day and they say this is unusual for this time of year. No stars visible tonight. The wind is picking up again tonight and though the rondavels are quite comfy(see pictures below), it isn't Le Must. The bed is a narrow camp cot and there is a desk/table, chair, dresser, camp trunk and a cold water sink. We have a small, one bar space heater (and a fan that I don't think will be used) The bath house nearby has flush toilets and hot water for showers but no heat.

Dinner was brown rice and lab curry. I ate some and if I scraped the sauce of the lamb it was pretty good. I'm not much of a curry fan. There were two other things that I cannot pronounce, nor did I try them. One of the other members of our group is as bad as I am about being a picky eater so that makes me feel better!

I swear I am hearing thunder.

Tomorrow we head out at 7:30 am ( 1:30am home time) to see meerkats. We had an introductory talk this evening about what to do in case of scorpion stings or puff adder/cobra bites. It sounds like the chance is remote.

I like Helene a lot already. She just finished her Masters at Pretoria in entomology. She is from Namibia and has been with the project 5 months. (I won't repeat now what I put in the Intro.)

There are 14 current meerkat groups that have been habituated to humans and all must be observed at least 3 times a week.

The BBC film crew is here to assess the possibility of filming a full length movie of the meerkats. They will be here for 4 days.

That IS thunder and now it is raining. Highly unusual for this time of year.

Wed. 6/28/ 06 1:00pm

FIRST DAY WITH THE MEERKATS! (and ostriches, as it turns out)

Got up at 6:30am I was toasty under my blankets last night but it was COLD getting dressed this morning. I have all of my layers on and boy am I glad I brought long underwear. They may reek in a few days, but if this weather keeps up I'm not taking them off.

Breakfast of cornflakes and muesli mix along with tea, then out the door to meet our “meerkater” at the other farmhouse. By twos, we are assigned to different groups of meerkats and meerkater. I was teamed with the Earthwatcher Debbie and meerkater Helen( in red jacket below), from Whales. Though we headed out early, Helen warned us that the meerktas would take their time coming up today due to the cold overnight rain. They did… While waiting, a “herd”(?) of ostriches approached. This group of meerkats, the Elveera group, is on ranchland across from the reserve where sheep and ostriches are raised. We were warned to beware of any large males (black feathers) with red shins because they in a mating frame of mind and are aggressive. Fortunately, these were all young females and none of them threatened us but they did get curious and came close to check us out.

Finally......after shivering for an hour and a half, the meerkats of the Elveera group began to emerge from their burrow. AAhhhhhhhh!! Since Meerkat Manor has made them tv stars, I don't have to describe their charisma.

Part of the habituation process is getting them used to a sound that will put them at ease when we are around it is a hmmm hmm hmm sound and we have to make it frequently as we walk amongst the meerkats.

Jo Jo is the dominant female in this group. She is the largest female. Those dark spots you see on their fur in the show MM, is not natural. They are markings “painted” on them with black hair dye in order to identify them more easily.

This is a copy of what the ID sheet looks like. The right column indicates the black markings on their bodies, ie, RS + MB means right shoulder and mid back. Depending on the size of the group, they may have 1 to 3 markings. Elveera have only 12 so they are a small group and are easy to keep track of. The Whiskers have 42!!! And they are a bear to keep track of.

It is phenomenal to me that Helen actually knows several of these Meerkats even without the markings, despite the fact that she could be working with any of the 14 groups. I'm sure it depends on how long the meerkater has been on the project.

I think this is one of those situations that by the time we learn what it is we should be doing, and how to go about it, it will be time to head home!!

Part of me wishes I had not watched the first few episodes of MM because then I would be seeing all of their behaviors for the first time in the wild. We booked this trip months before even hearing about Meerkat Manor and it is surprising how the show has made folks so much more aware of meerkats.

Helen was very patient with us. I'm not sure yet whether having Earthwatchers along is a help or a hindrance for the meerkaters. At least initially, we require so much explanation and watching to be sure we don't mess up, they must dread the beginning of each Earthwatch session.

These critters move around quickly as they dig from place to place trying to find insect meals. They are easy to step on so you have to be careful and have to keep making the hmmm hmm hmm noise.

5:30pm Just finished a GPS and meerkat training session

I think I have figured out how I can work with this in the class using clips from MM or one episode. I will use it for an animal behavior unit. Helene says she will burn a cd with all of this info. we have received so far and the foraging focus sheets that will be using as well.

Tonight at 7:00 we go to the other farmhouse for dinner with all of the meerkaters.

10:15 pm 4:15 am at home –yikes

These people sure like curry!! It was a nice dinner, but not to my taste. Fortunately the young guy next to me had appetite enough for two and had no problem polishing my plateful once he finished his. There was good conversation though. The BBC crew was there and had some interesting stories about working with David Attenborough, They say he is working on another video right now. These guys have been all around the world filming. They are “auditioning” the meerkats right now for filming they hope to begin in Oct. The ink isn't dry on the contract, but everyone is hopeful if it can be down without interfering with the research.

We can see the sky tonight (it had been cloudy all day) and the stars are magnificent. The Milky Way is as clear as it was from Baja Mexico (on my sea turtle trip). Driving back to the rondavels we saw a cape hare that moved like a kangaroo and had huge ears and a long puffy tail . It looked like a joke animal that someone had pieced together. They are strictly nocturnal so we won't catch a glimpse of them in daylight.

6/29/06 Thurs. 5:40am

Good night sleep under the blankets (3 of them) I woke up on my own – with some help from neighboring roosters. Sun isn't up yet. Still too cold to shower. No clouds. So hopefully it will warm up later when the sun comes out and I can take a shower in the afternoon. My head is beginning to itch.

Not homesick yet but I can feel the nigglings of it around the edges. I was able to buy a phone card for 50 Rand (approx. $7 US) and I can use it on Sunday so I am savoring the knowledge of the phone call to come.

8:18pm Very Busy Day

Followed the “Young Ones” group of meerkats from 7:30 to 12:00noon. 12 in this group since 2 males have gone off “roving”. Kept track of GPS readings every 15 min. as they foraged and bolted when alarmed. They were a nervous group. Had peanut butter for lunch then this afternoon we learned how to do a foraging focal. That's where we work as a team and observe a single meerkat for 15 min. keeping track of how long they dig, how large a hole they dig, if they get anything to eat, how many chews we can count, and ID what they ate if we can. At the end of the 15 min. you move to another meerkat. There are six in the group they want us to try and focal. They eat things like larvae, beetles, scorpions, something called a solafuge, and even mice, geckos and small snakes.

The meerkats are more vocal than I expected, particularly the young who have a non-stop chirpy “whine” and they pester for food ALL THE TME. Most adults ignore them but do occasionally give them something they have dug up. The young do dig, but they aren't so good at it yet. It reminds me of a kid in the checkout line at the grocery store who wants candy.

Dinner tonight was at 7:00 – chicken Jacob, hmmmm, chicken with a thick creamy sauce containing bananas and peanuts. Major yuk. Thank goodness Tanya turned her nose up at it too and she is more open about it than I am. They call all dessert “pudding” regardless of what it is, unless it is cake and their pudding is hot and called custard, much runnier than what we think of as pudding. I re-read this and it sounds like I am obsessed about food.

Continued….

It warmed up enough this afternoon that I was able to finally take a shower and I washed my long underwear. It has dried enough that I can put it on because we are going out at 9:00 for a night drive in the back of the truck to try and see some nocturnal wildlife.

10:40pm

We didn't see much unfortunately. They saw an aardvark on their way over to pick us up – the 4 BBC crew were there too so it was crowded in the back of the truck but not crowded enough to be warm. It was wicked cold. The worst thing though was that while driving there are thorny branches along the side sometimes and usually someone in the front will warn those of us along the side that we should duck. Well, someone got distracted and we didn't get the warning. I had just turned my head and had my hood up so I didn't get it too badly but Tanya got hit right in the face. She had multiple scratches and some bleeding on her lip, nose and eyelid. It must have stung like crazy, but she said she was ok after a little bit and we continued on. When we got back to the farmhouse we took a closer look and she had some thorns still stuck in her nose. (yeah for the tweezers I packed) She was braver about it than I would have been.

Fri. 6/30/ 06 9:45pm

Each day gets busier. We went out at 7:30 this morning and did 3 hours of foraging focals.

The group of meerkats we visited this afternoon, the “Moomins” group were wonderful. The meerkaters call them the Brady Bunch of meerkats. So friendly and well habituated. I had to stop taking pictures because I could have used up all of my batteries just on them. Everything they did was photogenic. We were there until a magnificent sunset. Then as we hiked back to the road we saw 7 wildebeests. They snort and carry on but will not charge us. Then a herd of springbok noticed us and began “pronking” away. (it is a bouncy run) This experience defies words to describe all of the sights, smells, and sounds that combine. So often now, I think how nice it would be to be out here alone. The meerkaters must like it much better when they don't have earthwatchers tagging along sometimes.

Sat. 6:15am 1 st of July

My internal clock woke me at 5:00 this morning. I have adjusted well to the time change. Last night I was thinking about the many differences between the way this Earthwatch “team” is set up compared to the one in Mexico . Other than the locations and critters involved, here are some of the most obvious differences: The Earthwatchers here are very much separated from the year long meerkaters. Our accommodations are a distance away and nicer than theirs. We have an Earthwatch Coordinator and even though Helene is very nice, it has the feel of a “handler” or “minder”. We do work each day with some of the meerkaters but I get the feeling that it is something they just put up with whereas in Mexico we were a full member of the team – living closer, sharing meals and meal preparation, as well as clean up. We played cards and other games with them, played practical jokes on each other and generally got to know each other much more. There was a greater feeling of belonging to the project. Here, though we did have dinner with them once, and I understand a couple will come for dinners with us this coming week, I feel more like a guest than a partner. Different people have different expectations though and others might like this set up better.

Sat. is a work day, like the rest of the week so we head out for foraging focals this morning. There is talk of going to a “ Derby ” in town this afternoon and maybe a dance this evening. This would replace our trip to the school since the kids are all out on winter break. It was disappointing to find out that we would not be visiting the school.

4:20pm- The best part of the day was when a meerkat climbed onto my head/hat to do sentinel duty. Debbie got a picture of it for me. We had left at 7:30 to follow the “Commandos” group but they were difficult to find by telemetry. (no one was with the group when they went down last night so we weren't sure which burrow they were in) It turned out that they had crossed the road and were on the farm adjacent to the reserve. There are numerous 7ft fences so Earthwatchers do not go over into that area. That means Sophie, the meerkater, had to call Helene on the radio and have her pick Debbie and me up and find another group we could join. She took us out to Moomins again. They were all up and out of their burrow, sunning themselves when we arrived. The meerkater was Helen, whom we had met the firt morning. I don't think I have yet described the meerkaters' day:
-out to the designated group by 8:00-8:30 depending on the weather to catch the meerkats coming up out of their burrow, if possible

- weigh each one, which is a tricky proposition that involves the “weights box” and a lure of hardboiled egg and a water bottle. Many of the meerkats are so well habituated to being weighed that they will approach the box on their own. Some have to be picked up by the base of the tail and put in the box. Sometimes though, the dominant male will mark the sides of the weights box with his anal glands and that deters others from approaching. Some of the meerkats are “egg mongers' and will continually jump into the box hoping to get more egg. It can be difficult to weigh them singly. There is one in the Moomins group that was born with no claws (see the comparison in photos below) and he is a major egg monger – understandable since he doesn't do very well foraging, and is much smaller than his litter mates. The smaller groups like Moomins and Elveera aren't too bad to weigh but the bigger groups are tough, especially Whiskers group. Keep in mind that they have to be properly ID'd with those black dye markings in order to record each weight correctly.

- Once they leave the burrow and begin foraging, there are different focals that can be done and all require that we follow the group, making our hmmm hmm hmm call and avoiding stepping on the little beasties. While the earthwatchers are doing foraging focals on some of the individuals, the meerkater has a small hand held computer that he/she input things like behavior, displays of dominance and submission, pup feedings, response to alarms, who goes on sentinel, etc. If an “alarm” call is made, the meerkats have 3 general responses: 1. if a burrow is near, they run into that, 2. if no burrow, but there are shrubs, they move so quickly you can barely believe it and they are scattered inside the various bushes standing still (I saw it happen twice and it is phenomenal) 3. if there are mainly grass clumps, they will lie flat on the ground right under the grass. Helen says there are two types of alarm calls, one calls attention to the sky, the other warns of trouble on the land but I haven't been able to detect the difference. There is an intermediate call that is more of an “alert” and when they do that you will see them looking up in a direction of the sky. If you look in that direction long enough you will eventually see the bird they have spied way, way, away. Usually a vulture, which will not turn into an alarm but if it is a hawk or eagle, it will. How can they possibly tell the difference that far away????

Today Helen is doing a specific pup study and these pups are the youngest we have seen – only 2 months old (4 of them). They are old enough to forage so there are no babysitters that stay back at the burrow when they are this age. The adults though, now become “helpers”. The pups move amongst the adults and they have a particular continuous chirpy “whine” and they just seem to pester the adult meerkats relentlessly for food. Helen takes turns following each pup to count how many times they try to forage on their own, how successful they were and how often they get fed by an adult. She has a decibel meter (see photot below) and records how loud the whining call gets. Pretty loud, actually. One way to find a group in the high grass is by listening for the pups. The adults make a noise called a contact call but it is not nearly as loud or as persistent. The meerkaters say when the pups aren't weaned yet, the whining drives them nuts.

Debbie and I began our foraging focus and the 1st meerkat took us for a merry chase (have I mentioned that the grass is unusually thick and tall this winter due to the record rainfall in the spring?) That tall grass makes it quite difficult to watch them dig and to figure out if they have gotten something to eat, not to mention keeping from stepping on them as you move along with the group. Some are more skittish than others about us following them. We are supposed to track each of six designated meerkats for 15 min. each. If there is an alarm call and they all run, we pause our timing until we can find the one we were tracking and that can often take 5 -30 min. depending on how quickly they are moving and the cover. You really do need two people to do it. One to start and stop the stopwatch and watch for where the meerkat is, both to try and see when they get something to eat and the 2 nd person to record the results on the foraging form.

WE came very close to a herd of eland today while with the meerkats. The meerkats are not always so smart. They kept alarming but would then move steady towards the eland. When I asked Helen why they were alarming (because I couldn't see any birds or anything else) She said it was probably the herd of eland, even though it was the meerkats moving towards the eland not the other way around!!

Tomorrow I get to call home. I have to wait until late afternoon here so they will be awake. I do worry that it will set me off as far as homesickness but I'll have a good cry and be done with it. The only thing planned for tomorrow is to pack a picnic lunch and drive to the Botswana border. There isn't anything really there but Helene says it is a nice place to have lunch and to say you saw Botswana . We will have time to do laundry and shower, etc.

I haven't seen any bats which surprises me.

Sunday, July 2 Sunrise, but I'm not sure what time it is because I don't have a watch and I forgot to bring the stop watch into the rondavel last night. The two things I REALLY wish I had brought were the school's digital video camera and a watch with an alarm. Pictures will be good but for what I want to do in class, video would be better. I know this camera has a video feature but I'm not sure how much battery it uses and how much storage space gets sucked up when it is used. I'll try to get a few next week though. Pictures don't capture the sound either.

Because this is our morning to sleep in, I have heard/noticed the bird sound much more today than in other mornings. It is as noisy as at home but a completely different set of sounds. At least I think they are all birds, they could be other things that I have no idea. There aren't many reptiles out this time of year and there are very few amphibians that live here at all because it is so dry.

I wrapped two of my blankets around me and went into the farmhouse to fix a cup of tea. Now I'm back snug in bed. The space heater does take the edge off but doesn't “heat up” the rondavel. I've developed a system so I don't have to go out to the cold “ablution box” first thing in the morning or even during the night. I have my handy dandy large zip loc bag. It works great. I also pile up my clothes the night before onto the locker next to the bed and before getting dressed I pull them under the blankets with me to warm them up before putting them on.

The BBC film people left yesterday and there is major excitement amongst the staff about the potential full length film. They want to begin shooting in Oct. and wrap it all up by next summer. They want to capitalize on the success of the March of The Penguins. The contract still has to be signed and there is much speculation about Tim Clutton-Brock and what infrastructure will be needed to accommodate a large film crew – will he be willing to allow it?

The sun is now up and I'm sorry to miss even one day with the meerkats. Most of the groups should be up out of their burrows by now. The meerkaters go out on Sunday only to do morning weights and then go back in the evening for end of day weights. They each have only one day off completely on differing days during the week. I can picture the meerkats standing upright to expose their dark belly sides towards the sun. I wonder if they even notice the mornings that there is no human, no weights box and no egg? I could easily see spending a much longer time on this project. What a great experience for these meerkaters at this stage in their lives. The tales they tell of the summer don't sound to appealing though.

I'm in the queue to call home. I'm afraid I will start crying while I'm talking to them but I'm really doing fine and I don't want them to think I'm a mess. I just have a low level constant feeling of missing home. I'm not ready to leave yet because I've only just begun to have questions answered about the meerkats and why they do what they do. I'm savoring the week of work ahead. I'm going to do some laundry to kill time. The washer is “semi-automatic” which means putting the clothes in to one side to agitate them, then putting them into the spin side, and repeat.

I was told there is a wild group of meerkats in the area near the farm, but haven't seen any. All of these creatures require such huge acreage, that sightings are fewer and farther between than I expected. EXCEPT ground squirrels. They are all over the place. They look bald almost because of their lack of ear flap/covers. They have a stripe down each side and a long feathery tail they use in the summer as an umbrella. Obviously from their name, they live in burrows and it is actually their burrows that the meerkats take over and enlarge for their own use. I'm told they will sometimes share the burrows as well.

Sundown 5:47pm I feel much better. I didn't cry until I got off the phone. I got to talk to all three of them since they were all home and that will have to hold me for a week. I don't know how much time I have left on my phone card but there should be enough to say hi again next Sunday.

8:10pm -yoo hoo We had real mashed potatoes for dinner. (it's the simple things in life) The fish dish was not anything I would touch but that's ok. Tomorrow we don't see the meerkats again, darn it. We do biodiversity transects in the am and insect surveys in the pm. Here are Helene and Debbie after netting.

Speaking of insects, I find it very odd that there are no ants in the rondavels or the farm house. Unlike the Island School and in Mexico , you don't have a trail of ants from the sugar bowl. I know it is winter but it warms up in the afternoon and despite that I have seen very few insects of any kind other than the ones the meerkats dig up. A few pesky flies and that's it.

8:00am Mon. July 3 I guess I was too rested yesterday because I woke several times during the night from bad dreams. It is probably better to be worn out before going to bed. We are about to have training for our transect study then we'll head out into the field.

11:15 Quick and easy. It was a line transect- not too thrilling. We listed any termite mounds, specific shrubs and evidence of digging or burrowing along a straight line. We saw only one large termite mound. The color and consistency made it look like a meteor that had fallen. Only one invasive mesquite bush and 25 grey camel thorn bushes. More down time, then we do the insect survey. I want to get back to the meerkats.

We set insect pit traps and did some netting.

For sunset, Helene took us to the highest dune on the reserve and we had snacks while watching the sunset. Even though it wasn't very high, not as high as the dune at Kitty Hawk , we could see a great distance all around us. There were animal tracks in he sand of the dune showing it is a busy spot.

July 4th , Tuesday – one full week on the project.

In Mexico , the researchers were mainly Americans and there was a small community of ex-pats in town so there was a rowdy celebration for the 4 th of July. Here it will go pretty much unnoticed. It is 5:50am and my biological clock has quickly reset to the 6 hour time difference.

Last night there were 3 gunshots that sounded near by. Maybe someone was poaching on the reserve?

The last couple of nights have not been as cold and by noon we should be able to shed our top layers. I now put my silk long underwear shirt on top of my long sleeve shirt so I can take it off in the field and I haven't worn the long underwear bottoms in a couple of days. If winter at home were like this, we would love it.

1:30pm We had a really good morning with the Elveera group. With only 12 of them, it is pretty easy to keep track of their forgaing, especially since there isn't much of the high grass over on this side of the farm. Mike Phinney, our meerkater, says the name meerkat in German means ‘little earth people”. That seems appropriate. At first the Germans thought the meerkats were some kind of monkey.

We were able to do the foraging focals for all 6 of our individuals. None of them went on sentinel duty this morning which seems unusual. We were hearing on the radio that Mike carries that there was a big igi (inter-group-interaction) between the Whiskers and the Young Ones. They say a female in the Young Ones was wounded badly. Lucy and Tanya were over with them today so they got to see it. They said it was quite intense.

That shooting last night was not poaching. It was sanctioned hunting of springbok and the 4 that were shot are being butchered right now on the front porch of the farmhouse. This meat will feed the community on the reserve for several weeks.

We have shower time then drongo focals at 3:30 . I haven't talked about them yet. I need to get my hair washed while it is warm out so I'll come back to them later.

8:45 pm Darn, no meerkats this afternoon to be found. (thus no drongos) We hiked for 2 nd a half hours and never found the Moomins group. Not sure if the radio collar is not working or just that their range is so huge, we never got close enough to receive a signal.

We did see an excavated hole near a termite mound that was made last night by an aardvark. The imprint showed the 2 front legs, body and long tale and two round circles that indicated that it had been a male arrdvark!

a drongo

Let me explain about drongos. They are birds that kleptoparasatize the meerkats. They find a group and sit on limbs nearby then try to mimic the warning call of the meerkats. If they fall for it and “alarm” then the bird swoops down and steals an insect that a meerkat has dug up and abandoned. We focal an individual drongo for 15 min. and record what they are up to and if they are successful or not. These are much easier to do than the meerkat foraging focals but also, there tend ot be fewer around in the afternoon when we are watching for them so if there isn't one around, we get to just watch what the meerkats are up to.

Two of the meerkaters came for dinner last night and we learned more about the kinds of places and studies some of them have worked on before coming here. Such a variety! Anthropology, entomology (crickets and wasps) ecological studies in various parts of Africa , Australia and South America to name a few. I keep hearing about all of these projects they have worked on all over the world and I wonder if it is that these opportunities have only been available in more recent times or if I just never heard about any of them when I was in my early 20's.

6:30am Wind picked up overnight and feels like a cold one.

We don't go out with the meerkats this morning. We will do some vegetation quadrat surveys. I hope Lorna can find the Moomins group this morning. There was one more burrow, north of where we were that she was going to try. I'm not sure which group I go to this afternoon. This was the day we were supposed to go to the school but since it is closed for winter break, we are going out with a meerkater instead. OK by me.

11:30 Back early from the quadrat survey of plants. What type of plants are needed to support meerkat populations? What types of invasive plants have moved into the area and to what extent? These are some questions being asked.

8:45pm It was a good afternoon with the stars of MM. Flower is pregnant again and Zaphod was staying close by. She was pretty mean to the subordinate females. Yosarian is off roving and there were 2 unidentified roving males that came near the group and they were run off. Not exactly an igi but the most activity I have witnessed so far. They are such a massive group and most have multiple marking to ID them, I don't know how the meerkaters manage to get all of their weights done. Tom says they don't always get them all, especially at the lunch time weighing. They sure try though.

We attempted our drongo focal but none showed up. Tomorrow morning I am back with this group when they wake up and head out of the burrow.

On the ride back to the farmhouse it was almost dark and we saw an Aardvark . It is the first one that Helene has seen in her 5 months here. It was much larger than I expected. She says we are the first Earthwatchers to see one. (maybe she says that to every team, I don't know) but she did seem excited about seeing it. It was too dark to take a picture.

July 6 1:30pm Lunch break and shower time while it is warm. It feels like the low 80s, very nice. Great morning with the Whiskers. They had an igi with the Young Ones and I was able to get some video clips of it on my camera. They move in such a mass when they decide to go. No idea who is deciding and exactly how the signal is made. There is so much activity it is hard to sort out. They stop, gather, move around, run, stop, then go again. They did it 4 times and ended up at the burrow where the Young Ones went down last night. The males had to spend much time anal marking the burrow opening and any bushes in the vicinity. Both males and females broke off and chewed twigs and rubbed their sides on shrubs as well. They were so busy, they weren't doing much foraging so we were able to focal only 3 of the individuals. We would have been busier focaling drongos this morning because they certainly seemed riled up by the igi.

3:00pm Random bits before we head out for the afternoon.

Discomforts – not many really. Cold in am and when the sun goes down. Black thorn bushes that can snag, particularly when moving fast and concentrating on a meerkat. Grass seeds that get down your socks and boots and itch/scratch. Flies on warm afternoons. All in all winter here is the comfortable season from the way they describe the summer.

Drinking water – we have been drinking from the tap (well water) with no apparent problems. I drink it mainly as tea. I fill my water bottle with hot tea in the morning and continue drinking it all day.

They allow us to touch the meerkats even if we haven't had a rabies shot because most of them don't bite easily and there have been no rabies outbreaks in the groups since the study has been in progress (TB yes, rabies no)

The meerkats' fur is soft. I didn't expect that.

Two days left with the meerkats. Sunday is a day off for packing and getting caught up on inputting our data into the computer.

Hey, I haven't told about our session with the elusive Moomin group this afternoon. We checked their necks for TB lumps and in the process got to “groom them” a little bit – in other words, scratch their necks. It is the first time we have actually been encouraged to touch them. Some would hold still for several seconds as we scratched them, others moved away.

2:45 Puff Adder Day!!! The Moomin group did a mini-mobbing and American Mike went over (about 10m from where we were standing and told us to listen) There was a strange sound like a heavy smoker breathing in and out. That was the puffing sound. He pointed it out to us and it was half buried under the sand. It was coiled up and still pretty lethargic from the cold night.

The Moomin pups are the youngest of any of the current groups (thus the cutest) Pig the dominant female (renamed because she is such an egg monger and tries to keep any of the submissive females from getting any at the weights box) has killed 5 litters of pups that have been born to other females in the group. She's a tough one.

The yellow hornbill is probably the bird I will most associate with this trip. They are large, and awkward when they land with that big yellow toucan-like bill. I'm told there is a pair of them that like to watch when the meerkaters play volleyball on Sunday afternoon. They do seem curious about what humans are up to.

We heard from Mike that at other times of the year, when the post docs and PhD candidates ore here, there is much more going on. They do experiments in addition to the observation. They don't book Earthwatch trips then because there are more people in the field and they don't want to overwhelm the meerkats.

There are many different types of animals here that are not being studied (yet) the possibilities are endless.

July 07 20:45 Such excitement here on location of Meerkat Manor!! Our afternoon began to look like another bust. Phinney had Debbie and I driving all over the place looking for the Lazuli. We drove over 2/3 of the roads in the reserve in a beat up (and I'm being kind) pick up with little suspension left. Better and faster than walking for kilometers! We stopped every few km to check telemetry but no signal. The Lazuli had gone missing. Their dominant male, JD, had left to go roving and took 2 other males with him. Phinney says this isn't surprising since the dominant female and the dominant male were related and genetically that isn't the best scenario for the group. (the former dominant male was killed and this one took over) The Whiskers had an igi against the Lazuli earlier this week and so they have taken off to a more distant burrow. Kazeema, the female has approx. 20 meerkats with her and Phinney began to suspect that she may have taken them to the far western burrow where she had been born. We drove over that way along the fence and sure enough, a faint signal was picked up. By now it was only about 30-40 min. to sundown and we needed to find them quickly. We had to go over a 7ft fence and found them a distance off. They were highly agitated and it didn't take long to see why. 3 roving males, led by Yosarian kept attempting to get close to the group. They would igi against them, running them off a bit, but the males kept coming back. Phinney tried his best to get as many of them weighed as he could but they were hilarious as even the smallest in the group tried to look so tough against the roving males. Phinney anticipates that one of the males will end up asserting dominance since JD probably won't come back. It will take time, but Kazeema may accept one of them to mate, maybe even old odd ball Yosarian. There is liable to be excitement there tomorrow so Tanya and Lucy will get to see some of it since they are assigned to the group in the morning.

A couple of the Lazuli group appear to have TB lumps and one has a sore on her nose which is a sign of TB. It is a major health problem with the meerkats.

2:00pm Saturday, July 8 th

LAST DAY WITH THE MEERKATS.

Last day in my 40's!!!

Afer all the excitement last night with the Laz group yesterday afternoon, the Elveera group was rather tame. It was quite cold again so they took their time coming up. The ostriches were giving us a fit. They wouldn't back off and kept pecking our backpacks. I think they were eating grass seed off of them. I was glad when the meerkats finally moved out of the ostrich pen and headed down the dirt road a ways. It is easy to get our 6 foraging focals done over here since the ground cover is so sparse. Sometimes on this side of the road, the meerkats will
hang around the farm buildings.

I haven't mentioned the dust here yet. It is ubiquitous and gets into EVERYTHING.. Driving has particular problems associated with it. If you end up behind another vehicle, you choke on the dust. If that vehicle is going slow then you have to make a suicide dash to the right to pass them and hope this isn't one of the rare moments that another car is coming. Anything mechanical has a shortened life here due to the dust. I don't know how they keep the computers functioning. One of the meerkaters had to have a chest x-ray done for something after being here 3 months, and the Dr. said upon looking at the x-ray “so you're a heavy smoker, right”. (he was a non-smoker) That's a bit scary.

Hmmm, July 9 th , why does that sound so familiar, oh yeah, 50 th birthday!!! How did that happen. Half a century. That just doesn't seem possible.

We just returned from watching the sunrise up on the highest dune. As much as I would like to be spending my 50 th birthday with my family, I have to admit that this is pretty darn cool. On the way back this morning I spotted a gemsbok. The first we have seen and he was impressive. Beautiful markings.

Now I'm back in bed trying to warm up.

The braai ( cook out- below) last night was low-key. No one got particularly rowdy. I loved the fire within a circle of logs and the bright full moon and stars out. It was difficult to follow the conversations since most were talking with such strong British or Afrikaans accents.

Today there is nothing scheduled but we have asked if Tina, our native Afrikaan housekeeper would be willing to come and have tea with us and talk. Helene is going to arrange it. Otherwise we input data, clean some clothes, shower and pack.

I'm ready to go home. I wouldn't mind having more time with the meerkats and learning more about them but otherwise, I have been here just long enough.

We just finished our “interview” with Tina (photo below) and I am blown away. Mainly she spoke Tswana, she has some Afrikaans and a little English. Helene was our interpreter and one thing that struck me was that it was obvious that Helene was learning things about Tina that she did not already know. We asked about her life there and about what it was like before apartheid. She worked as a “nanny” for nearly nothing. She had to have a note from her “employer” in order to go to town and the authorities in town would check the note. She couldn't go visit anyone on a neighboring farm without permission. Even now she said there are places she will not go. She says she was worried about Tanya going into town and to the Derby and she didn't know how the whites there would treat her. She said the night before at the braai, she, her husband and son were there,(but not really a full part of the conversation, we had certainly noticed that) when a chip was handed to a white Afrikaans who was visiting, the white person brushed the chip off first as if to rub off something from her black hand. Who knows, maybe there had been some sand on it, but the reality was that that was the way she had perceived it. She wrote in Lucy's Project Briefing book in Tswana and this is what she wrote:

Dumelang kena Tina ken ale Monna yo kemma rat ang le banabale 5 go sale. Ale mongwe, ke rata Kalahari eke Mohumanegi Ke aleboga

My name is Tina, I have a husband I love, I have 5 children one of which has died. Life here in the Kalahari is hard. Thank you.

Tina and Helene

I though today would be long but it has actually gone by very quickly. – Especially after calling home

There is no cup cake pan to make my Lion King cupcakes so I am going to attempt to bake it in a square pan. There are edible rice paper pictures of the characters to put on the icing, including a meerkat of course.

We went out to another dune for sunset tonight and said our good byes to the Kalahari.

Dinner was interesting particularly because Tina wrote a note to Helene to read to us. First off, she has never been asked to speak with any Earthwatch group in the past and said that most folks just treat her like she doesn't really exist as a person (so wrong) and then she had a list of questions to ask us. She wanted to know what we thought of her cooking. She asked what we thought of her when we passed her house on the way to the farmhouse. (It is mainly a shack and we had asked Helene earlier in the week why Tim Clutton -Brock doesn't improve the housing for the workers on the reserve! Now we know that it does bother Tina and I think this was another thing that Helene did not know) She had several questions specifically for Tanya and what it is like to be black in the US . I was thrilled that she asked us these things but sorry that she didn't feel comfortable asking them when we were all together. The whole interaction has been quite moving.

I presented my cake at the end of dinner and someone asked if it was an “occasion” so I told them about my birthday. Helene sang the Afrikaan version of Happy Birthday quite different from our own. The cake was a little dry but ok.

All-in-all quite an interesting 50 th birthday, I must say. I could never have predicted this when I was younger!!

July 10 Monday I woke up at 4:30 this morning and didn't need the alarm at 5:00 . Only 11:00pm at home and they were just going to sleep.

We bundled our bags into the trailer by 6:00 and then discovered (in the dark) that the back right tire of the truck was dead flat. Oi, was that an operation to get it replaced? It is the first time I have seen Helen a bit frazzled. But only a bit. She is used to flat tires, so knew what to do. It was only a pain because of it being dark and cold and we were on deadline to get to the airport. The full moon went down and we got the truck on the road by 6:30. No other mishaps on the 150km of gravel road or the 80km of paved road and we arrived in Upington with 20 min. to spare.

Goodbyes to Helene at the airport and the 4 of us boarded the small plane to JoBurg.

In 48 hours I will be back home and this will all be part of the memories I have to carry and savor for what comes after 50 years. I'm incredibly lucky to have them.