1/31/2010

This morning was not easy. There was a 5:30 bird drive, and I decided to go on that. We saw a wildebeest on our way out, as well as many beautiful birds. Upon coming back, we had breakfast and a 5-minute lecture before going out into the field to create hypotheses for fake experiments. While out in the field, we saw orb web spiders, kite spiders, massive termite hills and the bone of some animal yet to be determined. After we came back from the field, we presented our hypotheses, as well as a proposition for an experiment that will never be run. We then had two more short lectures, as well as a long break after lunch. Around 530, Hannah and I decided to go for a walk through the park, meeting up with Kevin on the way. We walked almost all the way to the bird hide we had been going to for the past 3 days, seeing along the way: a water buck, a steenbok, a lilac-breasted roller, and a scorpion, as well as a beautiful sunset. That night, we heard the story of how Alan, our ecology lecturer, came to be in south Africa from Zimbabwe. It was a very interesting story, and it really told me a lot about the conflict there that I had never thought about.