From our working holiday volunteering with leopards, caracals and Cape biodiversity in South Africa

All good things must come to an end, as the saying goes, and so we must say our farewells and extend our gratitude to group 1. And also say goodbye and thank you to one of our cooks, Gurli. You’ll be missed, but your efforts not forgotten.

You have all left your mark at Blue Hill, in terms of your contribution to advancing our knowledge of this area of the fynbos. Alan (our scientist) neatly summed this up in his science review on the last evening.

The team have: assisted in finding at least nine Cape rockjumper nests, thus supporting ongoing doctoral research; completed two sets of small mammal trapping, resulting in two new species records for Blue Hill; established 200 (!) honey bush monitoring plots; mapped multiple mammal species and collected several leopard samples for DNA analysis; completed 60 bird point counts across the Karoo (clocking up 1,500 km!); undertaken multiple nights of bat monitoring and 8 km of bat transect walks; and lastly, completed many hours of bat sonogram analysis.

You’ll note that I have glossed over the camera trapping, simply because it deserves its own mention. Four new camera trapping stations have been established, but the most exciting news comes from the camera traps established previously at Blue Hill. These existing camera traps were serviced by the expedition team and revealed that ‘Strider’, a known male, has recently been on the reserve, as well as a new, unknown female. In the last month the cameras have recorded leopards both on the east road saddle and along the south road. Great news for us, Blue Hill and the Cape leopards.

The team has made a big contribution to all of the scientific aims of the project, set out at the start of the expedition. Alan already has his scientific eyes set on at least one research paper. Not a bad achievement for eleven days work!

So we wish group 1 safe travels, and extend a warm welcome to our new cook, Barbara, who will be working with Melda. We can rest assured we will be well fed and the research will continue to be fuelled on excellent desserts!

So the bar has been set, and the research baton now passes to group 2. Your first challenge will be the weather, which looks like being cold and wet for the first couple of days. Hopefully you are prepared and we look forward to meeting you all.