Charlie says

We have had an interesting mix of folks visiting since the 17th September starting with the Biodiversity and Environmental working group under the Okavango Basin Management Committee, who funded the actual 2 day meeting while SAREP (Southern African Regional Environmental Programme) where we hosted Traditional Authority leaders, local school teachers and pupils, local community, conservancy members,  line Ministries and merged them with experts from Fisheries, Insects and Invertebrates as we thrashed out the indicator species and criteria to implement for monitoring the Cuito/Okavango floodplain as an environmental area of interest.  The group is led by Mark Paxton and we hosted a total of 22 participants, lots of food, water, drinks and stuff going on over that weekend, was productive and fun.

Then end of August through to mid-January is our sub-tropical birding season so we have had a range of birding groups come through including the heavy-weights like Tropical birding, but also the smaller more focused folks looking to add to their lifer list.  Mark does the speicialist guided woodland walks and looks for "hotties" like Souza's Shrike (his specialist bird), Sharp-tailed Starlings, Rufous-bellied Tits, Wood Pipit, Arnotts Chat and Racket-tailed Roller.  (I am not the birder so this is by no means a complete list).  Adriaan Stander our eco-training student does the boat-trips for birding, fishing and good old sundowners....has had a range of birds some of which are also exciting sightings, the African Skimmers are regular now, the Carmine Bee-eaters are nesting.  ( Ethan has gone out with him and 2 guests Emlyn and Elizabeth Horne, who are on their second visit to Shamvura Camp).  So I will ask Ethan to list the sightings from the river over the last few weeks!

Fishing has been exciting as well...Adriaan had the crazy Finish dudes, who were quite wild 70yr olds who stripped down naked, skinny dipped and then fished off the river sandbank in nothing but their birthday suites.  Gavin and Sally Marlton were here for a few days and he had some good fishing, Pink Bream, Nyembwe, Barbel and Tigers...will have to ask Adriaan to add to this list.


In between we intervened seemingly successfully in an attempted Sitatunga poaching incident and 2 of the Sitatunga swam over and sheltered on Shamvura Camp side within our fence lines...makes one wonder, do they just know its safe here?  Ministry of Environment got here 24hrs after being called and are doing an investigation.  The hippo family has grown and is now split into 2 groups with one of them also sheltering on our immediate floodplain.  Adriaan has to sneak the boat in and out of the channel right under their noses...they do seem to know our boat and do not bother us fortunately....

We also had "Plant Phile"(Thomas Danielle, Maria and Marius)  here who are doing research into indigenous plants with a view to creating sustainable income from marketing useful plants at a local level.  We also had Dawid and Cori here from The Nature Conservancies an organization similar to WWF which was very interesting.

On the home front Bokkie Spitbraai our castrated housegoat is STILL living with us and sleeps in the bedroom along with the dogs, Mark and I.  Adriaan and Ethan rescued another small lamb recently who they called Lucy but for once Mark and I were in total agreement and said NO RETURN TO THE COMMUNITY IMMEDIATELY.

That is it for now will ask the dudes to add their sightings soon!