Site Guiding week 1

10May-16May 2011

10May 2011

This was my first day at Site Guiding I was very excited to start with this course as it was something new.We did all our paper work and then had to do a "fake" game drive at the academy were you we put boards out with pictures of different mammals we had to choose two and give info on them my two animals were Zebra and Blesbuck info a gave was:

Burchell's Zebra:
That there are two Zebra species namely  Burchell's zebra and mountain zebra
On Sondela we have the Burchell's zebra
The zebras stripes differ and are unique like a humans fingerprint
The fillies when born the legs are as long as the mothers so that predators do not see that there is a young
The gestation period is 12months
Mates threw out the year

Blesbuck
That if you look close you will see they always nod there heads the reason for that is that a tsetse fly lays there eggs in the nose of the buck and it is irritating does not affect the animal negatively at all.
The young when born have a black blaze for black attracts the sun and they need the heat to survive
The gestation period is + -240days

This was an different experience but really fun.

 We started learning about mammals later  on in the day I gained a lot of knowledge .And found it really interesting.

11May2011
I wrote a test on mammals I did a night drive with Klaas and took over fully from him and then got awesome feedback was really good to see how quickly i picked up on things I was really confident and got the urge to just gain more knowledge and experience

12May2011
I learned about a lot of different grasses today and we went out to see how many grasses we can identify we also learned the importance of grasses.If there was no such thing animals wouldn't of had feed and would of died.They have a lot of other roles other then feeding such as stabling the ground avoiding erosion and putting nutrition into the field.

13May 2011
Had my assessment on birds and mammals today was found competent on my assessments.After this we had normal welcoming.

14May 2011
I was working at entertainment whilst waiting for game drives.I did a nine o clock Game drive were we saw a lot and I shared all my knowledge with the guests this was a lot of fun nice to gain experience.The rest of the day I just helped out at the farmyard with the entertainment of guests.
Then I had another game drive at 4 was I lot of fun as it was a bit more social and had someone to take with and help with guiding and talking as I have done it a lot more and had a lot of experience.

15May2011
I went out to help the new Recourse Guardianship group with Fence fixing as I have done it for nine weeks and by that time new exactly what to do this was funny to think that all of as struggled like that in the beginning.