Today was quite a lecture heavy day, after breakfast, it was time for our 0700 lecture – on botany. It was split into two halves, trees and grasses. Gerhard made it quite interactive by getting us to collect samples and getting us to identify for ourselves what they are. It was really interesting but just makes you realise just how much we have to learn!
We were given a bit of a ‘telling off’ by Rosa, the group that cooked last night put some oil down the sink and it’s almost blocked the drains, she wasn’t really cross, she was just showing us what happens and telling not to do it again.
We had a well deserved brunch of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, fruit and salad. We also had birthday cake for Sam (his birthday was yesterday).
For the first part of the afternoon I filled in my workbook and then it was time for a lecture on birds – this went on for about three hours! It was really interesting though, all about their anatomy, breeding habits, migration and so much more. It wasn’t too hard going though, Ben had packets of Smarties to give out for prizes when we got bird pictures right. It very much feels like being back in Madagascar (except I’ve swapped fish for birds) when there’s all these rules on how to tell the different birds apart, but they don’t always follow the rules and there are some families where several of the species look the same! The quote of the day has to be (when talking about breeding habits) ‘so what is monogamy?’ Response from the back of the class ‘boring!’ – That earned Smarties! I also found out that the bird a ‘snipe’ (from the movie ‘Up’) is actually real! It doesn’t look anything like the one from the film, but it does actually exist! Who knew!
We also saw several sable antelope wandering around by our dam, which we can see from the classroom. I’ve never seen them before so that was really cool.
We had dinner (beef stew with rice and salad) and then it was time for showers and bed – early start tomorrow!