24 June 2011
It was overcast and raining. Liza, Gerrit, Egor and Jochen all headed off 15km away to be boated to the other side of the lake to form a camp. They will check the shore and adjacent hills for new SBS territories and will be back on Sunday night. Nige and I have had a lot of SBS discussion today, more in response to my questions. I encourage him to blog but his world revolves around incubators, temperatures, cleaning, making notes and work concerning WWT headquarters and the conservation breeding projects he is involved in. He stays behind during the day, and gets up all through the night to check on everything regularly. He is clearly in a zone but in good spirits.
My four kilometer map shows we have covered the best, most suitable habitat in over 100 square kilometres of terrain. When on the gravel spits the team is using the quads to cover the distance, and in the hills and marshes, it is all on foot. The areas with birds have been covered many times over almost daily. We still feel that a nest or two has not been found despite the intensive searching. It is not easy, you just have to keep trying.
1850hrs Nikolay arrived back at base, he has spent all day searching the western spit again, no sign of SBS. Dinner is at 2000hrs tonight.
