Collecting of Specimens

THE COLLECTING OF SPECIMENS

When collecting Specimens from the veld no matter if it is plant nor animal nor insect you have to be super care full with what you do and how you do it so that you don't damage the specimen that your taken and in that way you can use it for many years to come.

Specimens are taken from nature for a few reason which includes research and education, you can put them in a museum tipe of room at your facility or school for futher learners, workers to have the opertunity of seeing your work and learning from it!

Veld specimens of both plants and animals can be collected,they can be part of, or the complete plant nor animal. Veld specimens require careful documentation. the following should be recorded:

• Name of Specimen
• Location
• Habitat
• Frequency of occurrence
• Habit
• Collector
• Date of collection
• Weather Conditions

When Collecting plant specimen you should have:

• A pair of secateurs to cut branches
• A small pick to loosen the ground around the plant
• A small hand spade to remove loosened soil
• Plastic bags as temporary storage for plants.
• A note book
• A pencil

This is just a few of things that you will require when going out to get specimens. There is alot of different methods ass well as to collecting insect specimens.

• Bait
• Light
• Pitfall trap
• Sweeping
• Beating
• Visual search
• Litter sampling

So starting from the top im going to tel you a little bit more about each of the top mentioned metods.

1. Bait- Is a mixture of rotten fruit and foods put out to a place to attract flies, ants ect.
2. Light-Is when a light is put on at night to attract all night insects
3. Pitfall trap-Is when you make a whole in the ground put a container in the whole with the top level with te ground
4. Sweeping-This is were you would make use of your net that you made and sweep it through a vegetation where you would like to collect your specimen
5. Beating-Is were you take a branch and start beating on a bush or shake a buch to see what kind of insects you can find there
6. Visual search-Is when you walk and crawl and see what kind of insects you can catch
7. Litter Sampling-Is where you take a bunch of leafes and shake it to see what you can find. This leafes will be from a dump site.

there you go that is Veld specimens in a nut shell

Making of the bicycle trails

Making bicycle trails on Sondela

Once a year on Sondela we have a bicycle ride day for the whole family. This is a nice bonding time for familys and for parents to do have fun with there kids!

And believe me it was a great day and even better weekend. We were full in the caravan park and the family's had lots of fun. We had give and take a little round about 260 people joing in on the fun and we had a 2km, 20km and a huge 40km.

Now everybody enjoyed the wonderfull weekend nobody really knows what went on behind the scenes. So im going to give you a little bit of information and a watch of behind the scenes for a whole week before the fun started.

We as students were asighned the work of making the trails for the bicycles to be able to drive. It was a long and hard week but worth it becouse now we are all able to go into a veld and re-construcked an old road that has been grown almost closed of trees and grass and make it a bicycle trail for people to enjoy.

We where diveded into groups each on with there own leader which was a second year student. In this groups we were working on deferent pieces of the road. Starting early and finnishing late. On the working of the roads we used the following:

• Spade
• rake
• pang
• Saw

With the making of the trails we learned how to start a trail and how to make a trail according to managers orders and to make it a health and safety trail witch means it is safe for cyclers to cycle on!

The trails were a huge sucess and the cyclers enjoyed the weekend with us!

Catching of Giraffe

The Catching of Giraffe that went through the fench

There were one of our giraffes that broke through our fence to the next door farm we as students were called to go help fix the fench and try to catch the giraffe that has broken through.

We were unable to get a hold of the giraffe that broke through but managed to fix the fench really quickly as we worked together as a team with the help of some of the conservation workers and some of the wild life centre staff.

Fixing the fence we were required to do the following:

• Bending of droppers
• cutting of some of the broken wire
• putting new wire on
• tightning of the fench

After the fixing of the fench we were driving up and down the fench to have a look if we could find any sighn of a youngster or another giraffe. Our search were un sucessfull and we heard that the giraffe that went through were a full grown male and Sieg our manager went into the next door farm to see if he can find the giraffe and yes he found him and walked behind him all the way to see if he can get him to the gate we opend for him. While this was happening we were sitting not far away to watch that there is no other animals that would go through the open gate. The giraffe got away from Sieg through the buches and we were sent back to work on Sondela seeing that there was no way that we were gona catch that giraffe anyway!

Guest House Game Drive

This morning myself and Lydon did a game drive for the Sondela Guest House. We had a total of one Guest on the drive with us. On this drive we saw the following mammals and bird:

1) A herd of Blesbok
2) A total of 13 Giraffe 3 of them were youngs
3) A herd of Impala
4) A Bush Buck
5) A Secratary Bird
6) 3 Worthhogs
7) 2 Kuda males

I must say for myself and the guest it was a really interisting. The difference between a normal chalets game drive and a guest house game drive is the following:

1)The chalets game drive is more relaxed and the quests are more relaxed as well.
2) The guest of the guest house going on a game drive expect a 5star game drive which means you as a Guide as to be more informed and better knowlidged as your guest so make sure you know what and where it is happening

Always remember to keep your chalets game drives at the same rate and same experience as your guest house game drives and you ill never have disepointing guests

Fire Breaks On Sondela

Fire Breaks

We started 31 may 2010 with the fire breaks here on Sondela. At first we were briefed about what we were going to do and what was expected of us by the second years who did all the planning!

The first day in the field was quite confusing seeing that none of us have done this before but we learned fast and in no time we were on the ball with the fire breaks.

A list of all the equipment that was used in our mission:
1)Big trackter with slasher
2)small trackter with slasher
3)long axe
4)short axe
5)panga's
6)long forks
7)saw
8)brush cutters ( string, 3blade and sekelbos cutter)

Between all the students all of us have worked with everything but the trackters.

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED IN THIS PROJECT

Fire Breaks are real important on any farm no matter how big or how small it is the season of fire now and everyone needs to prepare! When a fire arrises on your farm and you have not done the nessesary planning and preperation on your farm you will most sertanly lose your farm to that fire, but when doing the nessesary planning and preperations like we did on Sondela now you would stand a change of saving your farm and fighting the fire. The fire breaks will not stop the fire i repead WILL NOT stop the fire but atleast you have a space to go into and fight the fire and know that you stand a change of winning and have I mentioned the safety risk of NOT having fire breaks and sending your people in there to fight the fire! When you as a farm owner have fire breaks on your farm you are not just protecting your farm but also your workers when you are a farm owner and NOT have fire breaks you are carrying the risk of loosing your farm and most sertanly some of your workers going in to fight that fire! The fire law states that your fire break must be atleast 7m but here on Sondela we added another 10m to that number which brought us down to 17m breaks all around our houses and chalets so for our staff and students and everyone helping when a fire breaks loose it will be safe to go in and fight the fire, but PLEASE remember nothing is never safe in a fire the wind changes and then the fire changes so always be aware of your fire!

The funny part of farm owners is that they never or almost never think about the animals they have on there farms. farmers always just hope that animals will survive but truly that is bull dust for me I think that there must be a plan in place for protecting your animals that you have on your farm!

HOW DID WE GO ABOUT

The big trackter game in first and then the smaller trackter leaving all of us with the grasses underneath the trees and every where the trackters could't come in. The guys with the brushcutters went in after the tractkters to clear out underneath the trees and then the rest came in and took of all dead branches and branches to close to ground which will be a potential hazard in the case of a fire.

Basic ecological principles U/S 14584

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Welcome to Ecology

''Ecology is the study of interactions between organisms and their enviroments. the basic law of ecology is that the lives of different species of plants and animals are linked, so that changing one thing in nature changes others. The word 'ecology' is from the Greek word 'oikos' meaning our home.'' This is the direct words from our learning meterial it all sound good and easy but let me tell you one thing it is easy and really good to know. Me myslf have learned so much out of this unit standart that I truly understand the nature in the way it is ment to be fully now.

Lets have a quick run through the ecology we have learned now in the Species Care!
1--> Trophic Pyramid
The trophic pyramid is a basic explenation of how nature works in it's natural form. The pyramid is devided into 6 deparments. Starting at number 1 Abiotic factors whitch is your non-living factors like water,air and soil. then at number 2 primary producers whitch will be your grasses and trees. Then at number 3 primary consumers which will be your impala, blesbuck and all other herbivores. This means al other plant eating animals. Then at number 4 you will find your seconder consumers which will be your lions, cheetahs ect.Then at number 5 you wil find your tersiere consumers which will be the hyiena ect. Means all omnivores. Then by the side of the pyramid you will find the decomposers which in this case will be all bacteria, worms, fly's ect. The job of the decomposers are decomposing any left overs that animals don't eat. The decomposers will actually put all the nutrients and minerals left in that lets say carcas back into the soil which will make the soil more rich.

When following the pyramid in nature all things in nature would be in place. Look at it this way you can't have more lions that impala and you can't have more impala than land. When keeping the pyramid in place you are keeping nature the way it is ment to be!

Species Care 48433

Species Care in a controlled environment is all about learning us as students how to work in a wild life centre and how to be able to know animal behaviour, animal feedings(this include the weighting and preparing of food.

This course consist of 5 unit standards which is
1--> basic ecological principles U/S 14584
2--> assist with the selecting, preparing and providing of food U/S 113821
3--> recognise and care for plants in area of responsibility U/S 113814
4--> clean and maintain area of responsibility U/S 113818
5--> care for animals in area of responsibility U/S 113822

In this course I had the oppertunity to work with all the animals in the Sondela wild life centre that is also a rehablitation centre! We worked under a few personel and facilitators even second year students and the HOD of the wild life centre Sieg!