Up bright and early (0530 for 0600 start) to go and "do mammals" - half an hour by jeep past a ger where the dogs chase the car for several hundred yards. We found 6 animals altogether: Mongolian Gerbils and Mongolian Hamsters. Then back to camp for breakfast.
After breakfast the students and camp staff put up a ger for some new arrivals - this was much the same as at Ogii Nuur, and I was able to help them with some of the easier bits...
After that, I went with Oogii to track Argali. These are big sheep - very big sheep! - and they often appear on top of the rocky outcrops. It's easy to see them on the skyline, but much harder when they are against the rocks or the grassy areas where they blend in really well apart from their white bottoms. We were out from about 0900 to 1500 and saw around 40 argali, nearly all females or lambs.
Very soon after we started, we saw a female and her lamb, and then another 2 females appeared with their lambs, then more and more - eventually 15 or so popped up around the same outcrop. Oogii used the antenna to check for argali with collars and found four or five adults and lambs in the area we were searching. The female in the second picture has a radio collar which can be tracked with the antenna.
We also stopped to take pictures of a blue butterfly and to photograph birds on the steppe and the finches at the water hole near camp.
In the evening it was my turn to do bats, so I packed up my sleeping bag, knowing it's a warm one, and several extra layers. We took the poles and nets further down the creek bed to another water hole used by horses. Two were there when we arrived, digging in the sand for more water, but they went when we shooed them off.
We put the nets in a V shape around the water, propping the poles up with rocks and guy ropes. Then we pitched the tent but before we could organise the kit we started catching bats - faster than Nandia and I could measure them! Eventually we just checked whether the little Myotis were male or female and adult or juvenile, and weighted and measured the larger Eptesicus Gobiensis and Vespertilia Murensis which came out later in the night.
The horses returned around 0030 and I spent the next 2 hours chasing them off in the dark with the aid of a head torch which reflected the EYES in the darkness! Very creepy with big things snorting in the bushes and trying to sneak past to get at the water. Eventually, though, they got the message and went up to the water hole near camp.
We flew some of the bigger bats on elastic to record their calls and one landed on my shoulder - no phot though, because I hadn't enough hands! We also stuck glow sticks on some and released them to record their calls - the sticks fall off quite soon, but this gives a better recording of their calls because they are free to fly away.
We packed up at 0430 and were back in camp by 0500, but never got near that sleeping bag because we caught 159 bats during the night! Some ibex appeared on the rocks above as we left for camp...
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