Wednesday 23 June 2010

It is Wednesday morning, after we did a night drive late Tuesday evening.

During the night drive we made various predator and antelope distress calls. We aware amazed at Anton's ability to simulate black baked jackal calls and leopard calls.

The black backed jackals responded over various distances to the calls and we could hear them moving closer to the point of call, every time thy responded.

Unfortunately we did not hear any response on the leopard calls, but we did not really expected any response, because it is mostly male leopards that occasionally call to announce their presence in the territory, letting females know they are there and to tell other males to stay out of their territory and their way.

Now let us check who visited the camera traps since yesterday and who roamed the roads and bush trails overnight...

First camera trap had a very nice find...

Can you tell what animal was photographed to the left of the bush?  Look careful, it is only its back-side?

Answer: it is a honey badger trotting down the road.

A warthog using the road...

Here we have a gemsbok (orix) in view (only the back side again)...

Porcupines like to use the roads, because it is easier to walk in the road
than to drag their coils through the grass and bushes.

Here we have the same brown hyena (Floppy Ear) with a leg (of what seems to be an impala) in its mouth.

We followed it tracks and it seems to be female with a den. We did not find any pups in the den-site but there were losts of tracks indicating that it is indeed a female with at least one pup but possibly more than one.

A zebra must have picked up the human smell and decided to invesigate...

What did we discover on the roads and bush trails we patrolled?

- Black Backed Jackal traks at 7 differnt locations

- Civet traks at 4 different locations

- Brown hyena tracks at 4 different locatios

- Caracal tracks at 1 location
- Leopard tracks at one location

Leopard track of the right hind paw.

Here's the leopard track that we found.

We compared the tracks with the gypsum prints that we made earlier the week and were very confident that it was the tracks of the same female that we regularly tracked the previous days.

This indicates that she is most probably a permanent resident on the reserve. EXCELLENT NEWS!

We very pleased with the photos and tracks of the past day and night, but time is running out.

We also walked along one of the streams running from the north east of the reserve in an south westerly direction, to see if we can find any leopard or other predator tracks or signes along the stream. Unfortunatley we did find any leopard traks there, but we found the following:

Olive grass snake that we came across.

With only one day left for the pilot study and desperately wanting to photograph the leopard in the territory we decided on a plan of action. We drove to Vaalwater and got a few pieces of off cut meat from one of the butcheries.

We put pieces of the raw meat in an orange bag, and poured water on it to

spread the smell of blood onto the bag and the ground.

We want to drag the raw meat behind the vehicle in the vicinity of the camera traps to spread the scent of raw meat and blood in those locations, hoping that the predators will be drawn by the smell of blood and meat, so that the cameras can photograph them.

Here are photos and a video of the approach we took.

Dragging the bag with meat behind the vehicle to leave a smell trail of blood leading to the camera traps.

At the traps, we put some of the meat on the ground and some up in a tree close to a camera trap. The reaon for putting in the tree is to ensure that the first predator that comes along does not take all the meat and then there is nothing left to draw other predators. Only the feline predators will be able to collect the the meat that was put in the trees.

After scenting the camera traps, we retired for the evening. Haveing a braai and chatting till late around the camp fire.

Life is good if it can be lived in this way !!!