Tag: Naturschutzexpedition Gepard

In the last few days the elephants have really been travelling! One morning team found them in the mountains at the far south of the farm, and then the afternoon team found them at a waterhole on the north east side. (For those of you reading this that have already been to Okambara that would be in the mountains south of JM house, and then at Boma a few hours later!)

While our new box trap has not netted us a predator yet, we still have been consistently seeing tracks rather close to the trap, which keeps our hopes up for of a capture. We’ve also caught a porcupine (this one was also reluctant to leave the box trap), and another warthog. We also think we’ve solved the mystery of the closed-but-empty traps; tracks in front of a couple of the traps suggest a civet cat is setting them off, their small size enabling them to waltz out between the bars of the trap doors.

We have a couple of avid bird watchers, and it’s been enlightening to go out into the field with Anand and Suresh, because their keen eyes pick out roosting (and flying) birds that the rest of us need the binoculars to see. The duo has compiled a list of 51 positive identifications, and will add them to the expedition “bird journal” that Joe in Team 1 started. Several of us were lucky enough to go birdwatching (birdlearning?) with them on the day off.

Vera received a download from the collar of the leopard captured and collared during the last slot, and the data showed him repeatedly crossing the southern boundary of the farm. Vera immediately sent a team to investigate and they found the hole in the fence that he had been using and placed a camera trap there. Vera was ecstatic when pictures from the camera trap caught him in his patrol. Another good example of how useful it is to have so many helping hands, eyes and ears.

Speaking of camera traps, Sandra B. is such an enthusiast that she arrived with not one, but TWO of her own camera traps, and has added them to our efforts in strategic places on Okambara. One of her traps up north revealed a beautiful adult caracal as well as a very interesting oryx!

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Wednesday morning a sudden change in the elephants’ direction of travel put the elephant team face to face with the entire herd. It was a nice encounter in the middle of the road, where the team was treated to a display of mock fighting between two young bulls. The youngsters were plenty far away from the vehicle, and were nice enough to play out in the open so the team was able to capture some great pictures.

The afternoon camera traps team collected the SD cards from several of the traps around the farm and we were treated to a slide show after dinner. We got to see game animals from some interesting points of view, as well as a visual reward from Team Twos’ legacy: remember the oryx calf kill we used to catch the leopard and then relocated the calf? We caught three klipspringer on the camera.

The trap also revealed three cheetahs that were quite curious about a stick Christian had moved in the roadway a mere hour before the curious cats came along (we caught Christian on the camera trap as well!). As you can see, we can get some very good ID pictures from the minute that they spent in front of the camera.

Further south of that camera another camera trap revealed a very curious leopard (was he licking the trap?) unfortunately too close to the camera for Vera to use for ID pictures.

Wednesday one group walked a new transect in the northeast corner of the farm, which we are now calling Tracks & Scats #12. After hearing about the several tracks and scats that were found, Vera decided to make a new activity on Thursday to re-position one of the box traps there. So all three groups set out in the morning to do box traps – one to check JM South, another to pick up and move the JM North trap, and the third went up to Bergposten to check the trap.

The Bergposten team of Gary, Sandra, Suresh, Anand and Alisa arrived to discover a very displeased honey badger in the trap. After conferring with Vera, the team went back to release it. Thanks to Suresh for his nerves of steel (no doubt due to his Army training) for liberating the annoyed animal. The fierce honey badger at one point climbed up and was hanging onto the top of the cage from the inside trying to get to Suresh (honey badgers have been documented as even making a lion back down). Yet once the trap door was opened, the honey badger left Suresh behind and made a run for freedom.

When finished, the honey badger team joined the other two box trap teams, who had just finished the lovely new corral. This relocated box trap is just east of the lodge for those of you reading that have been to Okambara. Hopefully the new location will prove fruitful and we will catch a leopard!

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Our third team has arrived. They’ve brought along with them good luck and some strange weather. The first night, right on cue after the daily briefings, a rhinoceros family arrived at our waterhole. It’s always fun to watch the comings and goings just outside base camp.

Speaking of watching things, team member Sandra B. even brought her own camera trap, and while she caught mostly images of cows, she did manage to capture a couple of curious jackals sniffing out the trap. We haven’t seen last night’s visitors yet, but just as everyone was going to bed the elephant herd came to our water hole, and I can tell you it was a reverential event. Joerg Melzheimer, the biologist who brought Biosphere Expeditions to this beautiful study site and now makes sure from the wings that our science does what it’s meant to do, had just finished giving his presentation on the elephants and their behaviour, when all nine Okambara elephants arrived. I know we’re not supposed to use smart phones out here in the bush, but I for one am glad he rang them up and invited them 😉

The elephants proved a little more elusive during the day today as the morning team couldn’t quite locate them. It would seem they were on the move all day long, because the afternoon team found them, but they were almost 8 kms away from where we’d tracked them in the morning. Also this morning Vera gave us a presentation on how box traps work, and Gabi volunteered to give us a live demonstration on how the trap works.

Then Suresh took the initiative to get inside and get the job done. The group then split into three teams and we went about our morning activities.

All afternoon it felt like a storm was brewing with dark clouds, shifting winds, and we all got excited when we felt the first raindrop. But after two more drops the rain went away, and we were left with dust storms all over Okambara. It has been two very interesting days!

 

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Vera and I were reminiscing about the first two groups and we decided to have a look at the expedition journal. We’ve had some really original input from team members so far, and it makes us remember you fondly. Thorns? What thorns? Dust? What dust? Waterhole roulette?

Here’s some of what the first two teams wrote, and we look forward to sharing this with the coming teams. Team 3, see you on Sunday!

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Wednesday we performed our normal activities in the morning, and the box trap team liberated another curious warthog from Frankposten. The schools here in Namibia are on break this week, and in the afternoon we picked up the farm children and the team took them on a game drive. They all enjoyed the outing, but I think we enjoyed the children’s company more than the game drive. Barbara and Dianne had a sing-along with the children and it was really fun.

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Apparently me vs. meerkat was the highlight of the afternoon for Shelagh, since she immortalized the event in the Expedition Journal for every team hereafter to read about: The farm workers have a tame meerkat, which considers them its “family”. When we were picking up the children the meerkat took offense at my presence and attacked my boot, and I clambered up the side of the vehicle. Preposterous as this seems, I’d already seen it attack Vera’s boot the week before, so I was having none of it. (I note with irony that the meerkat didn’t like Claire’s boots any better, but SHE did not get immortalised in the journal!)

Our second Vehicle Game Count was Thursday, and again the teams were ready and eager. Sightings were plentiful and all three teams noted the abundance of oryx calf sightings in the morning hours. While it’s late in the season for the oryx to be calving, apparently they have the ability to postpone delivery while waiting for better feeding conditions, but only for so long. The last rainy season was quite meager (I’m told 70 mm as opposed to the “normal” ~450 mm), and the vegetation is sparse. If we’re, lucky the rains will begin early in December, but that’s a long time to wait. And they may not come early at all. It’s tough conditions in the savannah right now.

Friday morning we said good-bye to Team 2, and after one day here alone I can tell you are sorely missed! I checked all the traps all by myself yesterday, and it was very time-consuming. All the volunteer work here is so important; without you, we simply do not have the reach into the field activities that we do when you are here. So a hearty thank-you to you all! I look forward to meeting Team 3 next week!

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Kathy’s tongue-in-cheek masterpiece of Jesaya and Vera in action on a camera trap are now below

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This just in: two new species discovered by the camera trap at base camp! Whatever could they be? (An FYI to Paul and Joe, our jokesters in Team 1 – I could hear Vera laughing all the way across the compound when she looked at the photos from this camera trap. Shelagh from Team 1 was there too. Well done!)

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The last few days we’ve released a variety of animals from the box traps. One particularly belligerent male warthog refused to leave the trap, trying to punish Vera who was on top of the trap setting him free. We also had a reluctant porcupine in the trap at Frankposten…he made himself rather comfortable in the box and refused to come out. Finally the team left him alone to sort out his own departure.

Waterhole counts reveal large numbers of warthogs, as Claire said, “There is quite a lot of activity in upper warthog-ville today.” (The team counted 24!). Other teams captured on film a family of giraffes coming to drink in their awkward, long-legged way, and at one point an aardvark drinking at the water hole (sorry Joe).

Also in the past days the elephants have been extremely cooperative, taking their baths and playing at the waterholes (Frankposten and Boma) during our observation periods, making for some great photographs. Speaking of elephants, Team 1: do you remember how we thought that the elephants were nestled in at the north end of the farm? Well, look what we found on the camera trap at base camp!!! This was taken on the night before your departure.  All missed the tracks that day even though we were standing right there for our group picture!

And as if that wasn’t exciting enough, we have had several carnivores make appearances on the camera traps. We’ve seen a brown hyaena in the pictures from the JM South (or hole-in-the-fence) camera trap as well as another leopard, and this leopard was wearing a collar. Looking at the date of the picture (the same day we had the other leopard in the trap) and ID pictures, Vera realized that this is the leopard that the Biosphere teams caught and collared last year. That makes two collared leopards now on Okambara, and a total of three using the same hole in the fence. Exciting!

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Thursday was our vehicle game drive, and vehicle one came across a fresh place where a leopard had made a kill and we saw the drag marks across the road (good eyes Gary!)

This is a really good example of why the work the volunteers are doing here is so important…without all the extra “eyes” in various places all over the farm, Vera would never have seen the drag marks on her own. Her normal path of travel to base camp is on the other side of the bush, and she would never have seen the fresh kill if not for the volunteers. So a huge thank you to the teams for extending her reach into the study area.

It was really a pleasure to watch how team two communicated via radios and SMS, and through everyone’s efforts – and flexibility – we were able to move and set up two box traps at the kill site that afternoon. The next morning we were rewarded with a HUGE male leopard (69 kg) in the trap. Vera and the IZW team weighed, took DNA samples, and collared him. Recognise Shelagh from team 1?

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And, this just in from Vera: she has confirmed through ID pictures that the male leopard caught on the camera trap that walked by the hole in the fence but did not come through is, in fact, the very leopard that we have just caught and collared. So, a huge thanks again to team 1 for identifying that hole in the fence and helping to monitor the camera traps there. Way to go teams 1 and 2!

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Team Two was greeted the first day with rhinos coming to the water hole at base camp (thanks Claire for the awesome picture!).

Luckily I was done with my briefing for the day, otherwise it would have been stiff competition. The team is now fully briefed and already in action in the field. Monday we did our driver training then checked the box traps. We decided to take the long way home and were rewarded with an extended encounter with a family group of sable antelope. Then just after that we saw not one, but TWO aardvark, and we have determined where they live, which is very exciting.

Tuesday morning the team learned how to change a flat tyre, and were already working well together. Vera brought us all to the box trap at Frankposten, where she gave a demonstration to the group on how the traps work. John volunteered to be the “animal” as long as we promised to release him. Claire did some housekeeping at the trap brushing off the soil so we would be able to see tracks the next day.

After the box trap demo we split up into three teams and went off to our activities: tracks and scats, elephants, and water hole. The elephant team was joined by scientist Joerg Melzheimer and treated to a memorable encounter with the elephants.

Tuesday afternoon the box trap team also found excitement with a female warthog caught in the JM trap. This morning a different box trap team found more excitement with a porcupine in the Frankposten trap. The morning waterhole team was treated to a myriad of animals at Frankposten, including some juvenile giraffes taking a drink. In the afternoon the elephant team had a long encounter with the elephants and was amazed to see the 1 meter branches that the elephants were breaking off the shrubs and eating. The afternoon waterhole team went to Boma, our tree-house hide, and had an interesting afternoon despite Andrew being allergic to the tree they were sitting in. The afternoon camera trap team collected SD cards and looked at pictures and saw heaps of cows but no carnivores in the pictures.

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