A game of cats and elephants

[TonyQ]

If you are wondering about the CEO's snafu, this photo by fellow BE expeditioner Françoise might give a clue

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9113739@N03/2949332612/

Oops!

[Super LEEDS]

Eat vegetarians hahaha. Good on thee.

[JohnR]

Week 2

Monday

After the excitement of the previous week we return to our "standard" pattern of two activities per day.

In the morning I chose waterhole observation and we were sent to Gustavposten which we had observed last week but in the afternoon and there was quite a difference in the level of activity. The wind which had got up towards the end of last week was stronger than ever and blowing in our faces in the single hide at this waterhole so we had no choice where to sit. As we were dropped off by another team we had no transport so had to sit it out. We started at 8am with lots of sand grouse and blacksmith plovers. There was a male ostrich hanging around but he never came near the waterhole. Several baboons came to drink and were mobbed by the plovers. The grit in the wind was starting to form sand dunes in my clothing so we were glad when Susanne called from base to see if we needed picking up. We finished at 10.30 when Shelagh came and collected us. In that time we had 5 kudu and 3 oryx and very sore eyes. Since the camera shutter makes too much noise I don't take photos when on waterhole observation. I've bought a Nikon 1 camera which has a totally silent electronic shutter so I may try that in future.

In the afternoon I went on Elephant survey with Jesaja. We worked out with telemetry the direction of the matriarch which was north of us parallel to the escarpment and we set off in that direction when the boxtrap team came from Frankposten to tell us that the elephants were at the waterhole. They did not need to get past them as the hunter was still operating at Bergposten so they headed for the southern box traps. As we were approaching Frankposten Christian the farmer drove through the herd (and far exceeding the speed limit imposed on us) sending some elephants running off into the bush. We stopped to watch the rest of the elephants splashing and drinking.

There are two members of the herd that realise the trough will refill with fresh water and always stay back to take advantage.

Eventually all moved off and we followed them heading along the easterly road into the middle of the farm.

They carried on moving and gradually got further away than our 100m observation distance so we tried to get ahead of them by driving round the back way. But when they came over the central ridge about 300 metres away and saw us they stopped and after a while turned back. So we drove back the way we came and observed them again in open bush for half an hour -- the longest encounter I've had so far.

Eventually they moved away into denser bush until they were no longer visible. On the way back we saw a giraffe family,

and we jokingly asked Jesaja to find us an aardvark which he did a few seconds later. The first free roaming aardvark I have seen though I have seen them in the boxtraps.

[TonyQ]

@@JohnR

Wow - an aardvark - what a sighting!

[JohnR]

@@TonyQ They were coming out around 4pm so were being seen regularly. Gary even saw one at a waterhole. The scientists say this behaviour is linked to the drought in this part of Namibia. They need longer hours in which to find food so are forced to hunt in daylight for ants and termites.

 

I'm jealous of the later participants who even saw an aardwolf.

Edited January 5, 2014 by JohnR

[JohnR]

Tuesday

Morning was boxtraps with the team selected so there was plenty of manpower, and ladypower on the other activities. The pair of traps which had captured the leopard had been left active but failed to attract anything else. It was decided to take the kraal apart and relocate the traps back to their original positions. The leopard kill was also relocated to act as bait for a camera trap in the mountains so the camera trap team had to stop by and pick up the carcass. As luck would have it, the meat ended in the back of the truck with our two vegans. They were also to pass close enough to the hunter to hear gunshots

We dismantled the traps and moved one to Frankposten and the other north of JM House, rebuilt them but left them disabled until the afternoon cameratrap team brought some fresh bait from the lodge meat store.

Afternoon was Elephant Survey. After lunch at base we (Beate, Gary, Connor, me) went with Jesaja to find the elephants. We drove up the centre of the farm to just below Frankposten where there is a slight hill from where we did telemetry and found the collared matriarch within a small arc in the direction of the Boma waterhole. So we set off in that direction and shortly I found fresh spoor and almost immediately Gary spotted the back of a cow over a tall bush. As the herd was moving they eventually came out into more open bush and we circled round ahead so we could observe them feeding for a while. They were a bit spread out and by chance one of the young bulls headed our way so we were forced to pull further away to the west. After they had fed or just stood in the shade for a while the matriarch started to move more purposefully north-eastwards towards the Boma waterhole so we waited until they had all gone in that direction and then drove round the back of Boma so we had a good view of them drinking and splashing.

The young bull again threatened us and when we backed off he turned his attention to his cousin.

We then left them heading south and took a roundabout route back to base to avoid running into them and saw a variety of game.

Clouds. If only...

[Geoff]

Thoroughly enjoying this report. exceptional ardvark sightings.

Edited January 7, 2014 by Geoff

[pault]

Aardvaarks - very good!

 

Is that wildebeest with the straw-cploured tails? (just above the warthogs)

 

 

The second pic in the latest series could do with a bit of photoshopping - at least give him a bit of a tan.

[JohnR]

Aardvaarks - very good!

 

Is that wildebeest with the straw-cploured tails? (just above the warthogs)

 

Black tails are blue wildebeest (gnu) and white tails are black wildebeest . The latter are not native to this part of Namibia and out-breed the blue wildebeest.

 

The second pic in the latest series could do with a bit of photoshopping - at least give him a bit of a tan.

 

In the dialect spoken where I grew up, to tan someone's bottom meant to smack them

[Kitsafari]

aadvark - wow. love the "bum" picture. thank you for a most interesting and detailed report. it gives me a good idea of what it is like to go on a volunteer trip. something i've thought about but can't take time off work for, yet.

[egilio]

Sounds like you had a great time! Very jealous of the aardvark sighting...If the black wildbeests are outbreeding the blue wildebeests are there plans to remove the black ones as they're not native?

 

Did anybody stay with the leopard while he was recovering?

[JohnR]

If the black wildbeests are outbreeding the blue wildebeests are there plans to remove the black ones as they're not native?

 

That would be the farmer's decision. He is too fond of all his animals. The suspicion is that 9 elephants is too many and some need to be removed especially the young bulls. One of the objectives of the study is to provide sound data for game management decisions. You can lead a horse to water but...

 

Did anybody stay with the leopard while he was recovering?

 

Of course, a car from the cheetah project stayed. I am impressed with the IZW attention to detail. They have immobilised around 500 leopards and cheetahs over the years not to mention hyenas, caracals, honey badgers, jackals, so have everything very well organised.

Edited January 9, 2014 by JohnR

[egilio]

Good to hear somebody stayed with the leopard! Just wasn't clear on your initial description. Immobilized 500 leopards and cheetahs? That's a lot! I guess a lot of them were for relocation to remove/relocate problem animals?

 

9 Elephants too much...I guess that depends on what you want you area to look like. There's definitely enough food for them. And the elephants will open things up a lot more, but I guess they don't want to end up with a desert landscape. And they also don't want just elephants. In my opinion, the term 'too much' in relation with wildlife management, is often an opinion of the managers based on what they want to achieve.

 

Looks like they have set up a very comprehensive and well run research project. Weekly herbivore counts, wow!

[JohnR]

@@egilio Most of that number are cheetahs which have been studied for more than a decade in Namibia. Leopard studies are more recent and there's not yet a lot of data. The ideal is to have most of the target animals in an area collared so that the dynamics of the whole group can be studied, not just individuals. With GPS collars such studies are bringing lots of new information as areas can be identified which are visited frequently and the scientist can then go and look. In the case of a leopard it might be a large carcass or if a female it might be a den with cubs.

 

Immobilisations are mostly performed to collect samples such as blood, hair, faecal material and semen, as well as photographs for identification purposes on camera traps, and to study diseases, nutrition and genetics; animals are collared when suitable. The scientists are not there to provide a relocation service. Animals being shot by farmers is part of the environment in which they live (and die). It is as much a fact of life on game farms as on cattle ranches in Namibia. The scientists aim to build relationships with the surrounding farmers so that they can study "problem" animals. Of course many farmers are unwilling to hazard their livestock for the sake of science and collared animals are sometimes shot. Occasionally the collars are returned.

[JohnR]

Wednesday

Nearing the end and much is just a repetition fo the first week so I'm just covering the bits which are different. The new activity for this day is due to it being a school holiday so the farm children are at home and we are to take them on a game drive in the afternoon.

As some people still had not had clear views of the elephants and most wanted to spend their time following the herd in the hope they would come out in the open, I volunteered for boxtrap duty. The hunter has left so the Bergposten trap now needs checking again so it will be a long drive from the bottom to the top of the farm. The only other person willing to go on boxtraps, Claire, is a driver so we will do a circuit of all the traps avoiding the Frankposten area where people are looking for tracks and scats as we do not want to drive on top of any predator tracks. We take a packed lunch as we shall finish at the lodge in the north to join up with the others to pick up the children in the afternoon.

We checked JM North and South traps and both were open. Then we drove to Bergposten and made good time as with only two of us we could ride in the cab and go a bit faster (30kmph). The trap was closed but empty and no sign of small animals who could have triggered the trap and then escaped through the bars. Perhaps the hunter had closed the trap? Anyway we reactivated the trap and tidied it up a bit since the baboons are always messing around in that area.

After that we drove to the farmhouse along the escarpment and took the road to the lodge but were blocked by some wild cows. They were very reluctant to move even when nudged with our bull bar but finally we forced a way through, drove out the back gate of the lodge into the mountains and went to check camera trap 15 which had shown a fault when the previous team tested the SD card when changing it. This time we had no problem. As we had made such good time we drove a bit further to Kuduposten to see the mountain zebra and eat our sandwiches by the waterhole.

After a siesta we went to the Lodge to wait for the others and parked in the shade of the trees next to the abbatoir. The staff were butchering some oryx out in the open. Not a great sight for our vegans. A short distance away are some of the non-releasable animals which have been brought to the farmer as cubs/kits from the surrounding farms as they know he will take them in. The usual story is that the other farmer found the young animals alone but it is never clear who was responsible for the death of the mother. They are kept in several large enclosures near the Lodge. I don't know how many animals there are, but I saw caracals, a leopard and some young cheetahs last year. The leopard is called Lulu though he is male.

Three cheetah brothers which they were hoping to release

A couple fo the farm pets, one of which is a meerkat which regards the family as its `clan' so attacks any stranger who approaches them. It has to be restrained.

When everyone was ready

we set off looking for the elephants where they had been seen in the morning by the elephant group. As luck would have it they had moved further into the bush so we could only see them from more than 500 metres using binoculars which were shared out amongst the kids.

When it was time for a drinks break Claire and I were asked to offload our batch of kids and do the evening round of the boxtraps. All were open. The only excitement was on the way back when we came across the grumpy solitary male rhino and stopped to photograph it. He decided he didn't like our long lenses and chased us away.

Edited January 14, 2014 by JohnR

[JohnR]

Thursday

Vehicle game count again but not as chilly as last week as it has slowly warmed up from the freezing temperatures to about 7 degrees celsius at night. We also had better animal counts as we saw the large herds of springbok and eland which we missed last week.

In the afternoon was our final activity, cleaning the equipment and vehicles as well as searching for all the missing gear which had been loaded into our backpacks and then forgotten about. I used my large lens cloth and blower to clean all the binoculars and rangefinders (donated by Swarovski). Then packing -- I lightened my load by leaving behind all my first aid stuff, washing liquid etc as well as donating a book to the library. It was still a hard job getting everything in my bag for the trip back.

Friday

Breakfast followed by a team photo and then a drive across neighbouring farms to the gravel road where the minibus picked us up and took us to Casa Piccolo in Klein Windhoek dropping some off at the airport as we passed. Gary and Theresa wanted to do some souvenir shopping so we walked into Windhoek along Nelson Mandela Avenue to the Craft Centre which is a covered market combined with a cafe and has a mix of typically touristy things as well as handmade items such as sculptures and jewelery made from recycled materials. I usually buy a few of the necklaces as my mother-in-law makes jewelery and likes to see artisanal work from other countries.

Saturday a high speed trip to the airport as I shared a taxi with someone in a business suit who was in a hurry.

Some more camera trap pictures from later slots (there are still plenty of uncollared cats out there) :

Flying impala

Aardwolf

Pangolin

[Kitsafari]

Caracals! Oh they are beautiful. That's a comical picture of the baboon (I think), aardwolf! Pangolin! Beautiful cheetahs at the mini lake.

 

Thank you for sharing the pictures and educational TR.

[Geoff]

Excellent. Amazing what those camera traps pick up.

[JohnR]

The skill is finding the right locations to place the camera traps. That's why we search on foot and use what we find when driving around to indicate where the good locations might be. Holes in fences and waterholes are also good places.

[TonyQ]

@@JohnR

Can there be another trip report that has photos of

Aardvark, pangolin, caracal and aardwolf (and lots of fascinating others)?

I like the baboon investigating the camera!

[madaboutcheetah]

@@JohnR - I've just caught up with your report after the holidays .......... Wow - besides the fantastic experience - you just about saw all the hard to find critters out there! I hope to find an Aardvark one day!!!

 

[JohnR]

@@madaboutcheetah Those are camera trap pictures. I've only seen the aardvark in the flesh but all the ones in the camera traps have been seen in the open by at least one expedition member in the the last two years. On the other hand the chief scientist says that he has never seen them.

 

A good reason for me to keep going back until I've seen them all

 

A few more camera trap pictures:

 

Brown hyena

Warthog

Oryx

Eland

Kori bustard which parades up and down in front of the camera filling up the SD card

A large troupe of baboons responsible for hundreds of images

Rhino

Mountain zebra

Female impala

Sometimes someone forgets to turn off the camera whilst making adjustments

Sometimes you come across a species completely unknown to science

Edited January 16, 2014 by JohnR

[Super LEEDS]

Flying impala is great!

[Tom Kellie]

~ Hello, @@JohnR!

What a trip report, which is such a fine description of volunteering. Having been unfamiliar with Biosphere Expeditions, your entertaining and comprehensive report brings to life the reality behind a brief Web page prospectus.

It's been a long day of going over graduate student reports. I'm about 70% done, with more implacably waiting my red pen. For an escape from duty I returned to Safaritalk and read your report. Little did I suspect that tales from a Namibia volunteer project would cause me to break out laughing. Not only your dry humor, but several of the camera trap images as well as @@pault's witty replies made for delightful reading, more than a year after it was originally posted.

A clink of the champagne flute to you for keeping a diary so as to be able to write such a thorough daily description. All was enthralling, as your narrative brought up points which rang true, while simultaneously introducing the unfamiliar to one who knew nothing of what such an experience entailed.

Interesting that you noted how a klipspringer ‘magically appeared’ just after being mentioned, as later an aardvark showed up seemingly on cue. Several times on safaris it's been the case that an offhand mention of a species results within minutes with its abrupt appearance. Are the angels listening in when species are discussed?

As I laughed out loud when reading @@pault's rejoinders to certain photos, I started laughing when you described how your group's vegans kept getting stuck with raw meat.

The photo of the two caracals with the gentleman surprised me as I had no idea that they were that large, having never seen one. That they appeared so easygoing was interesting.

Safaritalk trip reports introduce unfamiliar terms, particularly from southern Africa. Going to the Internet I learned what ‘biltong’ is.

That you would give of your time and resources to serve as a volunteer in several years is admirable, @@JohnR, as is your gift of such an enjoyable trip report.

Few news features could match the firsthand authenticity of your reporting. Last year @@madaboutcheetah, @@Kitsafari, @@Geoff, and @@TonyQ all expressed what I felt tonight, that you did us a service through preparing such a valuable trip report.

If you don't mind, I'll write a few comments on photos which particularly impressed me.

With Appreciation,

Tom K.

Really like the atmosphere in the lapa — yet another new term. That's one large table for a group of weary volunteers who've more than earned their meal. Not a trace of glamour, yet oh-so-elegant in spirit!

That's a fine image, @@JohnR! The sepia tones somehow convey the dry heat you've described. Greatly admire the composition, including the dusty light highlighting the wildebeest mane silhouettes.

This image brings a surge of love for humanity at its best. The care, dedication and selflessness is topnotch. Having worked part-time in a veterinary hospital for three years as a teenager, I highly respect the work of the volunteers here. Safaritalk has a wealth of world-class leopard images, but these are every bit as terrific in another sense.

A Namibian sunset — gorgeous color tones. Glad that you included it, to convey the beauty of the environs where you served.

This is exactly what I must look like when encountering any newfangled technology for the first time. Very comical!

Calling the Namibian National Olympic Committee — that's one impressive leap. The volunteer checking the camera trap results must have had a good laugh over such an image.

In this case it's your droll description which triggers laughter. The frustration of checking the camera trap results only to see scores of Kori Bustard selfies!

[JohnR]

@@Tom Kellie, thanks for your kind words. I'm glad the report appealed to you. I went back again in 2014 and still plan to write something about it when I get out of hospital. Every year I have been has been different and this last time was perhaps more different and a suitable finale for my volunteering. More later...