Camera traps

During the dry season we use camera traps to try to locate and identify some of our rhino. When we first got the cameras we set them at water points, hoping to get pictures of rhino drinking but we soon learnt that all we got was literally hundreds of photos of elephants at night and guinea fowl, baboons and impala by day. After a couple of days the batteries were flat, the camera memories were full and we had learnt nothing. Now we set the cameras at the rhinos’ territorial marking spots, on game trails and at small pans that don’t attract too many elephants. There are still many more pictures of other species than of rhino but the results are often interesting.

  This week we have been setting some camera traps out in the field but first we tested them after the wet season lay-off by setting them at the bird bath outside our house.   The first night brought a real surprise with an elephant getting his trunk and tusks into the picture.  No more than fifteen metres from the house and we didn’t even hear him

   Three days later there was a particularly busy night. The first visitor was a side-striped jackal. We hear them from time to time but have never seen them in camp before though on the three or four nights we have set out the cameras so far this one has turned up every time.

Side-striped Jackal.    Canis adustus

Three hours after the jackal, a grysbok came to drink.

  Sharpes grysbok.  Raphicerus sharpie

   This is another animal we have never seen in the camp before but, like the jackal, she has turned up every night we have put out a camera.

   Next arrival, not long after the grysbok was a young leopard.

Leopard. Panthera pardus

   Sinamatella is good leopard habitat. We have occasionally seen them in daylight and often hear them calling at night. Last year National Parks had to trap one and release it elsewhere because it was becoming a nuisance in the staff village but normally they are very wary of humans and they keep out of our way.

   One of the animals we see frequently at night is spotted hyena and just fifteen minutes after the leopard one came for a drink.

Spotted hyena  Crocuta crocuta

  Hyenas look rather alarming but, like the leopard, they keep away from humans as much as possible. At Sinamatella we are occasionally woken at night by hyenas raiding the dustbin outside the kitchen. We usually try to ignore the noise but sooner or later one of us reluctantly gets up, opens the kitchen door and chases the guilty hyena away. At close range by moonlight they look particularly fierce but they never stop to argue!

    After that particularly successful night with the camera traps, nothing much new has been ‘captured’ apart from our resident large-spotted genet. This is a beautiful little animal that is often around the house at night. When there is food available it can be quite bold but otherwise it keeps to the bush and rocks at the side of the hill.

Large-spotted genet  Genetta tigrina

   Once the cameras had been tested we were able to set a few to try to ‘capture’ a rhino. One animal in particular is of interest. The spoor is too small to be an adult bull and it doesn’t scatter its dung as a territory marker so it is probably a female or a young male. We have tried tracking it but were not successful so we’ve set cameras in some of the places it frequents. We’ve also put a camera at this small spring.

  We know from previous attempts that very few elephant use this water but that a rhino sometimes does. His mother was killed by poachers two years ago when he was quite small but he survived and stayed within her territory. He should be getting big enough to start wandering further afield now but we hope to get pictures of him if he is still using this spring from time to time – even if it is only once or twice a month.

  While the camera is set and waiting for all that time, it is vulnerable to hyenas and elephants. The cameras are difficult to see but we have lost several to animals in the past. Hyenas chew them to pieces and elephants rip them down and throw them around so presumably they detect them by scent. We have reduced the amount of damage by smearing the cameras with mud or dung.

  The first camera trap results should be seen in a week or two. Probably they will be nothing but pictures of impala and elephants – it’s a technique that requires a lot of patience. If there are any good results I’ll publish them here as they come.

First 2012 volunteer group

We have had a number of visitors over the past two weeks. First there were six volunteers from the Dete Animal Rescue Trust (DART) who stayed with us for a week.  Amel, Didier, Gwen, Jean Pierre, Matthieu and Sebastien linked up DART through the French organisation Planete Urgence and after their week with us they travelled to the Main Camp sector of the Park to spend a week with Paul de Montille of DART.

Jean-Pierre, Sebastien, Mattieu, Didier, Amel, Sue, Stephen, Gwen

    Just before the volunteers arrived we received a report that the pump at Bumboosie South had gone wrong again. Sinamatella had no manpower available to pull up the pump so I suggested that we should go there with the volunteers. When we got to the pump we were surprised to find that it was working perfectly and the pan was holding more water than it had on our last visit. Rather than waste the journey out there we spent a couple of hot hours helping to shore up the trough, which is slowly being undermined by elephants.

Amel and Sebastien working hard.

The result of all that effort.

Elephants can be incredibly destructive without really intending any harm. They undermine water troughs as they scoop up mud to throw on themselves then the troughs collapse under their own weight. Unfortunately they also do a lot of damage on purpose. The pump at Baobab Pan is currently in need of repair after elephants pulled up the outlet pipe for the second time this year.

    After our day of hard work at Bumboosie South we spent three excellent days tracking rhino with Sinamatella Rangers Prosper and Stewart. Their tracking skills and their company were greatly appreciated by us all. Using the telemetry equipment to track rhino leads to hard work climbing hills to get the strongest signal but there’s usually the reward of some great views from the highest spots.

Looking east across part of the Deka safari Area

Stewart checking for signal

There’s a rhino out there somewhere.

  Over the three days,  we monitored rhino number 186 on two occasions, staying with her until early evening on the first day but leaving her on the second day when we found her sleeping amongst rocks where she had left no spoor and poachers would not find her. On our third day we helped locate number 299 whose transmitter isn’t working properly. We found her by old fashioned tracking of spoor until we got close enough to receive the radio signal then called in two other rangers who were based in the area to stay with her for the day. Although we saw rhino on three occasions, none of us got decent photos due to the thick cover they were resting in.

   From Rhino tracking we moved to a twenty-four hour animal count at Shumba. On a previous occasion when we counted at Shumba in May we saw nothing at all apart from a distant Jackal so I wasn’t too confident of a big count. The moon was superb and bright so conditions were good.

Full moon rising

  Lions called from all around us throughout the night and in the course of the twenty four hours we eventually counted four warthogs, thirty eight elephants and either two or four lions. In the early hours of the morning Sebastien briefly saw two large predators on the edge of the trees but wasn’t able to identify them. They were almost certainly the two lionesses that came past the pan and back into the trees just as the sun rose but of course we can’t be sure.

    When the count at Shumba was over we drove straight to Shapi where the volunteers joined Paul and a former volunteer, Aurelie, and her mother Collette joined us to stay at Sinamatella for a few days. Having behaved well throughout the volunteer week, our old vehicle “The Mighty Hilux” let us down at Shapi, refusing to start without a push. That meant we were unable to stop until we reached Sinamatella but even so Sue managed to photograph this late-afternoon Zebra as we passed him.

  

The Hilux has since given me several hours of unpleasant greasy work but it’s moving again – temporarily at least. It’s really too old to be completely reliable but has been a great workhorse for many years. The Land Cruiser that we took to Bulawayo for repair back in March is rumoured to be ready this week. We’ll see!