My First Drive

I think it's fair to say I'm not the best driver in the world, and I'm certainly not the best 4x4 driver in the world!! Admittedly, I could be learning in a easier setting, and if I could choose a vehicle to learn in it probably wouldn't be our dear landy!! But, I do love a challenge, and when I finally crack driving round Thabo Tholo in this particular vehicle it will certainly stand me in good stead for the future!! 

Now, as I've mentioned previously, every few weeks we do a two walks to look for spoor/scat and change cameras: one on a Friday and one on a Sunday. But events transpired that one Sunday when a walk needed to be done, I was alone in camp. There was high Leopard activity in the valley at the time, so it wasn't deemed overly safe for me to do the walk by myself, so I would have to drive it... by myself. I hadn't yet been let loose on the roads of Thabo Tholo on my own, so I was quite excited by this prospect. As far as I was concerned, getting the chance to do my own research/game drive so early into my time here was a great opportunity!!  

And so at about 05:30 when the sun was up enough that I should be able to see tracks in the dirt I set off, with just Tucker for company. I must admit apart from getting more practice driving there weren't many other benefits to driving the route. It made looking for spoor pretty tricky because I kept having to stop and walk ahead of the vehicle to check any sandy patches I came across anyway, which meant it was taking forever!! But I progressed without any problems, checking the cameras but not finding any spoor. And through the first half of the drive not seeing any game either. 

I still hadn't got my camera back, so was stuck with the old iPhone to record any sightings or spoor I found (I am being overly-critical of the iPhone; it has rescued me while my camera was out-of-action and has delivered some nice snaps). Eventually I came across some Impala, and was at one point held up by a Waterbuck roadblock. It was nice to be able to take my time going past them, but came on a really tricky part of the drive; a road called Gold Mine. It's up-and-down up-and-down up-and-down all the way, full of tight twisting corners, very rocky and lots of low-hanging branches. I was slowly making my way along, and coming down and round a particularly tight bend I suddenly found myself coming up to our resident giraffe!! 2 adult males, 2 adult females and 2 babies. So I pulled to a stop and switched off the engine. When I'd seen them previously they had been quite skittish, but I'd managed to stop far enough away that they just maintained that beautiful curiosity that giraffes have and just stared at me from about 40m, but without actually moving away. In fact a couple of them crept closer to get a clearer view. 

Curious.

This lasted for about 5 minutes before they eventually returned to feeding, occasionally stopping to get an update on my position. I decided I didn't care how long it took, I wasn't going to try and go past them, I just wanted to enjoy this moment. It was the first time I'd ever been in the presence of such a stunning, iconic animal like this by myself and it was a truly amazing situation to find myself in. I noticed the younger of the two adult males kept appearing to cry; 3 or 4 times water gushed out of his eyes. Speaking to some of the guides on the reserve, it could potentially be because of an infection, but no-one is entirely sure of a cause. So I decided to film them (of course he didn't do it after I started filming), but it was nice getting some footage of the sighting, irrespective of the quality. Hopefully this video will work properly!!

Eventually after about half an hour they had moved far enough away from the road that I was comfortable I could go past without disturbing them too much. So slowly I trundled past. And amazingly, instead of moving away, most of them just stood there and watched me go past, while the two youngsters actually moved forward to get a better view!! 

The rest of the drive went pretty quietly. I did manage to find some leopard spoor towards the end. There had previously been a small puddle of water at this spot, so the prints will have been made as he was having a drink.

I was pretty chuffed to have gotten through the drive unscathed, but to have an incredible sighting with the giraffe and then find some beautiful leopard prints really topped it off!!

My Leave: Part 2

After a pretty chilled out week I was then booked to come go to the Limpopo region, near where I was in 2011. So I got a shuttle from Lydenburg to Hoedspruit eager to see if it the area was as I remembered it to be. Is it ever!? It is amazing driving down roads splitting the private game reserves which litter this area; it’s like a free game drive, but at 70km/h instead of 10!! In less than 10 minutes I counted 24 different species. The landscape is incredible, with seemingly endless savannah bush land opened out under the Drakensberg Mountains, which form a breath-taking backdrop. I’ve missed this place, and as much as I love Thabo Tholo, I love this area even more.

The first three nights of this past week I stayed in a place called the Cheetah Inn, near the town of Hoedspruit. The first thing I noticed while walking through the reception area was a huge bat colony roosting in the ceiling. At one point they got spooked, so suddenly hundreds of bats took off above my head and made a giant move of about 20m to a different part of the same ceiling...despite the pathetic distance they traveled it was very cool experience to see/hear so many animals move at the same time.

Cheetah Inn

Just hanging around

It's a nice little place in the bush, surrounded by amazing private game reserves and lots of places you can go on excursions. Unfortunately while I was there there were huge thunderstorms every single day/night, so unfortunately all excursions were off!! Bugger!! Saying that, it was a nice place to chill out and study, and we could go and walk around the small plot, which did contain some nice wildlife, although unfortunately nothing dangerous!!

Southern Red-billed Hornbill

Tiny lizard that I spotted in the grass.

European Roller

At dinner on my first night there I was busy buttering half of my bread roll when I felt something clawing at my leg. They had quite a few cats so I just assumed it was one of them so ignored it. It then quick as a flash climbed up my leg and leapt onto my plate and began to lick butter of the other half of my bread roll. It did take me a few seconds to realise it wasn't actually a cat, but a Genet that the family who owned the place had rescued!! Since I spend so much time looking at pictures of Genet on camera traps it was awesome to see one at such close quarters. He even joined me for a beer after dinner :) 

My uninvited dinner guest.

Pushing his luck!!

He's only a baby, so still needs bottle feeding. 

     The next morning I went for breakfast not expecting any more exotic pets, only to see a Caracal they had rescued a few years previously waiting to welcome me for breakfast. These are beautiful, beautiful cats and was a lot of fun to play with:

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE-3WCvGbII

                          

     One of the big attractions of the Cheetah Inn are a sing/dance group called Big Sound who have been hired to work there about 7 weeks ago. All the groups members are from local townships, so this is a great opportunity for them to actually earn a decent living. They are planning on releasing a CD, so I was invited by the owners to go and watch them perform some songs. They were absolutely fantastic!! They put so much energy into their singing, and there were some truly fantastic voices in there and it made it a very special evening. 
  
     After leaving the Cheetah Inn I stayed at a small B&B in the middle of Hoedspruit, which was in a very nice, secluded spot and allowed me to do some shopping and chill out a bit more before getting back to work this week. While I was in Hoedspruit I was able to revisit one of my absolute favourite restaurants, Sleepers. I'd been there a few times the last time I was in South Africa and I took great pleasure in treating myself to one of their awesome Ostrich Burgers. 

     Overall it was great to go on leave, but I'm now raring to get back into work because we've an exciting period coming up which I'll write about soon!!

     Until the next time, have a good week. There will be another blog posted on the 13th.

My Leave: Part 1

After a quite incredible last evening in camp (see previous blog), I was now a little gutted to be leaving camp for the best part of two weeks considering we still had a leopard knocking around. But, I thought, sightings like that are so rare that there could surely be no-way he’d pop his head up again while I was away…HA! It turns out he did, more than once!! And it turns out he may even have made himself comfortable in a spot very close to our “loo-with-a-view”…which has no door…

But on leave I was still to go. For the first week I was staying at the house Will and Carol, who started the leopard research 10 years ago, are renting on the other side of the reserve. It is in a stunning spot, with breath-taking views of Thabo Tholo.

All along the front of the house is a huge veranda which provides the setting for the aforementioned views. For the week I was there I spent most of my time sitting there trying to study, but often finding myself easily distracted by the wildlife around the house. Swallows were a constant source of entertainment while sitting out on the veranda. They were constantly dive-bombing around trying to catch little flying insects, and I spent far too long trying to get a decent video of them in action. I’m not yet a brilliant wildlife cameraman, but I will get there one day J 

In the garden immediately in front of the veranda were some small flowering bushes which also attracted a lot of interest from birds and insects, including Sunbirds. Unfortunately I only saw a pretty drab looking female White-bellied Sunbird the whole time I was there, which was a huge shame because the male Sunbirds tend to have incredible colourations. Although they don’t have the amazing colours of the males, female sunbirds do have to characteristic long, thin, curved beak and flickering tongue which they use to get nectar from flowers.

There were also a huge variety of insects and butterflies attracted to the bushes.

You could also often see animals, such as these zebra, silhouetted on the ridge lines surrounding the house.

Not far from the house was a recently excavated aardvark hole, in front of which Will had placed a camera in the hope of seeing this incredibly elusive creature. Unfortunately there was an issue with the camera, so we sorted that out and I wandered out to replace it in front of the hole. The next morning as I was sitting on the veranda of the house having my breakfast I heard some incessant snorting from Walter, who was standing staring intently into the tree line just in front of the house. Walter is a Wildebeest that holds a territory around the house.

So I started filming him just in case he’d seen anything interesting, and suddenly he broke into a run and off he went. Not long afterwards Will came back from his early morning bike ride, claiming to have found very fresh leopard tracks heading in the direction of that very tree line, right in front of the camera placed opposite the aardvark burrow. So there was the reason for Walter’s skittish behaviour!! When I finished my breakfast I went down to collect the camera so we could see which Leopard had been wondering around…only to find the sodding thing hadn’t been caught on camera!! Unfortunately the cameras do miss things, and frustratingly this was just one of those times. However, it did manage to catch some Warthog checking out the freshly dug burrow; they are one of many species that utilise aardvark burrows when they have been abandoned, so this could become their new home!!

A warthog investigating its potential new home? 

There is a drinking pan a few hundred metres away from the house which also provided a steady stream of wildlife to watch, mainly in the form of Impala, Kudu, Waterbuck and Wildebeest who regularly visited it to quench their thirst.

Kudu at the drinking pan

On my final morning at the house I was treated to finally seeing Vervet Monkeys on Thabo Tholo. I’ve seen them on both my previous trips to Africa, but I’d only seen glimpses of them on camera trap pictures since I’d been here. It’s always a treat watching them interacting and flying through the trees.

Vervet Monkey "Flying"

The first half of my leave had just flown by!! And just as it was ending, that was pretty much when the heavens opened across a lot of this area of South Africa by the sounds of it!! And they haven’t really shut since, so I’m very interested to see the state of the roads when I get back to Thabo Tholo on Monday!!

A Leopard Send-off

Now, I haven’t posted nearly as much as I have wanted to, but there are severe limitations with regard to internet access and places where I can plug in my laptop so I am going to try and put quite a few out over the next few days if/when I can!!

After an opening stint of 7 ½ weeks working at Thabo Tholo I am now well into my second week of leave. The over-riding memory of the past few days will be of rain!! It has absolutely smashed it down, so much so that in some areas of South Africa half of the average annual rainfall fell in 2 days!! 

But I was also given one hell of a send-off the night before I went on leave!! I had initially intended staying in camp for my two weeks off so I could study for my FGASA exam, which I will hopefully take towards the end of March or more likely beginning of April. That plan was quickly put down by everyone here though; they were all pretty insistent I not only get out of camp, but out of the reserve if possible (I wonder if there was a hidden agenda!? haha). Of course, I had stupidly left planning my leave until literally about 2 days before it began, so I was kind of stuck for ideas. Luckily Will and Carol, who began the Leopard research 10 years ago, very graciously offered to put me up in the house they are currently renting on the other side of the reserve to our camp, which would give me a break and a chance to book something for the following week. So the evening of the 23^rd February I was beginning to pack to go to theirs the next day.

I should here just quickly mention the time (it was around 17:30 at this point) and what I had just been doing. At 16:50 I had walked from camp by myself about 15 minutes up a hill to change a camera we hadn’t been able to properly see to on our walk that morning. So I went at did that, no issues, and was back in camp at around 17:20. I should stress I hadn’t heard or seen anything untoward on my little jaunt. However, I had come directly from the direction of the subsequent interaction, so it is incredibly likely I had walked past the key players in the rest of this tale.

So, as I began packing a Bushbuck began incessantly alarm calling from just outside our camp; we often hear various antelope alarm calling around camp, so this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, apart from the fact the persistence of his calls. There was a definitive purpose to his behaviour!! I looked out of my tent to see Tara and Becky had gone to investigate it, but gave up shortly after. Or so I thought. A few minutes later I heard Becky frantically whispering/shouting (at the same time) for me to come down to the entrance to camp, which is about 15 meters from my tent. So I went down to find her absolutely bouncing with excitement.

“I’ve just seen a LEOPARD!!”

I was both ridiculously excited there was leopard right around camp again and FURIOUS with myself for dawdling coming from my tent. Had I missed my chance to see him? Well, it turns out no, I hadn’t. The leopard had been about 15 meters from Becky when she had seen it, but had moved away into thicker grass and a bush line about another 15m back from that position.

When Tara returned we frantically tried to catch a glimpse of the cat. The bushbuck was still calling with just the same intensity, and it was getting louder, so we knew he was still about. And then suddenly we got a glimpse of him? Possibly? No? YES!! It was ridiculous how difficult it was to say for sure if it was him at first, but eventually our eyes trained to him…for about 5 seconds before he moved off apparently away from camp. So we moved around a little bit to see if we could get a glimpse of him moving off down the road…no such joy! So I left Becky and Tara there and moved to where we had originally caught that oh-so-brief glimpse of him. And there he was. Much clearer this time, and staring straight at me!! It is an incredible, incredible feeling to get eye-contact with a leopard on foot. It is also something normally to be avoided with leopards, which are believed to regard eye-contact as a threat. But in this instance he posed practically no danger to us. He was a good 30m away, knew we had seen him and had shown when Becky had originally spotted him from about 15m that he was not likely to react aggressively to us. This was awesome because it meant I could just enjoy the moment!!

The Bushbuck was still barking away, and actually moving closer to make sure it kept the leopard in view. If the leopard had been stalking the bushbuck, it would have long known that the game was up, and eventually he did make a move away and down out of camp. So we jumped in the vehicle and moved off after him. Luckily the road out of camp was quite sandy, and straight away we picked up fresh tracks leading down a road we call Voortrekker. We followed the tracks for about 40-50m down the road before we lost the trail. Had he left the road, or were his tracks just no longer showing up? The light wasn’t great, and we could only look from the vehicle so it was tough to tell either way. So we went back and forward down about a 20m stretch of the road for about 5 minutes straining to see if we could find him in the thick grass. And then, as is a leopard’s way, he was just there!! Very intently watching a small heard of Kudu. 10 points if you can spot him!! I only had my iPhone with me so I’ve done a screen grab from a very poor attempt at filming the whole sequence. He is “revealed” at the end of the blog.

We sat and watched for about 10-15 minutes while the Kudu moved around, closer towards him. This was the “smaller” of the two “cubs” that have been spending so much time around Thabo Tholo since I’ve been here, and for the year before that (they are now nearing prime age to be kicked out by their dad to find their own territories). He wasn’t exactly being overly careful with how he was sitting while watching the Kudu, and was also upwind of them, which meant they were likely to catch on to his scent before they saw him. But still they moved around, apparently oblivious to his presence. We were all tense, ready for him to explode. He sat, patient while also seeming like he couldn’t wait to go for them. Alas, something gave the game away for him, be it scent or maybe he had been seen, but a short sharp bark made it clear they had seen him. Initially they didn’t run, and he didn’t move. But then another bark and the Kudu were off. The leopard shot off after them, but it was really quite a half-hearted attempt. It was getting pretty dark by this point, and that was the last we saw of him because we gave up looking shortly after.

I’m struggling to find the words to describe how incredible it is to have sightings like this. This cub and his brother have been fantastic for sightings and we’re just hoping their dad will take his time kicking them out of Thabo Tholo so we can enjoy moments like this for as long as possible!! They really are very special and keep providing moments I'll never forget. 

Now…did you spot him?

Finally, for some shameless plugging. if you want to see more pictures check out my Facebook when I eventually get around to putting more up. 

https://www.facebook.com/joe.arnold.716

I'm also on Twitter and I'm hoping to be able to put regular updates on there while on the reserve.

@JoeArnold03

Contact me on: a_j_a@hotmail.co.uk

I, along with the rest of our team, have another blog which posts a lot more regularly than this one!! Please follow it if you want to see a bit more about what we do out here.

http://predatorresearchnews.blogspot.com/ 

Till the next time.