Diary Entry - Day 37

Quick catch up:

On Wednesday, they finally caught Bwana, the leopard I saw on February 21st. Once his collar had been changed, I went along to see him being released. He was in a box with a wooden door in front of a metal grate. The wooden door was removed first, a which point Bwana started growling- he was in a very bad mood! AJ and Louis, who were releasing him, opened the metal door with a rope, from inside the car on which the box was carried. When releasing cheetah like this, it is safe to open the door by hand, but leopards are too dangerous to do this. Bwana shot out and dissappeared into the bush in a few seconds, with Wayne filming the whole thing from the car I was in.

Yesterday, I went with Louis to find Ishara, Bwana's sister. She proved very difficult to track down, and when we finally did see her, she ran away from the car.

We went to see Wahoo, who is a 14 or 15 year old leopard whom Wayne raised by hand. When he reached maturity he was homed in a large enclosure, where visitors can watch him being fed from a large hide. I actually hadn't seen Wahoo since my very first visit here, in 2008.

In the afternoon we put out some bait at several sites for new camera traps. In between doing this, we went to feed Penta, the mother of five cubs whose picture is on 'Diary Entry - Day 31'. Her cubs are very wild and shy, and are rarely seen, so we were very lucky when all five appeared- they must have been hungry! One especially was quite bold, and another very shy, hiding until we started to drive away. Louis said this is the first time all five have come out in the presence of a car like this.

Diary Entry - Day 34

TJ had his post mortem done today. The vet suspects that his head injuries were older than we originally thought, as they were very infected and it seems he died of severe septicaemia. His skin and skull are being preserved for educational purposes.

TJ

Sadly, TJ didn't make it. His injuries were severe and at twelve years, he was quite old for a leopard.

Diary Entry - Day 32

This morning was rather dramatic. Yesterday evening, TJ, the oldest male leopard in the reserve, was found injured. After being guarded from advances by a hyena and the wild dogs, he was darted and brought to the clinic at AfriCat this morning, where a vet had come in for him.

TJ had been fighting with a younger male, Mafana, who is in his prime and very big and strong, with a huge territory. They have been known to fight before, but never this badly.

TJ has deep puncture wounds on his head and rear. After all of these were washed out and disinfected, he was given antibiotics and laid out in a small, sheltered enclosure to come around. He will be very closely monitored for the next few days.

Whilst TJ was in the clinic, the older children from Perivoli, the on-site school, came to have a look, as did the guides and some of the other staff. This is a really good opporunity to see a leopard up close, and to help understand the work AfriCat does.

Here are a few pictures of me and the others with TJ in the clinic; these were taken once most of the madness had passed, and we were just flushing out his wounds.

I'm not actually admiring TJ's impressive teeth here, I'm looking at the holes in the back of his neck

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Diary Entry - Day 31

Sorry for the lack of posts- I've been busy this week preparing to look after the AfriCat office, as Chris left on Friday.

However, I've also managed to get out into the reserve a few times with Louis, and have had a go at refreshing my tracking skills. On Friday, I failed completely to pick up a signal from Dizzy, then we found her lying by the road a few minutes after I last tried. My excuse is that she was lying on her radio collar. I had more luck the next day, when I did manage to get a signal, and correctly discerned in which direction we would find her, but couldn't pinpoint her exactly. We found her running down the road towards the car, so my excuse that time was that she was moving too much...

Here are some pictures from the last week:

Big Stick Insect

Dizzy

My view yesterday afternoon

Dizzy Having a Drink

Penta

Drilling for Water

It has rained very little here this year, so the dams are very empty. This means that to keep all the game, and indeed people, watered until next summer (rainy season) they have had to drill to find water below ground. This is of course something I have never seen before, as especially this year England has had almost the opposite problem!

The drilling is done from a large truck with a tall frame, from which tubes are fed into the hole that is being drilled. This process is very noisy and dusty, and the workers have to be in the sun all day. If water is found, pipes are laid that allow it to be pumped to where it is needed.

These pictures show rock samples taken at every metre from the ground whilst drilling, showing how the type of rock changes. There are oer 180 samples here, i.e. they drilled for more than 180m. Unfortunately no water was found at this site.

Birds



(Sorry, I had a few technical problems getting this formatted- it was meant to be published on Friday)

These birds frequent the feeders where we put out seed every day outside the office.

Southern Masked Weaver (Male)

Southern Masked Weaver (Male)

Scalyfeathered Finches

Scalyfeathered Finches

A Weaver bird nest

The tree holding the Weaver bird colony

Diary Entry - Day 21

 

This is what the cats get to eat- these big peices are for the lions. Hungry anybody?

They are thrown over the fence to hopefully land on rubber mats, which prevent the meat from getting dirty (although a couple of the lions did not appreciate this and have moved their mats away). Unfortunately, I have not proven strong enough to get a four kilo piece of meat over a two (perhaps more) metre fence- mine bounced off near the top and fell back to the floor at my feet, spattering me with blood. However I need to develop this skill quickly, as once Chris goes on leave in a few days, I will have to help out more with the feed run.

Diary Entry - Day 20

I went riding again today- I think I still have a long way to go! I was following the middle Hanssen child, Jayd, who is eight, around during her jumping practise. I didn't jump, but walked, trotted and cantered around the outside and went over a few low poles. That is, when Marcus wanted to trot straight. I'll work on it.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours working on a bench outside the AfriCat office in the sun; Chris and Tristan, both the keyholders, were elsewhere, so I was locked out. However it was really quite pleasant.

Chris, my immediate boss, is going on leave on the 15th, after wich I will have to take care of most of AfriCat myself, so over the next few days I'm being trained up.

It's rained a few times here today- which means the roads, especially the small ones, are covered in frogs. Luckily I'm adjusting to the new quad, so avoiding them isn't too  much of a challenge, but it has meant that I've been spattered in a few puddles.

Diary Entry - Day 18

My quadbike:

I've switched quadbikes today, from a larger slower automatic one to this light, fast manual one. It's a little harder to drive and also a little more scary at first- but I'll get used to it!

Diary Entry - Day 17

Yesterday evening we had a braai (barbeque in English) in a dry riverbed. The children cooked boerewors (sausages in English) and bread over a charcoal fire as the sun went down, after which everybody sat and chatted and the children were given a lesson on navigating using the Southern cross .

It is actually quite funny looking at the night sky here- I know very little about constellations, but living in the Northern hemisphere I'm subconciously used to seeing the stars arranged in a certain way. When I look up at night here, it is a little disorientating.