Hello to all again or should I now say Bonjour! I am so glad you are still joining me on my third journey to Africa! I found out about a week and a half ago that I was offered the opportunity to follow and study the chimpanzees of the Tai National Forest for nine months. Without hesitation I agreed to join a girl from Germany named Lydia on her journey to the remote forests of Cote d I’vore (Ivory Coast) in Africa, to gain as much information as we can on the complex culture of the Tai chimpanzees.

Ever since I was a little girl I dreamed of venturing out into the unknown depths of the mysterious forests to track some of the last remaining populations of the great apes including ( gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans) I was blessed with a once in a lifetime opportunity in July 2008 to go to South Africa for a year and become a certified field guide in the wilds of the African bush, and after a successful year I learned a great deal and grew to love the wildlife even more and most importantly the importance of preserving it through conservation.

I am leaving a familiar area of open golden grasslands and plenty of sunlight with unbelievable species such as lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyena, buffalo, rhino and elephants, and journeying into an unfamiliar place which can only be described as dark, desolate, green, wet, humid, mysterious and intriguing with one of the most fascinating species known to man the chimpanzee. I am nervous, hopeful and excited all at the same time and am interested to find out just how basic I will be living! but Im a tough cookie for all of you who dont know! Apart from learning about chimpanzees I am anxious to start learning French since it is the official language of the Ivory Coast. I am not sure how much contact I will have with the outside world but will try and post to my blog when I can! so Salute for now…………….:)

The Valley is known for its mysterious black leopard sightings

I have spent the past 3 months now in Lydenburg South Africa working for the Ingwe Leopard Project. For many people in South Africa it is known as the area where the mysterious black leopards live , but there have only been few random sightings over the past 40 years. The Ingwe leopard Project has been running since 1999 and its aim is to research the amount of carnivores , specifically leopards as the main focus and brown hyena that are roaming free outside of protected areas, since this is where the majority of wildife occurs. The aims of our research is to find out how many different individuals are living in the Valley we live in. We do this first by tracking for their prints in the sand or what we call spoorand by setting out camera traps all around the valley which can be tricky and take some time since you have to predict where the leopard will move and when it will do so. We have successfully photographed the leopard, brown hyena and honey badger and have made more than 30 different and unique casts from the leopards spoor. 

Being the  first time I have worked with camera traps I  actually really enjoy working with them and feel like its Christmas day when I get to go check them after about a week. The camera trap is basically made up of a little camouflage box with a camera inside designed to pick up movement through a sensor and snap 1-3 pictures of whatever has walked by and triggered it. The camera traps we have are from the States and are more geared towards photographing animals such as deer which move at a much slower pace than a leopard or brown hyena would , so it is a bit challenging to get the perfect photo of these intelligent, shy and illusive mammals.

At the current moment we have a man named Dairen Simpson here from the states as well as a film crew following Dairen for a wildlife film series, as he tries to capture and trap leopards with a safe method of leg trapping. Although he had great sucess on our neighboring research area, we had not such luck on our side since the cats arent as use to people or as we call them street smart.

Below is a video that will give you a better idea of what Dairen Simpson does:

Our lucky break came a week ago when one of the farmers in the area told us of a old male bull kudu that had dropped dead from old age. We immediately saw this as an opportunity to get our camera traps all around the carcass in hopes of getting a leopard or brown hyena. Never before has any of these species been photographed on a kill in our study area, so we were hoping to get success. After 4 nights we retrieved our cameras to find we had snapped different leopards every evening and had 3 shots of a brown hyena which was ground breaking! unfortunately for us during the second night a brown hyena had bumped into one of the cameras and knocked the strap used to hold it up against a tree right in front of the lens , so we have around 40 pics of only half of a leopard, brown hyena ,bush pig, and who knows what else. As frustrating as this was , it serves as a learning experience just to prove that nothing runs 100% smooth in research. 

Believe it or not I haven’t seen a leopard in the valley yet! but just looking at the pic below of the area we worked in , you can get a better idea of why this is so.  The only signs we have of their presence is their spoor , scat, pictures and haunting calls throughout the valley.

We were a stones throw away from Kruger

Well sorry i haven’t been on my blog in months! I have been busy with traveling and starting a new job here in south Africa. Since the start of January I have been working at a place called Untamed Africa, at the Numbi gate of the Kruger National Park! We are literally within feet of the Kruger Park. The area is really beautiful , but the only problem is the grass is about 2 meters high! so as you can imagine you cant see anything unless it walks right out in front of the road . I am helping to start a research project on the white and black rhinos of this area. What I am doing is driving around all day and locating rhino middens and for all of you who don’t know its a pile of dung that male rhinos accumulate and use as message stations in their range. We then  GPS  all of the middens on the Leutla concession and are now starting to study whats association are occuring in and around the middens. We have come to find out that many other species use the rhino middens, for examples elephants take a liking to them because the grass that grows around the middens is nice and fresh when other areas arent as nutrient high. Mongoose love them as well because of all the insects like millipedes and beetles that accumulate in and around them.

Untamed Conservancy

The best part of my job here is going out into the bush every day without a ranger or a weapon. Although it is frowned upon, I do tend to wander off from the vehicle a little further than allowed, but I feel very competent in my ability to detect danger and I am well equipped with what to do should a dangerous situation arise. The other day I went into Kruger for a couple hours and was astonished to see how fast the leopards and lions disappeared into the tall grass right off the road, so ever since then I have decided to be a little more cautious when bending over to measure a rhino midden or wander off trails following some interesting spoor. Now believe it or not the last 2 months that we have been here we have not seen one rhino on the Untamed concession, but all the students and volunteers have a few times! this seems typical to me, when you are looking really hard for something it never shows, but when you least expect it …….. there it is, I am still determined to see a rhino on this conservancy before I leave, I have already had about 30 or 40 rhino sighting since I’ve been here , but not the ones whose middens I have been digging around in  all day every day. My accommodation is really nice, some call it a concentration camp, but i think its quite roomy . It is in fact  an old railway camp with an active station that runs on the perimeter of the Kruger Park. The only problem is how  the train comes by about 10 times a day and is about 20 meters from my head, but I have actually grown use to it, the only problem is that it drains out the sounds of the lions and hyenas at night!

Ive had some pretty cool sighting though, like when we pulled up to 5 wild dogs resting on a rocky outcrop that had just fed on an impala. Another great sighting was when a male leopard came 5 meters from the car, as well as a lioness sitting on one of the map signs made of rock in kruger, which I have never seen before! The leading newspaper asked for the rights to publish that picture in an article which was really neat. Anyways I will try to blog as much as I can when I can get to town, so hello to everyone back at home! wish you were here

Yesterday we got up very early and went out all day for a game drive. It was raining pretty heavy and we got poured on even though we had the canvas roof on. I love rainy and overcast days, because you tend to see more action since it’s not so hot and all the animals aren’t lying under shady spots which are hard to spot. We saw a few carcasses that we had never seen before (female buffalo and warthog) and heard a lion roaring in the distance. We also came right up behind a Kori Bustard and watched it fly away (it was huge). When our group had returned back to camp to lie down before dinner we got a call from the other group saying they had found 4 wild dogs! I couldn’t believe my ears at first since wild dogs are so rare and endangered and on top of that they were on our grounds! We figured it was part of the pack from Manyeleti right across the road that was off to find a new den since the pups were grown and ready to run with the pack. Unfortunately we could not go out to see them and were stuck looking at pictures and hearing stories from the other group who were all still in shock from this awesome sighting which lasted around 5 minutes.

Today we awoke at 4am to get an early start because Sean our instructor wanted to watch the sun rise. For the first hour we did not see anything , only the occasional hornbill and impala, as we started to head to the area where the wild dogs were seen we ran into 2 Kori Bustard walking along searching for food down below. As they left our sight we were about to pull off until I noticed some odd footprints on the ground beside our car. I automatically thought wild dog but asked Sean just for assurance. No one really recognized any of these strange little tracks that we had never before seen, but all felt that we had come across wild dog tracks. We jumped back into the vehicle and headed on. As we were driving along I kept seeing these tracks from the tracker seat and knew we were following right behind them from what looked like earlier this morning. As we pulled down one of the roads we came upon a large dead tree that was blocking the road. Since it was the trackers duty to remove all branches and thorns from the road that may harm the land rover . When the driver stopped the vehicle I checked for danger and did not feel there was any threat , just a herd of impala eating, so I declared it safe and jumped off to move the large tree pushed over in the road from an elephant . As I walked up to the tree I was only thinking about one thing, why was I the only one moving this large object and which direction should I push it over to without getting a handful of thorns? Just then right ahead of me I heard an alarm snort follwed by a stampede sound and saw the same group of impala running frantically across the path. Knowing that impala are skittish I did not think much of it and turned my head to the vehicle to ask Sean how I should push the tree over. Just then I heard Sean yell out for me to get back on the tracker seat and watched as everyone was gazing straight behind me with eyes wide open pointing their fingers. When I turned to see what was going on I heard the word DOG! And just then I saw a glimpse of a dark object flash across the road trailing right behind the impala and did not think to question what I was actually seeing. I ran (yes ran) to the tracker seat and by the time I had turned around one of the dogs had grabbed a female impala by the throat, thrown her down on the path and dragged her by her stomach onto the road where it without hesitation began to effortlessly tear into the stomach of the impala which was still alive and in shock. Was this really happening I kept thinking to myself! Some people go their whole lifetime without being fortunate enough to capture a wild dog kill on camera and here we were causally stumbling upon an actual chase and kill. I quickly pulled my camera out and started to take a video. The wild dogs face quickly became covered with blood and bit by bit it tore out its favorite pieces and swallowed them whole. Something really gruesome to witness was when it pulled out the impala’s baby embryo and threw it to the side. When it had finished, which took a matter of minutes it quickly disappeared into the bush to rejoin with the other members of its pack who were still in pursuit of the rest of the impala herd , oblivious to the kill that had just been made and just as quick as the dog arrived it vanished.

The dog had dragged the impala back into the road and started to eatThis was a gruesome sight to see !

This was a gruesome sight!

This was our first kill to ever witness here in Africa and the fact that it was with wild dog is something we all never dreamed would happen! As the other group pulled up anxious to see a piece of the action, they were all quickly disappointed to find out that the dogs were gone. All that was left was the remains of a disemboweled impala and her baby lying next to her. Just then we saw an Ngala vehicle pull up and knew it was time to leave since we were on their property and they had guests. As they pulled by us we felt satisfied knowing what we had just witnessed and as humbly as we could explained what they had just missed, which put a huge damper on the guides drive. When we turned around to get one last glimpse of the area we saw a lioness appear out of nowhere and head to the carcass followed by another. Some of us had thought we heard small lion grunts nearby , but didn’t dream they would show up this quick to finish off the impala.Unfortunately we could not go back and watch as the lions took their turn, but we had seen something far greater that will stay in my memory forever!