A South African Adventure!: Finally found leopards at lajuma

The last month has been so very hectic running the Panthera grid, we have been hiking and driving to all the camera stations over 210km squared area.

Sleeping arrangements for sigurwana

Carrie, Liam, Zoe and I went to Sigurwana and Tolo for 4 days to finally finish liam's vegetation plots as well as measure all the roads for my own project, It was a busy 4 days tramping through thick bush counting trees, We stayed in a small room, with an outdoor shower and it was the nicest shower I have ever been in.

Our Outdoor Shower!

In camp there were loads of impala at night as well as more bush baby's than I have ever seen. We celebrating finishing the veg plots, f1 style spraying (and drinking) champagne.

Finally a pic of a thick tailed bush baby

The Saturday we got back from sigurwana I managed to fall down the office steps and dislocate my shoulder again, so spent the evening in the hospital and the next 3 weeks in a sling.

We had been told at the meeting on Sunday that sam was checking some abnormal behavior by pimms our collard leopard, he had stayed in the same place for 5 days. Sam found a fresh kill by pimms unfortunately it was a calf, the next day we went to the local community to measure their kraals to reinforce them with razor wire.

Champagne Celebrations

On Wednesday evening we went out in the bakkie with the UHF (ultra high frequency) receiver to look for and download data off our only collard leopard at the moment. Unfortunately we did not find him, however, on the way back 5 minutes from camp a leopard jumped into the road in front of the car, we think it was jenny but she saw the car and ran back into the bush, I could not stop smiling.

Bakkie ready for the road trip!

I also spent some time with the baboons again when they slept at wilderness camp, it was nice to see them again, especially seeing fat-face and funny face doing so well. Unfortunately a few weeks ago one of our adult male baboons, sessile was killed by Khal one of our lajuma leopards during the middle of the day but that is life in a baboon troop.

Fat face and funny face together again

Last Monday Carrie and I went to Polokwane to go to a government meeting discussing leopard hunting permits and what to do with damage causing animals, it was really interesting looking at other groups of peoples views on hunting, even though alot of the professional hunters had no understanding for the scientific point of view and therefore no real goal was reached during this meeting. On the way up the mountain back from polokwane there was a leopard standing in the middle of the road, it took a few seconds for everyone to realise that it was a leopard, 2 in 5 days is so rare at lajuma, both sightings occurred between 6:15 and 6:45, obviously a lucky time to see leopards.

"the sky is more blue here than home!"

Checking the camera images yesterday I had one of our leopards called Khal, sitting down in front of the camera and grooming himself, as well as an African Wildcat on our cameras which is an animal I did not think we got on the mountain