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My South Africa Adventure; From Cape Town via Garden Route to Zululand
Topic Started: Nov 9 2016, 01:36 PM (5,052 Views)
Priya
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Lion Lover

I feel like I have been in that journey :D
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Jony
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I apologise for the long break but I didn't have internet in the last days due to technical problems since Sunday.
Now I have internet again, so expect a new update tomorrow. ;)
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Jony
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Thanks all for the nice comments. :)

@TheToastinator: About 20 to 30 metres. ;)
@Priya: Haha, thanks. :D That's what I try to achieve. ;)


Part 3: Zululand

In this last part I want to show you what I experienced during my wildlife volunteer work in Zululand.
The organisation which I volunteered for is Wildlife ACT, a conservation organistion that was founded in 2008. It primarily works in Zululand (South African province KwaZuu-Natal), but also in Botswana, Malawi and the Seychelles Islands. The goal of their work is to preserve endangered African species, especially the African wild dog, but also cheetah, lion, black and white rhino, elephant, leopard and vultures by monitoring them, that means that individuals of these species are being collared and a monitoring team consisting of one so called monitor and maximally five volunteers is searching for them and looks for their condition, any newborns or pregnancies etc. By doing this it's possible to find out any relationships, so individuals can be darted and relocated if necessary. Especially the monitoring of the predators is important because the populations in each reserve are low due to space limitations, so it's necessary to provide an artificial genetic exchange by relocating them.
In addition, Wildlife ACT educates people, especially children, about the importance of preserving native wildlife.
Volunteering with WACT is not cheap though, because it's a private organisation that is 100 % dependent of donations and the money that the volunteers provide. But thanks to the volunteer money it's possible to buy the necessary monitoring equipment (collars, telemetry to find the collars, camera traps etc.) and to employ the monitors. Without Wildlife ACT the reserves wouldn't be able to employ these people and to buy the necessary equipment because there is not enough money in the reserves. In the most cases the WACT's reserves are public reserves which unfortunately suffer from budget cutbacks.
As a volunteer I could help monitoring the animals, changing camera traps and analyzing the pictures and other things. Twice a day we drove on a so called mointoring session to look out for the animals, one time in the early morning before sunrise (about 3:30 to 5:00 AM) and one in the afternoon.
The reserves of Wildlife ACT in Zululand are Mkhuze Game Reserve, Hluhluwe Imfolozi Park, Tembe Elephant Park (all governmental/public reserves), Zululand Rhino Reserve (privately owned) and Somkhanda Game Reserve (half governmental and half community owned). I could experience every park but the last one.


Day 10 to 24: Mkhuze Game Reserve

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My volunteer work started in Mkhuze Game Reserve, a 40,000 hectare reserve that was founded in 1912. Since 2013 it's a Big 5 reserve again, in this year lions were reintroduced to the park. Unfortunately it's the WACT park with the biggest problems of poaching as 3/4 of the reserve is surrounded by local communities.
That's why the monitoring of endangered species is so important and that's also why we looked for the wild dogs almost every session since it's the most endangered species in this area. Circa every second day we could see the wild dogs. But today you won't see wild dogs. ;)

By the way, I try to follow a chronological order in this part of the picture series as well but I will rarely show pictures of just one day. Otherwise we would sit here until eastern. :P

On the first full day we stopped at a "hide", a small wooden hut often located at a waterhole. Those hides are the only areas (apart form the camps) where the tourists are allowed to getoput of their cars.
On the way to the hide a Cape Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa) crossed the street. :)
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A bit landscape.
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After arriving at the hide, the first animal that we could spot were some Lowland Nyalas (Tragelaphus angasii), one of the most common species in Mkhuze.
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More nyalas are coming. :D
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If you look closer, you can also see some other animals like the turtle below. Unfortunately I don't know the species. Does someone have an idea which sepcies I photographed?
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Dark-capped Bulbul (Pycnonotus barbatus)
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Wire-tailed Swallow (Hirundo smithii)
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Cape Turtle Dove (Streptopelia capicola)
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There was also a single Impala (Aepyceros melampus). This is probably the most common ungulate in Kwa-Zulu-Natal. They were everywhere. :P
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Also very common: Vervet Monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus). Everytime when we left the camp, we had to make sur ethat all windows and doors were locked because these monkeys would break into the houses and steal food and destroy other stuff.
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By the way, speaking about our camp: it wasn't fenced, so any animal yould walk through izt. Some nyalas were often around the camp for example. They were very curious. ;)
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Some more landscape.
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Every session started at a tower where we could get the best signal for the collars. That's the view we had from top of the tower:
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On the first day we spotted a Lappet-faced Vulture (Torgos tracheliotos)! That was extremely lucky considering there are just 8 to 10 breeding pairs left in KwaZulu-Natal.
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There are also some more humid areas where you can see among others Burchell's zebras, nyalas and Blue Wildebeests (Connochaetes taurinus).
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That's all from the first two days in Mkhuze Game Reserve. I hope you enjoyed this update and stay tuned for the next time. ;)

PS: Sorry that there is so much text this time. :P
Edited by Jony, Dec 3 2016, 11:57 AM.
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Dylan
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The turtle may be African helmeted turtle. The watering hole looked great. All the birds.
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TheToastinator
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A piece of toast and a terminator.

I really liked the pictures in this update. The bird pictures were especially good.
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Jony
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Thank you, you two. :)

@Dylan: Thanks, African helmeted turtle fits. :)


Day 10 to 24: Mkhuze Game Reserve - Part 2

On the third day, we drove out to search for the wild dogs again. We got signal but unfortunatley they were in a poorly accessible and very mountainous area. So, we were unlucky again and couldn't spot them. At least we had a beuatiful view on the savannah. ;)
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Overhead were flying several White-backed Vultures (Gyps africanus), their population is relatively stable in Zululand, although African vultures are very endangered in general. In Mkhuze they are even relatively common. The vultures implied that there was a fresh kill somewhere in this area and because of the signal coming from this direction, we assumed the wild dogs having a kill there. If this was the case, we woudn't be able to see them this moring anyways, so we took a GPS point and drove back to camp.
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BUt at first, we drove to a neighbouring camera trap to change the memory card and the batteries. The camera traps are intsalled in areas where a lot of tracks and animal feces of one or some of the prority species can be found. This one was for black rhinos. ;)
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At least we saw a greater kudu and some zebras here. That isn't bad either, is it? ;)
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And a Wahlberg's Eagle (Aquila wahlbergi). :)
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He or she wanted us to take a picture as well: a Three-banded Plover (Charadrius tricollaris). Despite their small size, they are very loud and annoying. They even try to chase away much bigger birds like ravens or smaller birds of prey. xD
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After some driving, our monitor suddenly stopped because he spotted something. About 80 metres away was laying a South African Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus jubatus).:party:
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It was even a uncollared specimen which makes the sighting even more great. We should take many pictures of him to identify him later but we were bit too far away. But that's not a problem! Unlike tourists, we were allowed to leave the roads if necessary, so we slowly drove towards the cheetah ;) We were lucky that the terrain wasn't covered with too high vegetation, so we could do that.
In the meantime, he already nocticed us but didn't mind us, so we drove even closer. In the end, we were about 15 to 20 metres away. ;)
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He stood up and walked up the little hill where he even posed for us. :D
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In the afternoon, we couldn't spot any of the collared animals either but we watched a beautiful sunset and saw some giraffes. Of course we saw impalas and nyalas as well but I don't have to show pictures of them everytime. :P
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That's all for today from this exciting day. Stay tuned and see you next time!
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Dylan
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A cheetah. How incredible. The plovers are so cute (I love plovers)
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DRAGON-unit911
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The Stalker

Those are simply awesome pictures dude! loved that Savannah's sunset!
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Uolym
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What a splendide spectacle of life you have seen! :o
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Fireplume
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Snok Snok Snerson

Those Nyala are soooooooooooo pretty! :adowable: :adowable: :adowable: :adowable:
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Jony
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Thanks for your amazing comments, guys. :) I really appreciate them.

Day 10 bis 24: Mkhuze Game Reserve - Part 3

The next day wasn't very successful, we missed the wild dogs again and the other collared animals weren't visible either. But that's the wild: sometimes you can see a lot and sometimes nothing. ;)
But at least we could see a Southern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum) in the morning for a few minutes. ;) Due to the difficult photography conditions, the pictures aren't the greatest but it was one of the only two times that I have seen rhinos in Mkhuze, the second time the conditions were even worse. :P By the way, in Mkhuze aren't any collared rhinos and the populations of both species are low, that's way it's so hard to spot them there, so I'm glad I could see them at least two times.
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The fifth day started greatly with this beautful sunrise.
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A few landscape pictures.
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Unfortunately this day ended without any great sightings. :D So, let's continue with the sixth day, on that day we finally had success with finding the dogs. :)
But at first, some pictures of two male giraffes play-fighting that we have seen in the morning.
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Then, in the afternoon we could find the first African Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus). :music: Now the spell was broken and I saw them every second day, sometimes even every day in the next weeks. :)
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Flying wild dog
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There are two packs of wild dogs in Mkhuze, a big one with more than 25 dogs (including 14 pups who were born this year) and a small one consisting of four dogs. We have seen the small pack this day but only three of them, the fourth one was invisible and din't even send any signal. :/ The main priority in the next days was to find the lost wild dog. But this will be part of another update. ;)

Becaus ethis is all for today. Stay tuned and see you soon! :)
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Furka
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Breaking the missing species spell always feels good.
Great pics.
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Zoo Tycooner FR
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#Lithopédion

Happy to see you've found wild dogs . They were also quite common around Sabi Sand River . :)
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Imperator Furiosa
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Chaos Theory

Wonderful pictures! It must have been great to see the dogs in their natural environment!
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Jony
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Thanks guys :)


Day 10 to 24: Mkhuze Game Reserve - Part 4

On the next day, we got a stong signal for a lioness and she was in a easy accessible area, so we were following the signal.
Then we found that directly by the street:
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The wildebeest kill was very fresh and the signal for the lioness very strong, so we were sure that she killed it and was probably still around. We drove on a few meters and then we could see her: an African Lion (Panthera leo). :D
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Unfortunately, she didn't come out of the bush, so we just could see this glimpse of her. A second lioness who is always around with her din't show up at all, so we drove back to camp.

The next day, we finally found the two collared cheetahs of MKhuze, a pair of brothers, that came from Zululand Rhino Reserve earlier this year. They also had a kill.
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Let's take another look on the beautiful savannah!
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A white-backed vulture was circling around.
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On that and other days I took some pictures of birds that were often around the camp.

Bearded scrub robin (Cercotrichas quadrivirgata)
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Either a fork-tailed drongo (Dicrurus ludwigii) or a square-tailed drongo (Dicrurus adsimilis). The point of view makes it difficult to see the difference.
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Chinspot batis (Batis molitor)
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Southern crested guineafowl (Guttera pucherani edouardi)
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This happens when you come too close to them. :D
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Not only birds were present in our camp but also scorpions. The one below was sitting in the sink and was very aggressive. Luckily our mointor managed to catch it.
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The other day there was a Puff Adder (Bitis arietans) in our camp, one of the most dangerous snakes in South Africa. She was laying under a footmat. Luckily nothing happened and soon she crawled away.
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On the way back from the afternoon session we saw a Gabar Goshawk (Micronisus gabar), a very small bird of prey (much smaller than the European goshawk for example).
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Just a few minutes later a herd of elephants crossed the road. :)
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The next day began with another small, loud and annoying bird, namely a crowned lapwing (Vanellus coronatus). :P
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Better watch the beuatful sunrise than the aggressive lapwing. :D
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White-backed vultures
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An eagle, probably Wahlberg's eagle.
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That's all for today! The next update is one for dog and lion fans, so stay tuned and see you soon!
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