Bonus Birds

I've not been well lately! My self-diagnosis leaves me in no doubt that that I have a bad case of cabin-fever. This as a result of not getting out into the wilds for about a month now. I've had to console myself with browsing through my old camera-trap images. However, while doing this I decided that I needed to pull together a post about birds - specifically those that have walked in front of my cameras.

We're extremely fortunate to have a wide variety of large raptors, as well as terrestrial species, that are quite big enough to trigger a camera at some distance. So while I've only once actually set out to get images of birds (African penguins) I do get other big fellows fairly frequently. These are some of my favourites:

Secretary Bird (Sagittarius serpentarius) at a spot where I was hoping to get an image of a leopard recently seen in the area.

Lappet-faced Vulture (Torgos tracheliotus) bullying the other birds at the water-hole.

An African Hawk-Eagle (Hieraaetus spilogaster). What was amazing about this series of images was that the other mammals in the images waited in the background for it to finish (about 20 minutes) before drinking themselves.

Marabou Stork (Leptoptilos crumeniferus)

Kori Bustard (Ardeotis kori) - apparently the worlds heaviest flying bird.

A male Ostrich (Struthio camelus) with his young.

Hadeda Ibis (Bostrychia hagedash) an extremely successful species whose range is expanding dramatically in Southern Africa.

Black-headed Heron (Ardea melanocephala).


However I can feel the fever starting to subside already since I'm headed off next week to a remarkable place called the Tankwa Karoo National Park. Its renowned for its natural beauty, rather than abundance of mammals, but I'm hopeful that the cameras will pick up something interesting.
 I'll keep you posted.........

Precious tracks

Late last year I was involved in a fascinating project where we attempted to link images of black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) to their footprints using camera traps. Linking these rhinos with their tracks doesn't sound like a particularly difficult task given the size of these animals (and their tracks) but it can be. This is mostly because the black rhino is a browser and spends almost all it's time in thick vegetation. So when you come across one suddenly there is almost always running involved - either them or you. They are pretty foul tempered and so following one with a tape and camera is not an option for anyone who cares to see his family again!

I have debated for some time whether to actually post the images that follow due to the horrific amount of  rhino poaching currently taking place. I have no interest in helping the poaching syndicates locate these precious animals. So for that reason I can't tell you the location of the project but I'd still like to show you the images.

So why is a project like this useful? Its simply that wildlife reserve managers don't see their rhinos very often but regularly come across their tracks. So if you know who the tracks belong to then you can get some insight into the movement of these beasts and can confirm that they haven't fallen prey to the poachers.

So we set up a number of cameras at water-holes that showed evidence of recent rhino activity. But it's not just rhinos that visit water-holes and we recorded over 30,000 images in just over a week. These were some of my favorites:

Black-Headed Heron

Young Impala ram

Ostrich with his chicks

Red Hartebest

But did we get what we were really after? You bet we did.....loads of great images that should forever help the management of this reserve monitor their precious rhinos.