Sometimes you get lucky.......

.......AND SOMETIMES YOU DON'T.

I fear I might be guilty of mis-representation!

 Its not that I've claimed someone else's camera-trap image as my own (or something else equally dishonest) - its just that I've possibly made camera-trapping in Southern Africa sound particularly easy. As if we really do have lions and elephants walking our streets.....or great herds of antelope passing through our back yards.

For a couple of years I've posted photos on this blog of creatures great and small that I've been lucky enough to catch on my camera traps. But what I haven't done is to confess when my camera-trapping efforts haven't been rewarded. And there have been loads of those opportunities for confession! I guess its vanity, or perhaps a sense that the readers of my blog will desert me, that keeps me posting only 'success' stories.

A good example occurred a few weeks ago when we were invited to join some friends in walking the Whale Trail along the Southern coast of South Africa. This is a stunningly beautiful 5-day walk where one should see remarkable whale sightings during our winter and spring.

 

The area has been protected for some time and there are plenty of large ungulates in the area. There is also some anecdotal evidence of predators that forage in the intertidal zone. So I, obviously, carried along a few trailcams in the confident belief that this would present a good camera-trapping opportunity.

I put out the two cams on each of our four nights in the reserve. In each instance I spent some time scouting the area and was confident that I'd identified the best possible sites. And this is all I got:

A blurry porcupine...

......and a 'only just' image of a mother Common Duiker (I think) with her offspring.

For all that effort! I should have carried a bottle of wine rather that the cameras.

So, I've resolved to be more transparent about my camera-trapping results in 2013!

Having said that I also resolved to eat healthier food and do more exercise......which resolutions I've already broken. So don't hold your breath.

I wish all you camera-trappers out there a year of photographic miracles in 2013. I hope you all capture that Snow Leopard, or equivalent, that you've been dreaming of.

Camera-Trapping in the Tankwa

There are many extraordinary places in South Africa but the Tankwa Karoo National Park is certainly one of them. Its a place of harsh beauty where one can only admire the failed attempts of pioneer farmers to eke out a living here.

So its not what I'd call a camera-trappers paradise.

However I doubt many people do any camera-trapping around here so my friend Dave and I decided to give it a go. We certainly weren't expecting things to be easy but were disappointed that the windmills and waterholes marked on our map were bone dry.

There were certainly signs of life but not always the sort that I catch on my trailcams.

So our best option seemed to set up in a seasonal river bed where there were numerous game trails. Trees for mounting the cameras on were at a premium but there were plenty of large rocks which did the trick.

Not surprisingly it didn't take us long to go through the images each day but there were a few that turned out well:

A Small Grey Mongoose (Galerella pulverulenta) which posed for one quick image....

..and a mangy looking Common Duiker (Sylvicapra grimmia) who did hang around for a while.

But the image I was most excited about:

Its an African Striped Weasel (Poecilogale albinucha) and the first image of a live one I've ever taken. I consider these little guys to be quite rare and, sadly, seen most often as road-kill.

So while the Tankwa would never be called a place of abundance it remains, for me, a very special place.

Brown Hyenas at Tswalu

I've just returned from a trip to an amazing wildlife reserve called Tswalu Kalahari.  I went there with Elsa Bussiere who is starting her PhD on Brown Hyenas (Parahyaena brunnea) on the reserve, and wanted to test out a variety of camera-traps.

Tswalu is a huge and beautiful place!

But over and above the gorgeous landscape there is a fabulous diversity of wildlife. Even though our objective was to locate and 'catch' the Brown Hyenas on the camera-traps one couldn't but photograph some other great mammals:

A Cheetah Acinonyx jubatus

Gemsbok (Oryx) Oryx gazella

Common Duiker Silvicapra grimmia

But the real prize was these guys:

I'll be posting more images shortly but if you want to know more about Elsa's hyena project go to her blog.