Dogs and Frogs

Sometimes, when I go to check my camera traps, there are small animals hanging out on them. There have been several small lizards recently, and this cute frog on one camera trap.

I also spent some time with the anti-poaching dogs recently. Ol Pejeta started out with just two bloodhounds to use as tracker dogs to sniff out poachers, ammo, and carcasses. Then they got one Belgian Malinois as an attack dog whose job it is to run down and attack poackers running away. Last year, they brought in a British guy named Daryll who used to train army search dogs to work with the attack dog Tarzan. Pretty soon, the plan became to get 11 new Malinois puppies and train them up from scratch as attach, tracker, and patrol dogs. So now there is a whole dog unit dedicated to anti-poaching here! It is already beginning to have a big effect and other Conservancies are looking to establish dog units of their own. Here is one of the original bloodhounds, Lux, with his handler.

 And here is Tom (who is here for a few weeks filming promo videos for Ol Pej) filming Lux after a tracking demo.

semi-tame bushbuck

There is a semi-tame, young male bushbuck who sometimes hangs out around the research center for a day. He comes once every few months.... and was back the other day. I have seen him three times now. We think he normally lives near Ol Pejeta house. But I don't know why he decides to wander over to Research every so often.  He seems to have little fear of humans, barely noticing when people walk by. He will even look at you from only a meter away over the half-wall of the porch, or lay down next to a banda door to take a nap. I haven't really tried to see how close I can get without the porch wall in between us. I don't think you could touch him, but could maybe get close.

I espcially like the photo of him eating grass in front of the "Beware of Wild Animals" sign. Now all he needs is a name. Thoughts?

Life and Death in the bush

We know that herbivores get eaten by predators. But sometimes, rarely, animals die without any obvious cause of death. While measuring grass one day, my guard Barnaba and I found this dead male Grant's gazelle. Only a small part of its abdomen had been opened up (seemingly by a bird, as there were no bite marks like from a jackal or other mammal) and the rest was still untouched. We couldn't find any visible wounds like from a fight with another male Grant's. Sometimes they do stab each other with their horns, and this can be fatal-- but there were no apparent stab marks. So we left it be. The next night I went back and this time only the skeleton was left. Most of the meat had been eaten by scavengers and there was a jackal just chewing on the last of the scraps.

A few days later, near that same spot, I also found two male cheetahs. For some reason, predator sightings have been very scarce this trip. This is only my second sighting of cheetahs in over 6 weeks. And I think these are the same two males I saw the first time. I watched them cross the road through the bush, then eventually settle down under a tree for a nap. Their bellies looked full-- like they had already eaten sometime last night or that morning-- so they weren't too interested in chasing anything. But the zebra and gazelle nearby sure took notice of their presence and moved away. So I had to move on too, to find a different group of grazers to do a focal sample on.

And a final sighting for this post-- this big black rhino hanging around one of my study sites with a second horn bigger than his first! Poaching is still a major problem-- there was even an attempt just the other night. So this guy better keep hidden. Some people would love to have his horns. But I think they look better on a live animal than ground up as fake medecine...

More Sunsets

First, the bad news... it has been raining here for the last 3 or 4 days straight! This is supposed to be the long dry season. Rains aren't supposed to start for another month. But apparently things are becoming more and more unpredictable in recent years. Climate change in action.  And while rains are good for the grass and the animals, it is bad for the roads. One of the all black cotton soil tracks between two of my bomas was already pretty hairy yesterday. I had to drive in 4WD, 1st gear for awhile to get up the incline out of a valley.  And it just finished raining heavily here today, so the roads will only be worse now.

But back to some lighter fare-- here are some photos taken before the rains started of some more lovely sunsets. One night the sun was SO pink you had to see it to believe it. Unfortunately I only had my small camera with me, not the good Canon one and was not really able to capture it fully. But these photos (of several different sunsets) should fill in ok.

The clouds over the research center one evening were amazing. And the pink light was perfect... but for only 10 minutes, then it faded away. Good thing I decided to go outside during those 10 minutes.

 Then, driving back from the bomas one night, I looked behind me and saw this.  Again, it was perfect for 10 minutes, then the pink disappeared and everything began to turn to gray.

Odds and ends

Not too much to report this week. Work is continuing. It did rain here a few days ago, and not a light rain either. There was standing water in the morning. Lukcily it had been so dry that most of the water just soaked in and didn't make the roads too bad. But it is supposed to be the dry season. And that is what I want for my research this trip. So if that was a one-off rain event, no problem. Plus side: It has kept down the dust that had gotten so bad. But I hope this doesn't mean the rains have come early. They are not supposed to start for another month or so.

Meanwhile, here are a few random photos from last week.  Three white rhinos napping, and thinking about getting up.  They really are like big dogs sometimes.

Also, sometimes a photo like this reminds me how much bigger hybrid zebras are than their plains zebra counterparts. This male hybrid (on the Left) makes the plains males next to him look like small ponies.

Wilddog Video on Facebook

So, I was not able to get the wild dog video to upload on this site... but I did get it to upload to facebook. So those of you who have facebook, go there to watch it! I think it is pretty cool.

I was driving home from the field the other day for lunch and ran into a group of 20 or so elephants right on the road, blocking my path. I waited for awhile, but they showed absolutely no signs of moving. So eventually I had to take the long way around them.

The funny part was, when I drove up I noticed something white and fluffy laying on the road right in front of the elephants. I soon saw it was a sleeping baby zebra. He must have fallen asleep before the elephants arrived, because when he did wake up, he looked around and was quite suprised! He then jumped up and ran the short distance to his mom who was waiting nearby, but apparently didn't want to interrupt the elephants to go retrieve him.  There was also a big male with very large tusks.

 The elephants just to the left of the baby zebra looks confused. "What are you?"

Wild Dogs!!!

I have been back at Ol Pejeta for over a month now, and FINALLY saw the wild dogs last night.... and it was a great sighting. There were 20 of them, including 14 half-grown puppies. At first they were just sleeping next to the water tank. Then the puppies decided to hassle some zebra that came to the trough to drink. Some of the puppies came to sniff my car too, which was really cute.

Then, they all got up and went hunting and we watched them for over an hour. First they went after a warthog, but it retreated into a hole. They circled around and the adults took turns going into the hole after it, trying to get the warthog out. But the wilddog would soon jump back out of the hole as if it had just been lunged at by the tusked warthog inside.  So eventually they moved on and went after another warthog... but again it escaped down a hole! I have a great video of them chasing it and will try to post that next if the internet will allow it. They are so fast!

Finally they went after some tommies... but again the tommies escaped. So we didn't get to see a successful kill, but all of the chasing was pretty cool. While the adults were trying to do some work and get dinner, the puppies were just playing with each other... probably drawing attention to themselves and alerting all the prey animals. It's hard to be sleath with 14 puppies goofing off, kicking up dust, and making noise.

Where are all the cats (and dogs)?

While wildlife viewing is always great at Ol Pejeta, one highlight is usually the frequency with which we see lions, cheetahs, and wilddogs. However, this trip, they seem to have disappeared.

I'm told they are still around. And other people claim to have seen the wilddogs several times in the last few weeks. But since I have come back (over a month ago), I have yet to see the wilddogs and have only seen cheetahs and lions once each.  Where have all the predators gone?  They are not even showing up on my camera traps. As some of you have seen, I have some great photos from past years of lions investigating and even chewing on the cameras. This year, nothing so far. Maybe they have gotten bored of them?

So instead, all I can give you are the following: a male ostrich, a baby elephant at night, and a male tommie.