Drawing to a close

So my time here is drawing to a close. I haven't written in this blog as often as I should have but pressure of work is my excuse. I have now completed two spoor surveys and two and three quarter camera surveys. I am moving into the social part of my research for my last two months here and will be administering questionnaires and doing interviews with as many farmers as I can.

Below are a few pictures that show what I have been up to for the past several months:


Looking for spoor - and the cold weather gear my tracker is wearing is definitely necessary

Opening one of the dozens of gates we have to go through on the cattle farms while spoor tracking

Negotiating our way through a herd of cattle


Checking one of my camera traps and changing the memory card

Resetting the camera trap for another week's installment

Rare sighting

Its been far too long since I have posted on this blog and for that I apologise. My only excuse is that I have been incredibly busy.

One camera survey has now been completed and there are only 10 days left on the second. The second spoor survey is also underway and should be finished by the end of July or thereabouts. Although if the unseasonal weather continues (as I write it is raining - in June!!) it might take a little longer.

Anyway - what prompted me to finally post to this blog again was this photograph I got the week before last on one of the farms I am now camera trapping on.




For those of you who don't know it is a Black-footed cat (Felis nigripes) and is quite rare. It is the only picture of one that I have got in over five months of camera trapping in this area so it is quite a find.

The camera surveys have turned up a total of four leopards - one male, two females and a sub-adult. Quite a few cheetah, several caracal and African wild cat, a lot of brown hyaena and a huge number of black-backed jackal.

Away from work - I went on a trip to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve with some friends last month and we had an amazing 23 lion sightings. Not all in one group either but several different prides and also a mating pair. Here are a couple of photos.

Not so nocturnal after all!

My camera trapping survey is now into its fourth week and the variety of species captured so far is quite impressive. Sixteen different species of mammal have been photographed, including nine different carnivore species. This might seem what you would expect in an African bush environment, but this is on a cattle farm and so competition for resources is high.
One of the more suprising photographs has been of my target species, the caracal, in broad daylight. Daytime sightings of caracal are occasionally reported in protected areas, but in areas of high human activity they are rare.

Other interesting captures have been of an African wild cat (Felis lybica) and a striped pole cat (Ictonyx striatus). I have also got plenty of images of that nocturnal enemy of car suspension, the aardvark (Orycteropus afer).




The cameras have so far stood up well to the torrential rain we have been having for the past few weeks, the spoor survey however is now badly behind schedule. Tracking cannot be done when there is rain during the evening and night as the spoor is obliterated from the sandy substrate. On many occasions in the past few weeks I have got up at 4.45 in the morning to pick up my tracker and driven the 20 or 30 kms to the farm on which my transect for that day is located, only to find that it has rained and we cannot work. Getting up that early is irksome even when it results in the collection of data, when it is for nothing it becomes a dreaded chore.

The farmers need the rain though and the landscape is now looking very green and lush. It is remarkable how quickly this arid environment can transform from dry, sandy scrub to rich grazing land.

First pictures

I have now completed my pilot camera trapping period and have started the survey proper. Here are a couple of nice pictures I got in the first ten days during the pilot.

Spy in the camp

I am now starting, what for me, is potentially the most exciting part of my research - camera trapping. Studying predators can be incredibly frustrating as they tend to occur at low densities, are secretive and generally either nocturnal or crepuscular. All of these things make them very difficult to see! However, the advances in digital camera technology have made the use of remote cameras increasingly useful as a tool to gain information on population density and abundance. It also provides a window into the world of the predator that only a few years ago would not have been available. By setting motion sensitive cameras on a farm in my study area I can get a picture of the variety of different species that are using that land and in what numbers they exist, how many have young with them and what their movement patterns are.
For caracal in Botswana this is very exciting as there has been no research done on this species here. However, having the cameras out on the farm means that, although I am primarily interested in caracal, I can gather data on all the other predator species too.

Am looking forward to seeing what turns up!

Pula! Pula!

At last the rains have started! After weeks of searingly hot temperatures (well over 40 celsius) the clouds thickened and delivered huge great drops of water this week. The word pula in Setswana means rain but it is also the name of the Botswana currency, so the importance of rain in this arid region is underlined. Although the rainfall is very localised, with some areas getting a great deal and others only a few millimetres, it has already transformed the landscape. The brown, dusty bush is starting to turn green as the trees burst into leaf and the grass emerges in the most unlikely places.
The rain, and how much you got, is the subject of everyone's conversation and the wildlife is already starting to move away from the guaranteed water sources of the dry season.
Although the rain can cause problems for doing research, especially looking for spoor, it is very welcome and I hope there is plenty more to come.

Looking for tracks

I have just completed my first week of driving transects looking for spoor of predators and prey. This involves getting up at a ridiculously early hour so that I can pick up my tracker and get to the start of my first transect by the time the sun comes up. We then drive along the transect (they are around 15 km long) at a speed of 13 kmh with my tracker sitting on the bonnet of the vehicle and look for the tracks of any predators that have used the road in the past 24 hours.
The roads are all sand tracks so it is easy to see the tracks. When we see some we stop and examine the track to decide what species of animal made it, how many there were, whether they were adults or juveniles, what sex they were and if possible what they were doing. My tracker is a Bushman and is very good at identifying spoor. Once I have driven enough kilometres on my transects I will be able to get an estimate of the numbers of each species in the area.

I am also doing transects to look for prey once a month to see what prey animals there are for the predators to eat and how many. This is very important as if prey numbers are low it is more likely that the predators will be forced to take livestock. This is pretty much the same as the predator spoor survey except that the transects are shorter and I also count all prey I see from the vehicle while driving.