No Laughing at the Hyenas

Those of you who have seen the Lion King, and who hasn't, may remember the hyenas as unsavory characters.  The lead ranger on our volunteer program is studying the feeding habits and spacial ecology of the brown hyena in the Eastern Cape, and does not take kindly to any aspersions being cast at his favorite carnivore.  Last week, he took a small group of us on foot to visit a hyena den that he has been monitoring with a camera trap for the past year.  We were lucky enough to see 2 of the hyena from the den wandering about outside (one of them approached within about 10 feet of where we were hiding).  I still insist that they are odd looking animals.  You be the judge.....

Other characters from the Lion King are also present at Shamwari.  I'm pretty sure the movie was actually filmed at Shamwari, but the rangers insist that is not the case. 

 
 
 

We're Back!

Blog Go finally rebuilt its app to address the authentication issues created by Google's latest software update!  (I have no idea what any of that means - all I know is that I can finally log back on and make blog posts).

So, first things first.  During this unceremonious interregnum, our beloved Red Sox won their third World Series championship in the last 10 years.  Boy are our kids spoiled!  Now, I don't mean to take all the credit for their victory, but I do like to think that our expression of solidarity from South Africa had just a little bit to do with their great karma.

We're glad the Sox won, but a little bit sad that we've missed all of the celebrations.  And a little bit tired after staying up to watch the last 2 games of the Series which aired here in South Africa starting at 2 a.m.

Updates on our trip to follow in the upcoming blog posts......
 

Please Stay Tuned.....

The app we have been using to post to our blog is experiencing technical difficulties and won't let us log in (I have confirmed with them that its their problem and not my own stupidity - which was my, and I'm sure most of your, first suspicion).

We're collecting our photos for future posting.  In the meantime, Game 5 of the World Series will be broadcast tonight starting at 2 a.m. South Africa time.  I'll be watching......

Duck, Duck, Goose

This post is for all you birders out there.  Today we spent the whole day participating in a research study from the University of Cape Town on mapping bird species in South African Game Reserves.  We spent more than 8 hours driving around Shamwari identifying birds.  In total, we found 78 different species.  Besides the bird-spotting, we had a couple of other interesting sightings.  The first was when we were getting out of our land rover for a coffee break.  One of our rangers suddenly yelled - "Back in the car!  Lions!"  Glad we didn't end up as a morning snack for these guys:

The Servil cat we saw in the afternoon was a lot less fearsome looking:

Anyway, on to a small sampling of the birds:

The Cape Glossy Starling:

The Crowned Hornbill (also known as "Zazu" by you Lion King fans)

The Kingfisher

And some cool African ducks (don't remember their technical name)

Melanie will be able to entertain you with many more bird pictures upon our return!  Please be sure that we wake to good news about our Red Sox tomorrow morning!  My playoff beard is still growing......
 
 

 
 
 

 
 

Finally, the sighting you've all been waiting for......

The Addo Flightless Dung Beetle!

Our head ranger told us that to hold the endangered dung beetle was equivalent to holding a panda bear.  Just not quite as cuddly....

Spent the morning out doing predator monitoring this morning.  Great sighting of 2 brother cheetahs enjoying the remains of their latest kill:

One missed post from last week to catch up on too.   A year ago, a caracal was shot on a farm adjacent to Shamwari.  Her three 1-week old cubs were recovered by Shamwari, and have been raised in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center here for the past year.  Last week it was time to release them into the wild.  While caracals are carnivores, they're pretty friendly around people.  Melanie's motherly instincts kicked in, and she jumped right in to help load them into the truck:

We drove them an hour and a half to the northern fringe of the reserve, where we released them back into the wild:

 
 
 
 

Time to Catch Up

Its been a busy week at Shamwari since our last blog post.  Lots to catch you up on, so pour yourself a cup of coffee and settle into a comfortable chair.

When we last left you, we had returned from a day of Cape Buffalo darting and transport and prickly pear destruction.  Just to give you an idea, here is what a typical prickly pear looks like.  My hand has only now recovered from the thorns.

Thursday of last week was another early one - darting another buffalo and her calf followed by a move to the new herd.  The mother of the calf didn't go down easy, and one of the rangers narrowly escaped getting gored.  Thursday night was a great night - camping out under the stars in our sleeping bags.   Baking "stick bread" over the campfire was delicious:

We didn't sleep all that much, despite the fact that the rangers had left their rifles in carefully selected points around the perimeter of our camp, with instructions to those taking turns staying up all night on guard duty to wake them if they heard anything "unusual".  Thankfully, no elephants, rhinos, hippos or lions took any interest in our camp, though thanks to our many game drives, we know there are no shortage of the same.

 

Much of Friday, as well as  2 mornings this week were spent at a daycare center in an adjacent township called Paterson where the unemployment rate exceeds 90%.   The public water tap gets shut off at noon everyday, so we installed a 5000L water tank to catch rainfall that drains off the roof so the kids will always have a supply of drinking water.  By the by, our drinking water at Shamwari is collected the same way.

The weekend was pretty chill.  We don't have any work to do on the weekends, so we took a couple of long walks around the property (the part of the reserve we stay in is about 1000 acres and is predator free).  Saturday night we took a taxi into Grahamstown - a town about an hour away that is home to Rhodes University (not to be confused with Rhodes College in Memphis).  We hung out at the local university pub, the Rat and Parrot, watching rugby on tv with a few of the other volunteers.

This week has been split pretty evenly between wildlife-related activities and manual labor - finishing up installation of the water tank, removing old fences around the reserve to prevent animals from getting snared in them, and clearing brush that is growing into roadways.  Melanie wields a mean machete!

One of the cooler days was tracking 2 of the cheetahs on the property (they have implanted transmitters), and then being able to get up close with them

This afternoon was a blast too, as we got to go out with the head ranger trainer and shoot the South African version of the American M-16, and a 12-gauge shotgun.  Once again, Melanie's skill frightened me just a bit.....

Well, that's all for tonight.  Glad to hear that America is back open for business.  We're following the Sox and the Pats from a distance, so give us something to cheer about!
 
 

 
 

  
 
 

Day 2 at Shamwari

Not to worry, don't think we'll be bloggin every day of our time here, but today was pretty cool.  We set out at 5:45 this morning (it was freezing) to meet up with the Shamwari vets.  They had to move a couple of female Cape Buffalo out of the existing herd and move them to meet a new bull, trying to set up a new breeding herd.  Interesting factoid:  a large, disease-free Cape Buffalo bull can cost more than $2M.  Anyway, we located the herd and hung out until the vets arrived.  Their first order of business was to tranquilize the 2 females they selected with their dart gun

Nice shot!

Next step was for the vet (with the help of an able assistant) to check that the cow was not pregnant:

(yes, he does have his whole arm up in there)

Then into the trucks for the ride to meet their new boyfriend:

This afternoon was a bit less glamorous - out with machetes cutting down prickly pear cactuses (cactii?).  They're an invasive plant originally imported by farmers as a supplemental food for their herds during times of drought.  They're spreading too far, and its an uphill battle to keep them under control, but we did what we could.  Nothing picture-worthy - I'm sure you're all disappointed.....