Imfolozi dag 5: CF17 and her cubs
12 oktober 2018 - Imfolozi Game Reserve, Zuid-Afrika
Vrijdag 12-10-2018
Imfolozi dag 5: CF17 and her cubs
Dieren vandaag gezien / Animals spotted:
African wild dog
Cheetah + cubs
Elephants
White rhino
Giraffe
Nyala
Impala
Leopard tortoise
White backed vulture
Brown snake eagle
Another early rise, 4.30 am we left to go on a session. We had our first morning session with Ryan. This morning I was the one who was doing the scanning. First a scan for all the animals that could be around. We just had a few signals but one of them was Neni. She was of course a priority. Off we went. This time a nice and extremely challenging dirt road. Ryan asked me to keep scanning whilst we were driving. Normally this is a challenge but now the car was on every possible angle a car can be. I managed and even found the 2 dogs. Ndaba was still limping but kept up with Neni. We lost and found them again. It was good fun to be on this road. We saw some animals like elephants, giraffe and white rhino. To get this one male rhino to the car, Ryan was making a deep and heavy breathing noise. It actually worked. This was impressive.
Then we scanned for a cheetah. On our way to a crossing we came across a leopard tortoise who was trying to cross the road just in one of the bends. A dangerous place for a tortoise, one of the reasons why she was moved onto the side of the road. We located this cheetah in the middle of a valley. No way we could get there, what meant it was time for morning tea.
We drove for a while but did not find anything special. Most of the cheetahs just crossed the road our were in impossible spots to find them. Back to camp.
One of the things we did in camp was getting our photo’s for the ID kits. So Jo and I started doing this. We just had our photo’s but we had shots of 8 different dogs, not to bad.
During the afternoon session we were looking for CF17 with cubs but the first thing we had to stop for was Neni and Ndaba. It Is so funny because when you look for them they are hard to find, but now they just walked on the road. Ryan worried a bit about Ndaba’s condition. We drove around and found 3 cheetah cubs on the road and their mum in the bushes. Not for long though because they ran off into the long grass and they were gone. What a lovely sighting. Sadly my photo’s aren’t sharp. The cubs didn’t look pretty though. They looked more like gremlins than cheetah’s. There is a chance
On our way back to the camp Ryan did some funny things to like swooning across the road. Jumping the bumps, using the whole road, extra breaking and speeding up. Just great fun. We all laughed except for Sonja.
In the camp we had some dinner and most of them where getting ready for the next day. We heard the lions calling here an Ryan asked Jed (on his phone) if we could go out to scan during the night. He allowed it. So we got in to the car as fast as we could. But we forgot the telemetry. What makes it harder to find them. And we didn’t. It started to rain so we went back to camp with some lovely driving from Ryan.
Imfolozi dag 5: CF17 and her cubs
Dieren vandaag gezien / Animals spotted:
African wild dog
Cheetah + cubs
Elephants
White rhino
Giraffe
Nyala
Impala
Leopard tortoise
White backed vulture
Brown snake eagle
Another early rise, 4.30 am we left to go on a session. We had our first morning session with Ryan. This morning I was the one who was doing the scanning. First a scan for all the animals that could be around. We just had a few signals but one of them was Neni. She was of course a priority. Off we went. This time a nice and extremely challenging dirt road. Ryan asked me to keep scanning whilst we were driving. Normally this is a challenge but now the car was on every possible angle a car can be. I managed and even found the 2 dogs. Ndaba was still limping but kept up with Neni. We lost and found them again. It was good fun to be on this road. We saw some animals like elephants, giraffe and white rhino. To get this one male rhino to the car, Ryan was making a deep and heavy breathing noise. It actually worked. This was impressive.
Then we scanned for a cheetah. On our way to a crossing we came across a leopard tortoise who was trying to cross the road just in one of the bends. A dangerous place for a tortoise, one of the reasons why she was moved onto the side of the road. We located this cheetah in the middle of a valley. No way we could get there, what meant it was time for morning tea.
We drove for a while but did not find anything special. Most of the cheetahs just crossed the road our were in impossible spots to find them. Back to camp.
One of the things we did in camp was getting our photo’s for the ID kits. So Jo and I started doing this. We just had our photo’s but we had shots of 8 different dogs, not to bad.
During the afternoon session we were looking for CF17 with cubs but the first thing we had to stop for was Neni and Ndaba. It Is so funny because when you look for them they are hard to find, but now they just walked on the road. Ryan worried a bit about Ndaba’s condition. We drove around and found 3 cheetah cubs on the road and their mum in the bushes. Not for long though because they ran off into the long grass and they were gone. What a lovely sighting. Sadly my photo’s aren’t sharp. The cubs didn’t look pretty though. They looked more like gremlins than cheetah’s. There is a chance
On our way back to the camp Ryan did some funny things to like swooning across the road. Jumping the bumps, using the whole road, extra breaking and speeding up. Just great fun. We all laughed except for Sonja.
In the camp we had some dinner and most of them where getting ready for the next day. We heard the lions calling here an Ryan asked Jed (on his phone) if we could go out to scan during the night. He allowed it. So we got in to the car as fast as we could. But we forgot the telemetry. What makes it harder to find them. And we didn’t. It started to rain so we went back to camp with some lovely driving from Ryan.
