Imfolozi dag 9: An extremely hot day.

Dinsdag 27-11-2018

Imfolozi dag 9:        An extremely hot day.

Dieren vandaag gezien / Animals spotted:

·         African wild dog

·         Impala

·         Zebra

·         Kudu

·         Giraffe

·         Leopard tortoise

·         Spotted hyena

·         White rhino

·         White backed vultures

We left at 4 am. I offered to scan again because I didn’t really do much on my session yesterday. Our target for today were the wild dogs. Ryan did all he could to find the dogs quickly. This meant driving a bit faster. I do love this though. The first bigger animal we found were 6 spotted hyena’s. They were moving in a group along the main road. All of them had a smile on their faces. It looked so funny.

After about 1,5 hours we found them. We just had a few glimpses of them. They walked of in a very big block where there are no management roads. So no darting this afternoon. Then we looked for CF17. I got signal right away. We did get close to her but off course she was hiding again. We drove along to see if we could see her from the opposite site. While we did this we passed 2 leopard tortoises. One was following the other. It looked funny and they walked quite fast for a tortoise. We also passed a group of 6 white rhinos on the road. It is just wonderful to see so many of them together. Sadly we didn’t get to see CF17.

We went back to camp where I did a nap of 4 hours. Just to catch up on some sleep. It was really warm in my room but when you sleep you don’t notice anyway.

This afternoon we left later than normal. 4.30 pm. We had to load the bait for the dogs. A plan has been made and we tried to dart Oman the alpha male from the Bhejie pack to contracept him. When we arrived at the place where it was going to happen we met up with Roan. Tactics were discussed and we acted on them. First we tied up the meat to a tree. We played the hoo call on the car installation. It didn’t sound great, different dogs and different tones. When the dogs started to move away we got the bait back in the car and Fi started scanning in the back. Ryan drove, quite fast and when we lost signal we turned around and tied up the meat again to a different tree. After a while Ryan started hoo calling and got in to Roan’s car. Fi did hoo call as well, she also did a good job at this. We saw the dogs pass Roan’s car at the back. Then a tourist car drove up behind them and scarred the dogs away. They decided to have a look at the hide. We followed them later and yes they were at the water hole, but it was too far and too dark to dart them. We stayed at the hide for about 10 minutes and then left. While being there we saw a white rhino drink. This was just lovely to watch. We picked up the bait and drove home. On the way to the camp we saw that the fire was still going that had started 2 days ago. It was impressive to see a big fire like this spreading in a long line and leaving little spots of fire behind.

The maximum temperature got up to 42°C today. It was an extremely hot day.