uMkhuze dag 4: Checking up on MCM22

Donderdag 25-10-2018

uMkhuze dag 4:      Checking up on MCM22

Dieren vandaag gezien / Animals spotted:

·         Kudu

·         Nyala

·         Impala

·         Cattle egret

·         Eastern striped skink

·         Warthog

·         Giraffe

·         White backed vulture

·         Brown hooded kingfisher

·         White-tailed mongoose

·         Plains zebra

·         Bush snake (dead)

We left at 4.20 am to check the signals at the beacon. Afterwards we travelled to the gate to check up on MCM22. This morning I was scanning. We didn’t get a signal close to the gate but further away we did. We had to wait for the gate to open so we could scan outside of the park as well. No signal here either. Back to the gate where we sat till 8.30 am. Not happened in the meantime. We drove to the office were we met up with Eduard. He is quite a funny man. After this we returned to camp. Here we saw an extra car. It was Megan’s. We didn’t met her then.

Because it wasn’t to warm jet I decided to do some work on the fire aria. The grass and the weeds were taking over so I took the slasher and started to cut it all down. It did work but after a while I got a blister on my finger so I had to stop.

I started to do some writing. At 10.30 it was time to check up on the cheetah again. It was just Emilie and me this time who went. While I was scanning I had to test Eduards telemetry system as well. Wow this was is bigger than the one from Wildlife Act. Sadly it didn’t work properly. I did get signal with the “normal” one but not near the fence. This is a good sign.

About 2,5 hours later we went out again. No signal at all. We tried a few different spots but no luck. Back to camp again.

This afternoon we had Megan for the first time. When we drove to the beacon we found some vultures in the trees. We drove down to the vulture restaurant to go and see if there was any food. Yes there was. But whilst driving up there the vultures flew of. When we arrived at the I could see the flying around. All in total 19 perched and 27 flying.  

We went looking for the dogs and we got signal but we didn’t get to see them during this session. There is an obvious difference between Teegan and Megan. Megan is a birder so she stops more often to look at them an other things as well. She makes you scan more often than Teegan does. While driving around we found some tracks. One was from a leopard and the other from a rhino. Other things we found were a white-tailed mongoose, a dead bush snake, two brown hooded kingfishers, some giraffes and some other animals.