Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Apr 08 2008 | By: admin

Howzit guys,

Sorry for the late post. We are all still here and all waiting to see what happens with the elections, like most of the country’s population.

Last week we were concentrating on finding a pack of five dogs that were being reported near our new base. It was hazardous following them because the first two times the guys were tracking them, they led them straight into elephant herds with very protective mothers!

We finally found three of them resting at a waterhole and we heard the other two calling nearby. We waited for them to show up but, after an hour, they still hadn’t appeared and our presence was preventing other animals from drinking.
One wildebeest bull was more concerned with the dogs though, as their being there was spooking his herd. He put his head down and advanced towards the dogs who weren’t too happy about this turn of events and scattered. They settled down behind a bush about 75 metres away, but the wildebeest seemed satisfied with this distance. We decided to leave everyone in peace and headed off.

‘What is that animal doing?’

‘Scarper!’

We hope to find the full group of five once we can get started on the dogs again.
The fieldwork team are taking their (much needed) days off this week, so you’ll be hearing from me after then.

Sarai zvakanaka,

Mike

Tags: 1120, 1122, 189, 46, 698

3 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Mar 30 2008 | By: admin

(Plenty of wild dogs)

Howzit guys,

We are still going strong. One day last week, Reuben and Misheck found two packs in the same day!
One was an unidentified group of five dogs, but they wisely decided to stop tracking them when they started running into elephants in the thick bush.
The other pack we suspect to be the Saindota Pack (named after the river that runs through their range), but they were so wary that we couldn’t get close enough to take any pictures or even count them. Rascals!

People have really been great with calling in their sightings recently. I guess they can hear us on the radio when we’re following up their reports, and so know they aren’t wasting their time. It is a huge help to have all those extra eyes out there for us.

Gratuitous picture of elephants raiding crops.

I am moving to a house in the north today, which will help with getting to the dog sightings quicker. I’ll warn you in advance then, that my blogs may not be as frequent as before as I won’t have internet access there. Fear not though, Peter will be able to fill you in if I can’t.

A new member of our team, Rosemary, arrives from the UK next week as the project manager. She has already done much for the project, securing funding for VHF and GPS collars, among other things. No doubt she’ll be pressganged into writing a few blogs too, including an introduction.

Sarai zvakanaka,

Mike

Tags: 1120, 1122, 189, 46, 698

3 responses so far