Wild Dogs take on Wildebeest: Video
Published by Wildcaster 1 year, 10 months ago Tags: africa, animal kingdom, blogumentary, cites, conservation, documentary, ecotraining, education, endangered species, flickr, GLTP, gonarezhou, Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, hunting, IUCN Red List, kill, malilangwe, mashable, narrowcasting, Open Content Alliance, pamushana, peace parks, photos, polls, predators, quickmaps, rain, teach, video, wild dogs, wildcasting, wildlife, wildlife documentary, youtube, zimbabwe.(Because of the rains today, I had to pull a new video clip I shot a few days ago.)
The rains arrived soon after getting back to camp last night. Sitting with the dogs near Banyini late yesterday I noticed this advancing cloudbank, which just looked like some cooler weather on the way. And yes it did get cooler but only after raining all night.
I had plans on getting out early to the dogs being sure to find them hunting on the open savannah country of Banyini. But with all that rain having fallen I was grounded. It had stopped raining by dawn but the roads would have been like grease and I would only have damaged them even more. And not to mention that there was no ways I would be able to travel off road.
By midday things had dried up or rather soaked up and ventured out. Every little conceivable depression was now a puddle. All the insects were out in force and this rhino midden got its own dose of dung beetles.
But where were the dogs? They were nowhere near Banyini. I eventually located them far in the east, south of Lisillilije in mopanie country. Mopanie trees have a habit of growing on heavy clays, which in wet weather are just waiting to suck up any vehicle that would foolishly venture on them. I managed to find the dogs resting in the mopanie but could only see a few in the thick bush.
Before sunset they performed their greeting ceremony and were off on the hunt.
When they moved on I was happy to make it back to a road and from there I monitored their movements. Waiting for them to make an appearance on the next track I heard impala death cries. They had killed. But 5 minutes later they were on the hunt again crossing the road. It must have been a baby impala, enough for only one dog.
And just then the rains were back. I had to scramble to get my cover over all the camera gear in time and called it a day, not having even taken my camera out the box.
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In addition to animal behaviour, appreciate your descriptions of habitat. “Brachystegia” resulted in a google find about Brachystegia woodlands and interesting information about bird parties. The article mentioned Miombo woodlands, and on further googling found a PDF about Miombo-Mopane ecosystems - with another interesting fact “The Miombo-Mopane woodlands support most of Africa’s remaining wild dogs.” As a youngster, Mopane were a favorite with their butterfly leaves and rich-red late winter color. Their tolerance for poor soils make them pretty ubiquitous in some areas.
Ay, the sundry Gods smiled the wildebeest this time.
Ah, and by the way, no, I didn´t give him a hard time. I´m a tamed character…
Cheers,
Dave.
Those mopanies! Well it actually wasn’t them, it was the soils they grow in that got the better of me today. Hopefully tomorrow they be a little more lenient.