Daily Archive for June 25th, 2007

Plucking Leopard: Video

Eventually it all came together.

Brown Snake-eagle
My afternoon started off badly with more technology problems just when Khayeni was hunting at dusk.
Several hours later we were back on her trail hunting to the north-east of Noro pan. This is pretty cool country for us to hunt in as the bush opens up somewhat.
She was headed for a big herd of wildebeest but then changed tack and set her beady eyes on some impala. But they blew her cover and she retraced her steps back to Nhoro pan where she had a Scrub Hare racing for its life. And successful it was.

Peeping
Khayeni took a break resting up in the thickets south of Nhoro pan till around 2am when she again headed north.
This time a rather unsuspecting Sharpe’s Grysbok was plucked from the bush and hoisted up a nearby Sterculia tree safely away from the hyaenas. Here Khayeni proceeded to pluck her prize for about 20 minutes before feeding.

Resting on dinner
Well fed she lay around close by and at dawn was stalking an impala ram that had ventured into the vicinity. She was serious about it too, even though she still had 80% of a Grysbok in the tree. But the impala was too sharp busting her cover. She retreated out of sight hoping the impala would stop alarming the rest of the world of her presence.

Just stripes
It was home time for us. Well so I thought until we found Stephen had a branch pierce straight through his radiator. He wasn’t going anywhere. We removed the radiator in the field and hope to have it repaired to be back on Khayeni’s trail again this evening.
At this time of year one of the only plants flowering is the Impala Lilly. These stunning flowers look delicious too and my dad would love telling people how yummy and sweet the nectar was and having them try it.

There is nothing yummy about it. The nectar instantly dries out your mouth and leaves a horrible bitter taste!

Impala Lilly

Tjololo 25th June 2000

The Tjololo Diaries

25th June 2000
Tjololo took us further west along the Sand river than he has ever done before into an area that we know is free of male leopards as the previous male died several months ago. Tjellers has herself too moved into this area with pressure from the Paradise Valley female on the eastern side of her normal territory.
Tjololo was very relaxed in the area and quite happy to hang around with his new impala female kill which he treed straight away. The tree he chose was not very conducive to caching a carcass, as I filmed him and carcass precariously roaming around the tree exhausting him as he hung onto the dead weight hanging from his jaws, usually the weight is borne to some extent by the branch he is moving it along, until he eventually managed to secure it. Leaving the tree the carcass fell about an hour later.  He soon had it up another tree.


The kill was not very dramatic but I did film it, which is great news, except not much is seen with the usual dense cover of grass.
Heading up north we found 2 adult male lions finishing off a buffalo kill. In the early hours we headed back to Tjololo.