There’s been a big weather change. Yesterday’s maximum was 33 degrees C and today as the clouds rolled in for the day the temperature never got over 23 degrees C.
But that I don’t think had much effect on the wild dogs behaviour.
They were all out at the back of the den with the adults when I arrived and with one bark mom had them all scattering back into the den.
All was quiet for a couple of hours as I now sat perched on my same rock, but this time without my hide. I’m now sitting in the open about 10m from the den on an isolated rock. This is really close to try to habituate the dogs, but it’s the furthest I can get from them.
I reckon the dogs are now used to my hide but they aren’t getting used to me ‘cos they basically don’t know I’m there. So I have to make an appearance and they need to see me there all the time and that I actually don’t mean them any harm.
Mom arrived back after a few hours, saw me on the rock, barked and went round to the back of the den where she called and the pups went running for grub. (This behaviour was no different to when I was in the hide.)
But the pups came back shortly afterwards and hardly ventured from the den entrance as they kept an eye on this guy on the rock. But soon seemed to settle down.
They did on a couple of occasions go round to the back but were soon in the den again.
And that was them for the day. All day I could hear them squabbling in the den but they never ventured out again. (and so of course I didn’t even get any photographs today.)
As it was getting dark, no sunset as the cloud blanket smothered all, the adults came up from the valley to the den. They saw me, barked once and went round to the top of the hill. I didn’t see them again and when I left they didn’t bark.
So has me sitting in the open worked? Well it hasn’t made anything worse. The dogs reacted in much the same way as they did when I was in the hide. So lets just hope it can only get better.
These little guys are so cute.