Tag Archive for 'microlight'

Sex at the dinner table: Video

Published

on April 9, 2009

. 1 Comment Tags:adventure, africa, animal-kingdom, blog, blogumentary, bush, bush-knowledge, carcass, conservation, dinner, documentary, ecotraining, education, endangered-species, experience, film, filmmaker, flickr, fly, GLTP, gonarezhou, Great-Limpopo-Transfrontier-Park, hunting, IUCN-Red-List, kill, lion, lions, malilangwe, mashable, mating, microlight, narrowcasting, nature, Open-Content-Alliance, pamushana, peace-parks, photo, photos, podcasting, predators, sex, table, teach, ultralight, video, wild, wild dogs, wildcasting, Wildebeest, wilderness, wildlife, wildlife-documentary, youtube, zimbabwe

Those lions sure weren’t wasting any time the other day. Sjambok was hardly keen to feed with other things on his mind.

Having got back today and I was anxious to get out in the field in search of the wild dogs.
My first port of call was the airstrip and I took to the skies in my microlight. Although I was happy to get a signal on the dogs, they were a lot further west from where I’d left them the other day. Really bad country. Country where our scouts have no control, but they did lift hundreds of snares from the area the other day in a few hours. With so many snares in the area, I can only hope prey is scarce in the area and the dogs soon come back east.

The bush was dense and I wasn’t able to see the dogs but the only good news was that Jiggy’s signal was moving. So I trust he is fine.
I’ll keep following up on them and somehow hope to get across the river by car and hopefully get to see them.

A gentle awakening: Video

Published

Wildcaster

on March 16, 2009

in videopost

. 2 Comments Tags:adventure, africa, animal-kingdom, blog, blogumentary, bush, bush-knowledge, cites, conservation, documentary, dogs, ecotraining, education, endangered-species, experience, film, filmmaker, flickr, fly, giraffe, GLTP, gonarezhou, hunting, IUCN-Red-List, malilangwe, mashable, microlight, narrowcasting, nature, Open-Content-Alliance, pamushana, peace-parks, photo, photos, podcasting, predators, puppy, pups, sunset, teach, ultralight, video, wild, wild dogs, wildcasting, wilderness, wildlife, wildlife-documentary, youtube, zimbabwe

Luckily I had planned to fly this morning anyway, as I’m sure I’d never have picked up the wild dogs. They had moved a long way north from the hills where I left them. All looking rather lean but well.

I’d been doing some flying on a neighbouring reserve just helping out with an aerial perspective on the place for them.

In the end I only got to the dogs after midday. They were totally spaced out hardly acknowledging my arrival. Take that!

As regular as clockwork they all woke at 5pm for the afternoon ritual. 2minutes later they were all back to sleep. Yes it’s just like that, frantically greeting each other and then fast asleep again. In other wild dog packs, usually when they wake from their afternoon siesta, they have their greeting ceremony and head straight out hunting. These guys haven’t read the books.

Later the pack headed on north to the boundary fence. I really don’t like it when they hang around here and the pups showed keen interest on hearing voices across the way.
Thankfully Jiggy and Puzzles were old hats at all of this and headed on west. The pups soon caught up with them as it got dark.
Time for me to call it a day.

The sunset on the way home was truly amazing. I took a bunch of photos and moved on. But it got better, so I took some more and moved on. And it got better and then better again. Amazingly I made 4 stops on the way home to photograph the sunset as it played out its ever changing display of colours.

Moon sets on wild dogs: Video

Published

Wildcaster

on February 11, 2009

in videopost

. 4 Comments Tags:adventure, aerial, africa, animal-kingdom, blogumentary, bush-knowledge, cites, conservation, documentary, ecotraining, education, endangered-species, experience, film, filmmaker, flickr, fly, GLTP, gonarezhou, Great-Limpopo-Transfrontier-Park, hunting, IUCN-Red-List, malilangwe, mashable, microlight, narrowcasting, Open-Content-Alliance, pamushana, peace-parks, photos, podcasting, predators, teach, ultralight, video, wild dogs, wildcasting, wildlife, wildlife-documentary, youtube, zimbabwe

My biggest fear so nearly came true!
With my car all fixed I was out rolling at sunrise or was it moonset, in search for the wild dogs, picking up from where Mark left them yesterday. But I hadn’t even got there when I got a call on the radio that 5 dogs had been seen crossing the tar road to the north of the reserve. This is communal lands and definitely not dog friendly country.

My head was spinning with the consequences and until I’d confirmed this all myself, there was little I could do.

Mark and I took the air soon afterwards. But just before take-off I got another call on the radio that 7 dogs had been seen at Manyoka, which is inside the reserve.
But these numbers didn’t add up. 12 dogs? Was there a mis-count? Just as well we were taking to the air to settle any confusion.
I picked up a signal early on and was beside myself to find all 11 dogs on the move at Nduna dam with Puzzles leading the way.

What a massive relief, AND what good news that there are other dogs in the area. Could this just maybe even be Whisky with a new pack?
We circled the dogs for ages as they headed west with Mark shooting video and I was trying to shoot whatever stills I could.
Back on the ground it was good to see the dogs all well, although a little lean.

They seemed reluctant to get on the move in the late afternoon, milling around the hills near Nduna. I suspected they may be waiting for night fall where they’d be hunting with the full moon. But around sunset they crossed over the hills and headed south with some urgency and I had to leave them as night took over.

Elephant bull waivers: Video

Published

Wildcaster

on January 20, 2009

in videopost

. 5 Comments Tags:Add new tag, adventure, africa, animal, animal-kingdom, buffalo, bush, bush-knowledge, conservation, documentary, ecotraining, education, elephant, elephants, endangered-species, experience, flickr, fly, GLTP, gonarezhou, Great-Limpopo-Transfrontier-Park, hippo, IUCN-Red-List, malilangwe, mashable, microlight, narrowcasting, nature, Open-Content-Alliance, pamushana, peace-parks, photo, photos, podcasting, predators, sable, teach, ultralight, video, waterhole, wild, wild dogs, wildcasting, wilderness, wildlife, wildlife-documentary, youtube, zebra, zimbabwe

I was hoping to get my blog up to you yesterday, but as hard as we tried we just couldn’t locate the wild dogs.
I had hoped for an early start this morning but an all night drizzle put a dampener on that one for a couple of hours.

Heading up the hill to check for a signal for the dogs and I got a beep way way to the south. It was almost in the same place as the signal we had yesterday. So we continued to search on the ground travelling extensively in the southern areas all the way to Malevula hill. Still not a peep.

I then changed modus operandi and went in search of elephants. We came across a couple of bulls having their mud wallow and this dude just loving all the splashing. His friend wasn’t so keen and moved on in the shade.

But I wanted to find the elephant herds. And sure enough I found evidence of them right up in the north east. I presumed they might be here in search of marula berries, which are just ripening. They just love them.
The evidence of the herds was there but we didn’t find them. I think they must be in the thickets right up in the north.

Late afternoon I again took to the skies in search of the dogs. We flew for ages in the lovely light seeing lots of buffalo, a number of white rhino, all the general game but no sign on the dogs. This has now really snookered me.

I’m really stuck as to what to do next? And really I don’t have an option, I must just soldier on.