January sightings, wildlife monitoring and interesting research projects.`
Sightings of the month
Thank you to all who recorded their sightings in the book this month
Here is the number of recorded sightings of a few species during January:
Highlights:
- Lion and Leopard sightings were the most reported, as usual, with 24 leopard sightings and 21 lion sightings. There were reported sightings of two mating pairs of leopards and a mating pair of lions.
- Highlight mammalian sightings: A Brown Hyena was spotted at Sibon Dam! This is an extremely rare sighting to have had, and one we have been waiting for for years.
- Birding highlights included a Black Stork seen on Argyle, a Dwarf Bittern at Zebra Pan, a Greater Painted Snipe at Goedehoop Dam, White Storks on Argyle Road and the new addition to the Southern Ground Hornbill family on Argyle.
- Reptilian specie: Rock Monitor, Nile Crocodile, Flap-necked Chameleon, Leopard Tortoise, Speke’s Hinged Tortoise, Giant Plated Lizard, Marsh Terrapin, Mozambique Spitting Cobra, Black Mamba, Yellow-bellied Sand Snake, Peter’s Thread Snake, Mopani Snake, Rhombic Egg-eater, Puffadder, Eastern Tiger Snake, Boomslang and Serrated Hinged Terrapin.
- Amphibian highlights: Bubbling Cassina, Banded Rubber Frog, Foam Nest Frog/Grey Tree Frog and Eastern Olive Toad.
- Mammalians recorded: Leopard, Lion, Wild Dog, African Wildcat, Caracal, Brown Hyena, Spotted Hyena, Honey Badger, Elephant, Buffalo, Impala, Kudu, Wildebeest, Giraffe, Zebra, Waterbuck, Warthog, Hippo, Nyala, Bushbuck, Klipspringer, Sharpe’s Grysbok, Duiker, Steenbok, Warthog, Chacma Baboon, Vervet Monkey, Scrub Hare, Tree Squirrel, Springhare, Dwarf Mongoose, Banded Mongoose, White-tailed Mongoose and Slender Mongoose.
- Bird species recorded: Arrow-marked Babbler, Crested Barbet, Bateleur, Chinspot Batis, European Bee-eater, Little Bee-eater, White-fronted Bee-eater, Grey Go-Away Bird, Dwarf Bittern, Dark-capped Bulbul, Golden-breasted Bunting, Grey-headed Bush-shrike, Kori Bustard, Bronze-winged Courser, Temminck’s Courser, Black Crake, Great Spotted Cuckoo, Jacobin Cuckoo, Levaillant’s Cuckoo, Emerald-spotted Wood Dove, Laughing Dove, Namaqua Dove, Ring-necked Dove, Fork-tailed Drongo, African Fish Eagle, Brown Snake Eagle, Martial Eagle, Tawny Eagle, Wahlberg’s Eagle, Verreaux’s Eagle-owl, Jameson’s Firefinch, African Paradise Flycatcher, Grey Tit-flycatcher, Crested Francolin, Egyptian Goose, Dark Chanting Goshawk, Helmeted Guineafowl, African Harrier-Hawk, Bat Hawk, African Hawk-eagle, Retz’s Helmet-shrike, White-crested Helmet-shrike, Green-backed Heron, Grey Heron, African Grey Hornbill, Southern Ground Hornbill, Southern Red-billed Hornbill, Southern Yellow-billed Hornbill, Hadeda Ibis, Giant Kingfisher, Pied Kingfisher, Woodland Kingfisher, Yellow-billed Kite, Red-crested Korhaan, Blacksmith Lapwing, Crowned Lapwing, Dusky Lark, Sabota Lark, Black-headed Oriole, African Scops Owl, Pearl-spotted Owlet, Red-billed Oxpecker, Yellow-billed Oxpecker, Brown-headed Parrot, Three-banded Plover, Tawny-flanked Prinia, Black-backed Puffback, European Roller, Lilac-breasted Roller, Purple Roller, Double-banded Sandgrouse, White-browed Scrub-robin, Magpie Shrike, Red-backed Shrike, Southern White-crowned Shrike, Greater Painted Snipe, Southern Grey-headed Sparrow, Natal Spurfowl, Swainson’s Spurfowl, Burchell’s Starling, Cape Starling, Violet-backed Starling, Black Stork, Saddle-billed Stork, White Stork, Woolly-necked Stork, Amethyst Sunbird, White-bellied Sunbird, Barn Swallow, Lesser Striped Swallow, Little Swift, Brown-crowned Tchagra, Water Thick-knee, Groundscraper Thrush, Southern Black Tit, White-backed Vulture, Blue Waxbill, Common Waxbill, Cape Weaver, Lesser Masked Weaver, Red-headed Weaver, Spectacled Weaver, Red-billed Buffalo Weaver, Long-tailed Paradise Whydah, Green Wood-hoopoe and Golden-tailed Woodpecker.
Invertebrates have been very active after the rainfall, as expected. Highlight invertebrate sightings included:
- Four removals of the highly venomous Transvaal Thicktail Scorpion (Parabuthus transvaalicus). All scorpions were removed and relocated safely. Multiple other scorpion species were observed during the month, mostly from the genus Uroplectes (Lesser Thicktail or Bark scorpions, which are mildly venomous).
- A rare sighting of a Forest Huntsman spider (Panaretella spp.) in one of the aloes in the garden at Reception. The distribution of this spider is usually within the forest regions of the Eastern Cape and Kwa-Zulu Natal, but they are not well studied in this region.
- Interestingly, there have been very few Golden Orb-web Spiders, Shield Bugs and Stink Bugs, and only one Garden Orb-web spider seen so far.
Sightings Monitoring: Emphasis on the Collared Wild Dogs
This month has been slightly different to other months of tracking and monitoring sightings, as we have added an extra layer to our monitoring using the collared wild dogs’ GPS data. Not only are we relying on reported sightings via the radio or in the sightings book at Reception, but we are now also able to partially track the movements of collared wild dogs using EarthRanger.
In essence, what this means is that we still manually log every sighting we can of all species, but we can now also see where the wild dogs have been moving when they aren’t being viewed and can use that information combined with the manually recorded sightings to draw comparisons to other animals in the area at the same time. Although these comparisons do not mean that we can reliably say there was any form of interaction between the wild dogs and the other animals, it does assist us with putting potential “puzzle pieces” together in the greater scheme of things. It also assists us with gathering information on how the different packs move, whether they interact with each other, and how territories might change over time (including possible reasons why they may have changed at all).
To give you a breakdown of how the collars work, every 6 hours the collars are programmed to upload their GPS position, which then updates on EarthRanger (and other relevant platforms using the data for research purposes). On EarthRanger, we can see those locations and connect them to show how long the dogs were in a particular area, the rough patterns of their movements and the rough distances covered by each collared animal. Below are three screenshots showing the movement of both packs in the same 21-day period:
The Umbabat pack moved 92.10km over the 21-day period, while the Klaserie pack moved 112.78km. It is important to note that these distances would be a lot greater in reality: these distances are calculated from GPS uploads every 6 hours, connecting them in a straight line. The wild dogs do not move in a straight line, and as such every movement between those 6 hours is not recorded. It is interesting to note, though, that their territories do not overlap at all over the 21 days, and with the rivers flowing they have not been able to cross any major rivers this month, which has limited them somewhat from their “normal” movements.
We hope you enjoy seeing something different for a sightings update this month!
Words by Tess Woollgar, images courtesy of Alex Jordan, Heitlé Booysen, Max Schillar, Maureen Kirk, Lynne Pascoe & Tess Woolgar. Screenshots and data obtained from EarthRanger.