March Sightings Update

Here is a summary of my March tours. It’s been a pretty good month for the Big 5, as well as Wild Dogs. With the grass being as tall as it is at the end of the wet season, cheetahs and jackal (both preferring the open grasslands) have been scarce.

The 4 rows in the table below indicate the following:

1^st row – nr. of tours animal has been seen

2^nd row – nr. of days animals has been seen

3^rd row – nr. of sightings of animal

4^th row – nr. of individual animals seen

Total tours: 4 Total days: 14

Day	Elephant	Rhino	Buffalo	Lion	Leopard	Cheetah	Wilddog	Hyena	Jackal
Tour	4	4	4	4	3	0	3	2	0
Day	11	6	9	8	3	0	4	3	0
Sights	Y	14	Y	10	3	0	5	5	0
Nr	Y	26	Y	44	3	0	33	9	0

Simon Vegter

Wild Wings Safaris

www.wild-wings.co.za

Sighting of the Month!

For March, the sighting of the month must definitely be a wild dog kill. We found the small pack of six individuals sleeping along the side of the road early in the morning. There wasn’t much activity until they started waking up. They stretched and groomed each other, before heading down the road on their daily routine of finding something to hunt. Wild dogs primarily hunt medium-sized prey like impala and therefore need to hunt regularly (pretty much every day) to supply enough food for the entire pack. The pack hunts together, but because they hunt with stamina and often chase the prey over a distance, one often looses the hunt within the vegetation. On this morning I noticed the leading dogs spotting something in the bush and off they went leaping into the bush with the others quick on their heels. With the bush being very dense I thought that was going to be last we’ll see of them, but it wasn’t long before the dogs returned to the road and managed to catch a duiker right next to road. The duiker was squealing for dear life, and as is the habit of wild dogs, they started feeding before the duiker was officially dead. It’s quite horrific to see, but also an equal privilege to be able to witness something like that in the wild. During the feeding frenzy they dragged the duiker slightly deeper into the bush and devoured it within minutes. The squealing attracted the attention of a nearby hyena who was hoping for an easy meal, but being challenged by 6 wild dogs, he had to admit defeat and stay on the outskirts until the dogs were entirely finished and he might manage a few remaining scraps. It was an awesome sighting that’s often only seen on documentaries. Definitely the sighting of the month!

 

Simon Vegter

Wild Wings Safaris

www.wild-wings.co.za