Diaries of a New Biologist: Steping into camera-trapping

Bonnie, one of 
the leopards, punching the camera-traps ("arg, one cannot get rid of 
paparazzis not even in the thicket" she commented indignant) 

Afte three months following the samango monkeys through their thorny and thick kingdom, my time came to switch to the predator side of the Project (although I’m still responsible of handling the mess of data we have of the monkeys).

Last Saturday, finally, I could experience the nice life of camera-trapping. The introduction was pretty good, going to check the traps of the mythical Sigurwana. I went at 7 to Bush camp to meet the French-Spanish and then we start to walk. To my horror, we had to climb the leopard trail through the chimney (It’s not that hard and I do it many afternoons just to do something, but the me in morning and the me in the evening are different people). After that, we followed to the Mount Lajuma and climbed until the settle, crossing the border of Lajuma and getting into the lands of Sigurwana.

After some slips, thanks to the killer-grass (don’t know the real name, but this is appropriate enough), and ups and downs through some hills we finally reach a sand road where we had to wait for the ranger. We were pretty co-ordinated and the man was there 30s after we arrived. He was a chatty middle-age man that, as the Afrikaner, was like a encyclopaedia of South African wildlife and conservation. He drove us to the different cameras while chatting about his plans to transform the little reserve into a research centre and teaching us things such as tell apart the footprints of a leopard and a brown hyena.

After collecting all the cards of the camera traps he took us to the fancy camping of the reserve, so we could copy the pictures into their computers, while having some coffee and cookies. The place was actually pretty awesome, the typical “safari” camping of the magazines.

Another day, we went to check cameras on the properties at the East of Lajuma; which was an 8-hours walk, including a short visit to a cave with paintings of the ancient inhabitants of the mountains, the Khoi San.

We also had to check one which was after climbing up and down a mountain and close to some more paintings and the cameras of the properties at the West of Lajuma; though that day we had to take the car because they are fairly apart from one another.

Back at the Barn, the processing of pictures starts which is, pretty much go one by one tagging the animals which appear on them. When the camera has taken around 500 pictures everything is alright, but when you find 4000 is kind of exhausting. Baboons love to hang around the cameras and they usually are in a quarter of them. Sometimes crested Guinean fowl and cows; but sometimes you get nice surprises, such as the tail of a Greater Bushbay, a caracal or a serval looking directly into the camera o a brown hyena with a kind of punk hairstyle. When we find that a leopard came around, we had to find out who is she or he by looking at the spots. Sometimes is easy, if the leopard has been seen before it that station; if not, you can be an hour swimming in a sea of spots and end up with a great headache; but is rewarding when you can finally give a name to the spotty cat on the picture.

Here are some examples of the images that we are lucky to see (and before you wonder, yeah, I’m allowed to use the images as long as I don’t show the information attached to them):