Trail Cameras
The Mayanja river is teeming with wildlife – but not all of these species are active during the day, some have been persecuted by humans enough to keep their distance, and some are just shy and like to hide in the shadows. Part of my research here is to determine activity patterns of sitatunga, meaning to see what time during the 24-hour day they are moving. To this end (since I can’t be in a machan for 24 hours!), I brought some remote-triggered trail cameras to deploy in areas where we think sitatunga are moving. These cameras have an infrared sensor to take pictures at night, and they are set so that anything that moves in front of the sensor will trigger the camera to take a series of three pictures. This set of pictures will hopefully allow us to see when sitatunga are travelling, feeding, and perhaps even track their movements around the study area.
These cameras do not only take pictures of sitatunga. ANYTHING that moves in front of the sensor triggers it – when the grass or papyrus gets very tall, that can mean a memory card full of 30,000 pictures of papyrus blowing in the wind. This can also mean that other visitors to the trail camera area are documented. There is a large-scale project going on in Tanzania that is based on determining what species of animal are pictured in a series of “camera traps” across the Serengeti ecosystem. Here, it means that some of the more elusive animals can be featured on my blog!
Say hello to some of the more secretive residents of the Mayanja river!
Bushpig Bushpig are primarily nocturnal animals, and when the trail cameras take a picture at night it is in black and white. I was lucky enough to have a mother bushpig and her piglets move during the day, so that you can see the coloration of this species. Of all the pig species I have seen, bushpig may be the prettiest (certainly a lot more photogenic than the wild hogs found in the Southeastern U.S.) On adult pigs, the white face is set off by the reddish-brown coat – but those chestnut-brown piglets are just too cute.
Warthog
I stated that the bushpig is pretty; with the warthog, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I was also lucky enough to get a few pictures of a warthog family complete with piglets, confirming my opinion that all baby animals are cute in their own way. Warthogs have curved tusks, which they use to deter predators. When they enter a burrow, they enter them backwards, so that their tusks are presented to any intruder.
Olive Baboon
Baboons travel in large groups called troops, which include many males, females and young. Males are much larger than females, and have an impressive fluffy mane. Young baboons hitch a ride on their mothers, either hanging on their stomachs or riding on their backs. Baboons are omnivorous, eating a wide variety of things – which keeps them in conflict with humans. They are notorious for raiding crops, and are heavily persecuted for this reason. Thus, they tend to try and keep their distance from humans – but they seem to like the areas where I put up some camera traps!
Colobus Monkey
Being black-and-white, you would think that colobus monkeys would be very conspicuous against the trees. What really catches your eye, though, is how fast they move and how agile they are. Even very young colobus monkeys move so quickly and climb trees so easily that it seems they are showing off. There is one machan that colobus monkeys have basically claimed as a nighttime lair. If we get to this machan early in the day, there is a chaotic, raucous, exciting evacuation of colobus monkeys from their resting spot. SO far, they have left it pretty clean, and they vacate pretty quickly when we arrive, but I definitely get a feeling that we are infringing on their space. Nevertheless, the best pictures I have of them may be from camera traps due to their quickness – by the time I get my handheld camera focused on one, they are leaping to the next tree limb. They are fun to watch!
Hippopotamus
In the case of hippos, camera traps may be the safest way to get close up pictures. Hippos are some of the most dangerous animals in Africa – responsible for more human injuries and fatalities than lions. In the wild, hippos are territorial, aggressive, and notoriously ill-tempered towards humans and their boats. At night, they leave the river to travel on land, grazing along the way. They will travel many kilometers at night (some estimate up to 20), but will find their way back to the river by sunrise. Hippos usually are found in groups, a large mature male accompanied by a few females, their offspring, and immature males not quite ready to go their own way. When I see trail camera pictures of hippos, I am struck by how large they are, and am glad I haven’t run into one that close in person.
MYSTERY ANIMAL: Serval?
Sometimes, the images you get on the camera trap are ambiguous, blurry, underexposed, etc. In this image, the animal was moving through the detection zone pretty quickly, and originating from behind the camera, thus the camera didn’t get good pictures. From what I can tell (and I have gotten a couple of second opinions), this is a picture of a serval, a lesser cat species. Serval are known to be in this area, but they are very secretive and stealthy. In this case, I had recovered a camera from its regular location because it was not taking pictures at night. So I set up the (supposedly) malfunctioning camera at camp, in an effort to test its ability (the camp donkeys move through on a regular basis during the day, so I intended just to check the daytime functionality before determining the night glitch). The first set of pictures it took were of this animal – so not only did I get pictures of a serval, but it was moving through camp!
More trail camera pix to come-
-Camille
