Tembe Elephant Park

We have now been at Tembe two weeks and it should really be known as Tembe Dung Beetle Park! Yes they are David’s hands!

Dung Beetle (known here as ‘Spitfire’ due the sound it makes when flying past you)

This is a lovely place 30,000 Hectares of ‘sand forest’ which basically means the earth is all sand where some grass, shrubs and trees have grown into thick woodland in some areas. If anyone has been to Studland Bay near Poole in Dorset it is very similar to that, but rather than the whole area only going 1 mile inland it is 50/60 miles inland and down a couple hundred miles of coastline, with slightly alternative wildlife!

We have now gone back to some serious game viewing. The priority species we are checking here are Wild Dog, Lion and Elephant. The Wild Dogs are a bit of pain to catch up with mainly due to the serious lack of roads and sometimes our tracking equipment can’t find them due to distances involved, so due to the lack of hills to get some height it requires some serious tree or antenna climbing. Lions are much tougher to find as they prefer a tree to sleep under all day although they have come out to play on a couple of occasions. Elephants are all around and here they have as a percentage the largest Elephants and Tuskers (tusks weighing over 45 kilos each) in the world. The Elephants here are absolutely massive and we have not seen any of the top 10 yet!

David climbing one of the antenna to try and achieve a signal for the Dogs and Lions

The wild dogs though when found are great to watch especially as there are 9 adults and 5 pups (3 of which are below).  The dogs are so used to the vehicle that the adults frequently leave us to “baby sit” the pups whilst they go hunting knowing that they will be safe.  You have to remind yourself that they are deadly hunters when they look this cute!  

The Lion viewing though should improve dramatically as we are about to undertake a ‘Lion Call Up’ – this entails providing a light snack for the lions (usually a couple of warthog as opposed to a volunteer we are assured) and playing a dying pig sound from a loud speaker and the Lions apparently come running. On this occasion we will apparently be in a vehicle not on the back! (bad luck the kind person on the blog comments recently who requested heads in Lions mouths pictures!) The aim of this is to ensure vets can get up close and personal to the lions and check they are all healthy especially the 5 that are due shortly to be relocated to another park.

We could spend some serious time out and about as there are three sessions of monitoring available:-

4.30-11.00 – Wild Dog and Lions

11.30-3.00 - Elephants

3.30-7.00 – Wild Dogs and if did not find Lions earlier you need to try harder!

We did try all three recently but with temperatures in the mid 30’s with no cover it is a little bit of a challenge.

As you can see in the picture below, due to us usually being the first vehicle out some of our duties include removing trees knocked over by elephants to give us access but obviously someone has to take photos whilst Dawn tidies up!

What has been good fun here is having meals occasionally with other researchers talking about what is going on in our and other reserves and general admin type things which feels as if we are actually part of the team and really involved.

Last Sunday we went out with the three monitors here to the beach at Sodwana Bay about 70 kilometres away, obviously in between monitoring sessions! The beach was fantastic with only a few people about, perhaps this had something to do with the fact that there was a storm brewing whilst ended our stay rather abruptly. We are also allowed to take the 4x4 along the sand. This was then followed by a very special treat seeing people at a beach restaurant and having a fantastic home made Pizza!

Other exciting things that have happened over last two weeks-

·         Massive thunder and lightning storms – the noise is unbelievable and the lightening is incredible with regular W shaped bolts.

·         2 more snake types to add to our list in camp, green spotted and twig snake (latter very poisonous).

·         Seeing our wild dogs chase a herd of Elephants who did not like it very much and two Elephants then chased them back towards us with some of scariest noises we have ever heard.

·         Seeing the Wild Dogs being tracked by Lions and running off into the forest with us chasing by vehicle to make sure that none of the dogs had been killed which was then followed by the vehicle battery dying, the radio packing up and no mobile phone reception. We could not push the vehicle well enough to jump start it due to the sand and it being dark now being 6.30 at night, with Lions obviously very close by. We were 1.5 hours away from camp in the most remote area of the park, so we then had to sit and wait for 4 hours to be rescued after finally being missed.

As promised an appropriate picture from a few weeks ago which could have a few titles:-

Spot the mosquito bite! or David and Dawn enjoying the sunshine in South Africa!, or Wish you were here!

Tip of the week:-

Welcome Thunder and lightning storms – it means you have a good excuse for not getting up at 4.00 am!

Love

David and Dawn