Country Living in Southern Africa

Last year I wrote about the Bat-eared Foxes of Bakoorvlakte. I have recently tried to find them again, especially now that it is winter again, and theoretically they should be more active in the day. I haven’t really had any luck myself to find them in day time, but my trail-cam did.

My husband gave me a Bushnell Trophy Cam for my birthday last year. (I asked for one, but I certainly wasn’t expecting a huge gift like that.) It is something I have wanted to play with for a very long time now. You can leave the camera somewhere, tied to a tree or pole and motion sensors triggers the camera to take pictures. This specific camera can take night-time pictures, but it has a white flash, which means the animals can see it. Which could explain some of the pictures I found on this last round, with animals staring at the camera and also a very interesting visitor.

On my last camera-stunt I tied it to a tree in a quieter area on the farm, quieter from human movement at least. There seemed to be a lovely game path and I hoped it would be the perfect spot to leave the camera. If I leave the camera in an area with lots of grass, the movement of the wind in the grass triggers the camera and I get hundreds of pictures of the grass moving. I can set the sensitivity on the sensor, but I am scared that I will miss animals if I do that. I am still playing around with the settings, but to get back to my story, this specific area has very little grass, so I hoped it was perfect. It turned out to be even better. This is the most animals I have captured in 24 hours. My daughter and I left the area at 16:05.

An hour and a half later, the first one on the scene (that is besides some cattle) was none other than one of my beloved foxes.

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An hour later, and it seems the fox brought some reinforcements.

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On the same night the camera also captured some Scrubhare, a Small Spotted Genet, 2 Spotted Thick-Knees and a Common Duiker early morning.

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I have to finish with my favourite pictures of the night, this Spotted Eagle Owl who came for a walkabout. My guess is that the bull that walked through slowly just before, triggered the camera flash for a long while, which in turn attracted some insects, which attracted the owl. If this wasn’t the case, I am not to sure what the owl was doing.

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