Born Free

Every morning we work from 7am to midday, when we stop for lunch. After lunch we have a few hours to ourselves, and then in the afternoon is usually some kind of game drive. The project leader, Clive, and his assistant Beth, are incredibly knowlegable and have shown us all kinds of animals living in the reserve.

Probably wondering why 2 trucks of
 tasty meat are sitting watching him!

I think the highlight of the game drives has to be tracking all the 7 radio collared leopards. We only caught a glimpse of a few of the leopards, who are so well camoflaged you often don't see them until they are right in front of you. One of the leopards, MJ, has 2 6-month old cubs who she usually stashes in the mountains while she goes off to hunt for them. However they are reaching the age where they need to start accompanying mum to learn how to hunt. We were so fortunate on Sunday morning to have not only tracked MJ to a nice shady spot, but also her cubs who were busily eating a kill that she had placed in a tree for them. The cubs were only a couple of feet long and we watched them for several hours.



Barely hanging on

MJ the mother

Wild dog

Abbey the cheetah

We also tracked hyena and wild dogs. A healthy clan of hyena actually rank above a pride of lions in nature based on the power of their jaws, and I got to stand 10 feet away from one (albeit a sleeping one)! The hyena at Okonjima aren't like normal hyena because they are solitary and would never be solitary normal. This particular hyena, Pooh, was the hyena I mentioned in my post about the vet visits. Luckily he is back roaming free and in good health. Wild dogs are endangered in Africa- there are only about 500 left in the wild. It took a few attempts to track the wild dogs and when we finally saw them it was only very briefly.

Another real highlight was tracking some of the cheetahs that are in the larger rehabilitation enclosures, with the aim of eventually releasing the animals. Having worked closely with the cheetahs in the welfare enclosures and learning about the overall aim for these cats, it was good to see the ones that have a chance still. We saw 3 cheetahs- Mulder, Abbey and TinTin who are all siblings and hunt in a coalition (the name for a group of cheetah). They were all very relaxed when all of a sudden Mulder got grouchy and tried to charge us- a bit scary but luckily we were in good hands. Hopefully one day these cheetahs may be released back into Namibia, but they still need to be a bit more afraid of humans first!

Pretty cute for a squirrel!

 

I've seen plenty of game animals since arriving in Okonjima, but not all of them. The numbers and type of game are controlled in the reserve to maintain the predator-prey balance. Some typical game we have seen are Oryx (the most mountain adapted antelope), Greater Kudu, Impala (nicknamed Bambi), Steenbok (which curl up like stones when afraid- Steen=stone) and Dik-Diks which are the smallest antelope in Africa and mate for life.

One animal that I have seen more than enough of is the giraffe, however they are so graceful and yet bizarre that I never tire of seeing them! Did you know that a group of stationary giraffes is called a tower, but if they are on the move it is a journey?! A group of giraffes is more of a social group- they don't stick in family groups unless it is a mother and her calf- and they don't stay in the same group. And giraffes have the same number of vertebrae in their necks as humans! Enough of the useless facts (might come in handy for a pub quiz), and on with the pictures!


My absolute favourite animal however, has to be the zebra. In Okonjima reserve there are mainly Mountain zebra, which have white bellies, horizontal stripes down their legs, a brown patch on their snout (for lack of a better word) and a grid pattern of stripes on their butts. I didn't realise until I toured the rest of Namibia that Mountain zebra are actually quite endangered so it was a priveledge getting to see so many. [More on zebra later. I might even dedicate an entire post to them.]