SEE WE DO HAVE FUN!

HELPpppppp!

MALAWI? Where do I start? Last week we had no phone connection or internet for about 7 days. The country still has no fuel. The compensation is that the weather is great if you like it hot and although we have had a little rain the proper rains have not come upon us yet. The trees are growing their new leaves and the grass is starting to grow again.

The sad news here is that yet another elephant has been killed by poachers. She was shot twice in the body and managed to walk a couple of kilometres before collapsing and dying. The poachers managed to get her tusks, trunk and a little meat before disappearing into the bush. The scouts went searching for the poachers but had no luck but because the carcass was still fresh the meat did not go to waste and was sold, rightly or wrongly, to the locals in Kasungu, the main camp and at the gate. Should the meat have been left to rot?  I am sorry but I am not qualified to answer that one.

A reward system is now operating to try and motivate the scouts to work harder in catching the poachers and we will have to wait to see if it brings in any results. If anyone out there that reads this blog has any ideas on this or any other way to stop this devastation please let me know.

On a positive note the bird life is getting better here and there are many birds around the dam. I estimate between 500 to 700 at any one time. The fish eagles and osprey are still battling over the fishing rights and there are many birds of prey here which I cannot identify. One caught a swallow on the wing the other day. There are spur winged geese, yellow billed duck, white faced duck, black duck, redbilled teal and knobbilled duck. The African jacana and lesser jacana are common residence as well as various egrets, storks, herons as well as rock pratencole.

The large male hippo has set up camp in the pool right next to my house and if I don’t notice that he is there before I see him all hell breaks loose. I am not sure what has happened to the hippos. Last year there were around 15 adults and 1 baby. Now there are 9 adults and 6 babies.

The elephants are still coming to the dam although they are in decreased numbers but they still swim and play like children. Nearly every herd has at least one baby as well as several sub adults and the other day 5 of the big bulls appeared at the same time in a little herd. I just hope the poachers keep their filthy little hands off them.

The painted dogs have been seen several times in the last few weeks and seem to be doing well although I am not sure what their long term effect on the prey species in the park will be.

I saw the large male leopard at the lodge the other night and the lodge manager nearly jumped out of her skin with fright. I have him on one of my cameras at the house along with hippos, elephants, bush pigs and civet. Some of them are literally knocking on my back door.

The project has nearly come to a standstill due to the diesel issues but I am working with the lodge management to try and get the volunteer program up and running. Hopefully this will give us a sustainable source of money for the project.

The lion man, David Youldon, came to see me a couple of weeks ago to discuss the park and project and wishes to get involved with me here to do a feasibility study on the suitability of the park for release of lions. He works out of Zambia and has recently made a program for ITV on the rehabilitation of lions back into the wild.

If anyone out there has any spare cash that would like to donate to the park or the project there a million things I could spend it on.

If you have any comments on what you read on this blog or my website please let me know.

THIS POACHING MUST STOP NOW! PLEASE HELP.

THE POACHING CONTINUES AND WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT MORE THAN EVER.

I WILL NOT APOLOGISE FOR THE VERY GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING PHOTO OF THIS YOUNG ELEPHANT BUT THIS IS THE REALITY OF POACHING!!!

A few days ago the scouts found yet another poached elephant in the bush. She was around 10 years old, had no tusks and was probably poisoned. All the poachers took was her trunk and some meat from her back. WHAT A WASTE!

The main issue in my mind is that the scouts are not well trained and lack equipment and motivation for them to do a good job. Here in the park we need your help! Donations can go a long way here.

The good news is that the elephants are visiting the dam more and more and I think the hippos have had another baby. This could however be a sign that they are stressed and over breeding to compensate.  Sable, roan, hartebeest, zebra, buffalo, wild dog, lion, leopard, caracal, hyena, puku, wart hog, reed buck, duiker and oribi have all been seen during September which is very encouraging for the park.

The bird life including the osprey and lesser jacana are around and can be seen most days at the dam so adds to the attraction.

The little fruit bats have returned to my house and the cutest little things you have ever seen.

The land rover continues to burn oil and needs the cylinder/turbo sorting and this is just a matter of money which I don’t have a lot of at the moment.

SEPTEMBER BLOG

The weather here continues to get hotter although there is still  a chill at night which is very good and enables you to get to sleep.

WESM game count went well with many members taking part to count the animals on 3 different drives around the park. On Saturday morning, Saturday evening and Sunday morning last week up to 9 cars left the camp site and counted animals on 9 different routes around the park. Around 200 separate animals were counter on each drive. The most exciting was 3 caracals.  3 leopards were seen but only when people were driving to the event. It was a good opportunity to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I t will be interesting to see the results compared to the last ones taken in 2009.

There has been a report of 4 lions being seen. 1 female and 3 cubs. No painted dog sightings have occurred but staff at the lodge reported seeing 2 dogs which have actually turned out to be domestic dogs running wild.

As the water dries up around the park the elephants are starting to return to the dam and herds between 1 and 32 have been seen. They have even started to play in the water again and behave just like children in a swimming pool.

There are now 2 osprey and 2 fish eagles around the dam and they are fighting for the fishing rights. The fish eagles have a nest and because the female is sitting quite high in the nest now I assume she has young. Water birds are returning now and there are around 130 spur winged geese, a few knob billed ducks, saddle billed stork, black stork, goliath heron and the usual array of smaller birds like the watt led plover, green shank and lesser jacana and today a woolleynecked stork arrived.

The hippos have around 6 young ones now and although there are around 14 in all this means that the adults have been reduced by about 5.

The park continues to be attacked by poachers of various tyres ranging from killing the animals to cutting fire wood, charcoal burning and even mining for precious stones. If anyone has any ideas or wants to help reduce these practices let me know.

The house is coming along slowly due to money issues and the land rover is running but burning oil. Either the turbo seals are leaking or the valve guides have worn again. This limits the amount of driving that I want to do as I don’t want it to break down.

Although I have 9 cameras only 5 are still working so finding the wildlife at night is proving harder now however some of the results are still surprising like the water mongoose again and although elephants in the past have showed curiosity towards the cameras one actually leant against one and another took a swipe at one with its trunk. It’s a good job they are quite sturdy.

I am hoping to start to offer activity weekends for visitors at the lodge and this should help to subsidise my project. We are still hoping to run a volunteer program but this seems to be taking a long time to get off the ground.

Although the diesel problem went away for a couple of weeks it is now back with us and it makes life very difficult for travel. Nobody seems to have an answer but you never know.

Meet the ultimate nosey neighbour. They watch everything I do.

AUGUST 2011

My first few weeks back in Malawi have been interesting as usual. At the end of July we experienced a small earth quake that lasted about 10 seconds. Malawi lies on the edge of the Rift valley and every now and then the earth moves.

The animals are slowly returning to the dam as water dries up around the park. A few days ago 25 elephants turned up for a drink as well as a herd of around 25 buffalo. A troop of baboons arrived yesterday and soon disappeared again. Hippo’s are still around and there are now 4 young ones and I think one of the females is pregnant because she is huge.

6 guns shots were heard a couple of days ago and the scouts went looking for the poachers but only found foot prints,  a spent cartridge and a blood trail probably from a Puku.

A large herd of sable and also a herd of roan have recently been seen around the park.

There have been no sightings of the painted dogs since May and no signs of lions. Leopard are present and I have an excellent photo of a leopard only a couple of meters from the back of my house. Genet, civet, hippo, bush pig, porcupine and elephant have also been recorded at night over the last couple of weeks.

The new lodge concessionaires have been very busy preparing the place for visitors and have repainted and varnished throughout. New cutlery has been purchased along with many other new items to help bring the lodge up to standard. The swimming pool is being repaired which will bring a great of pleasure when it gets hot out here. New staff are being employed and trained and the new lodge manager is arriving soon. They have many plans for the future and I am hoping to help them as much as possible and we are planning to get an eco-volunteer project up and running.

Fuel is still a problem but we are hoping things will improve soon.

MY RETURN TO MALAWI

My first 2 weeks here in Malawi have been interesting to say the least. As usual no diesel. As you can imagine this not only makes it difficult for me to travel around but also makes life very difficult for all Malawians. I eventually managed to fill up with diesel after being here a week. Nothing much happened while in Lilongwe other than to meet old friends.

I have now been back in the National park for just over a week and again nothing very eventful has happened here. There are a few elephants around and the resident heard of puku and hippos are at the dambo. A couple of days ago one of the female hippos was killed in a fight. We cannot work out what happened or why this occurred but she eventually floated to the side of the dambo. I called the parks department officers and was not quite sure what they were going to do with the carcass. There are no crocodiles to clean up things like this. I soon found out what their was plan. A car arrived with twenty people in and they set about stripping the hippos leaving only a few pieces of skin and a couple of the insides that they will not eat. Job done, nothing was left to waste. On one hand it is sad to lose one the hippos but on the other it will feed a hundred people for around a month.

Not wanting to miss an opportunity to get some photos with my infra red cameras I have set them up around the remains and hope to get some pictures of hyenas and whatever else might come down to finish her off. One interesting observation was of a young hippos eating the contents of her stomach, all the grass. Was this possible her baby? Again nothing goes to waste out here.

Some good news for me is that the lodge has a new concessionaire, Quelccaya, and we are hoping to set up a collaboration between my project and the lodge.

If you want to see where I live go to Google earth, Malawi. About half way up to the west is Kasungu National Park. Follow the road into the park and to Lifupa lodge. Zoom in to the widest part at the end of the dam and you will come across a little house all on its own. That is my house. The Department of National Parks and wildlife kindly let me stay there in return for the work I do for them. I am slowly ‘doing the place up’ and with my solar panel I have electricity, I have water some days and have a flushing toilet. The donkey boiler outside still needs a little work and some of the water pipes need to be cleared of 10 years of ‘stuff’. I will then be able to have a hot bath. (dream on) a few litres of paint are still needed and the place will be quite nice.

I didn’t know Africa could be so cold. I am not usually here at this time of year so do not have much experience of the weather in July. During the day it is lovely but at night it drops to about 5 degrees C which is quite chilly. I have a fire place in the living room and will try a fire some day but I don’t want to burn the place down as it has a thatch roof.

Keep in touch and drop me a line if you like what you read.

P.S. I just received one of the best presents I have had in a long time. One of the girls bought me a blanket.

MY RETURN TO KASUNGU

I am returning to Malawi on the 30^th June and arriving on the 1 July. I hope to gather more information on the painted dogs, lions, cheetah and leopard as well as looking out for the elephants and other wildlife. Kasungu hosts a great deal of other species like snakes, amphibians and plant life which I will also be looking at.

I have been unsuccessful in raising any funding for the project so as usual I will have to spend my own money to continue with the survey. I cannot afford to buy radio collars and pay for training for the scouts and local communities so this will have to wait until finance can be found. This means the wild life is going to continue to suffer from poaching and encroachment which means a lack of food.

The local community within the park continue to suffer from malaria and sleeping sickness which again due to lack of finances will mean no added treatment for them. Earlier this year 2 children that I know both died of Malaria just for the sake of £3 worth of anti-malaria treatment. Food is often in short supply for some of the staff and children and this leads to them poaching for food.

NO LUCK YET!

I have been writing to many organisations for support and donations to help protect the painted dogs here in Kasungu. Absolutely no luck yet. If anyone has any ideas of how to raise the profile of this project please let me know.

The good news from Kasungu is that dogs have been seen on several occasions since I have been back in the UK. No other news has been reported to me.

HELP REQUIRED

I am back in the UK for a while trying to raise funds to protect these painted dogs. If you have any ideas let me know.

MORE VIDEO OF THE PAINTED DOGS

PAINTED DOG VIDEO

BARN OWL

I managed to take this photo of a barn owl the other day. It resides in an old pump house close to the lodge but has managed to escape my efforts for some time now. There are always fresh pellets and it seems to do well on mice and other small rodents.

BUSH BUCK

The park has been very quiet for the last few weeks just like the rest of Africa when the rains come. So I have decided to return to the UK early to catch up on paper work and try to raise some much needed money to help support the project and inparticular the protection for the wild dogs.

I returned to Lilongwe because I have Malaria and decided it would be better to be there than in Kasungu just in case things became complicated. The worst seems to be over now.

Just before leaving I managed a shot of this bush buck. They hang around the main camp area for protection and as you can see she seems quite at home.

MORE DOGS FROM 11TH FEB.

MORE PICTURES OF DOGS FROM 11TH. FEB

NEW PACK OF PAINTED DOG IN KASUNGU

A new pack of Painted dog (wild dog) have been seen and recorded in Kasungu National Park in Malawi.
Yesterday the 11th February 2011 I received a call from the Divisional Manager, Alphius Lipiya, of Kasungu National Park to say that he had just seen 5 painted dog. All adults. On arriving at the site there had clearly been several dogs around as there were foot prints everywhere, they were no longer around so we tried to find where they had gone. On inspection of a hole under a tree where the dogs had been digging was what we believe to be a striped weasel still curled up and ready to defend itself against the dogs or us. He looked to be ok but obviously it was very shaken. We left him there and returned to the camp. Some people have all the luck, I had seen one dog in 2009 but nothing since, yet people that weren’t looking for them had seen them again.
Knowing that the habit of dogs is to stay in the same area, if they have made a kill, I returned to the same spot at about 1800hrs to see if they were going to continue with their search for prey. There was still no sign of them so I turned the land rover around and decided to wait for a few minutes to let it get a bit darker. I had no sooner done this when right in front of me were 9 painted dogs. They were obviously timid about coming close to the car but that’s what they did. I turned the engine off and let them come as close as they wanted, some even sat down on the road while others investigated the car. All of a sudden one dog actually barked and they all got up and ran a few yards away. Some sort of warning I assume. They soon settled again but after a few minutes trotted down the road in the direction I was facing. I followed at a respectable distance while they ran in and out of the bush looking for prey. It was difficult to see their sexes but it appeared that most might be female although there was definitely at least one male.
I took many photos and videos of the dogs until they finally disappeared into the bush. On close inspection of these photos I believe that this is a new pack and not the same ones that we had recorded in October 2010. 2 of these dogs have white patches on them however none of the 17 dogs seen in October have any white patches other than the tips of their tails being white.
I have posted some pictures of these dogs on this blog for people to see however due to the time, cost and efficiency of the internet in the bush here in Malawi I can only post small pictures and it is very difficult for me to send large attachments to individuals to research.

FRUIT BAT IN MALAWI?

ZEBRA REPLY

Here is the answer to the question about the type of Zebra we have here in Kasungu. When I first saw them I knew there was somthing strange about them and that they were not just standard Burchell's zebra.
"The Zebras in Kasungu are Crawshay's zebras, they can sometimes have shadow stripes and most noticeably they have horizontal stripes the full length of the legs and stripes which often extend all the way round the belly. You should be able to find them on the internet on wikipedia or something like that but in books unless you have a very comprehensive mammal book the Crawshay's will be included in plains zebras and may not even include images to compare to."
The talk at WESM went very well and attendees aprreciated my efforts.
All is very quiet here at the moment except for the local people fishing in the dam. It is illegal but they dont seem to care. They say it is done because of poverty so I am going to try and offer some of the more desperate among them some work and see if that helps or not. Only time will tell.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

I have not written anything lately as it has been very quiet here. I have not seen any elephants for about 10 days now although there is often spoor left at night. The hippo and puku are still around the dam and the good news is that one of the hippos is now a mum and has a tiny baby. It is not as long as her head yet. Last year’s babies play a lot of the day and can be seen play fighting. When they are chasing each other they almost leave the water. Even when I go for drives in the bush most of the animals seem to have disappeared although a couple of days ago I did see roan again. Most of the larger water birds have found another place of sanctuary although the fish eagles are still around along with a martial eagle. There are many bats, swallows and swifts.
At this time of year it heaven for botanists as there are many wild flowers and orchids around. I have tried looking some of them up in my book but it does not cover many of the ones I see. If anyone is interested in carrying out a study of the flowers now is the time to do it.
On Monday I am going to Lilongwe to give a talk about the wild dogs and wildlife of Kasungu to members of WESM. I hope they enjoy it.