When elephants take a shine to your trailcamera…
Hi everyone! Goodness, it has been a boring couple of weeks without any trail cameras out in the bush! Luckily, Tales of the Trailcam is back! New trail cameras, new tales to tell!
After the hyenas demolished Paul and Susan’s Bushnell, Ed Barker contacted me. He was missing our Trail cam footage and very generously offered to buy us a new trail camera! It was lovely meeting Ed and his wife and I am extremely grateful for the stunning Browning Trail Camera they brought from the US! Thank you so much, Ed!
I also bought a replacement Maginon Camera from my friend Pam and so we now have two working trail cameras again. Which, I have to be honest with you, I am very scared to use! After losing two trail camera’s to hyenas in a short space of time, I don’t want to offer the hyenas a new chew toy! (You can read the blog about hyenas eating my first trail cam in the blog Trailcam Tragedy and Tickbite Fever, and the second one in ‘Dear Hyenas of Wolhuter, we need to talk.)
So Steven has had the Maginon up at the waterhole, but out of reach from the hyenas. And I have had Ed’s Browning up at our front gate a few nights. The two trail cameras still need protective steel boxes though. I have been working on a design for a hyena/elephant/big five-proof security box. I will keep you all posted on the progress, but until then we are very careful with our cameras!
The first clip Steven got, was of a hyena checking the camera out. Luckily it was too high from its powerful jaws and our Maginon is still alive. But let me tell you when I saw some of the footage Steven got at the waterhole, I kept on muttering: “please don’t destroy my camera, please don’t destroy my camera, please don’t destroy my camera!” Not because of hyenas, but because of elephants…
When elephants take a shine to your trail camera, they like to sniff it, test it with their trunk, brush up against it, and just generally spend time in its presence… Or maybe the shady spot the Trail cam was in, had something to do with that…;-) Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new Tales of the Trail cam! I split the footage up in two different video’s. The amount of animals at the waterhole is amazing. Now that the veld is dry, everyone is clearly happy to visit!
I will share the footage from my new Browning in a future blog!
Have a lovely week everyone!
Xx, Linda
Absolutely lovely Linda! It was a bit scary when the elephants actually scraped up against the camera and even moved it, but I gather it came safely through this ordeal and the footage was amazing. Those close-ups of the elephant’s skin, and that wonderful moment when a beautiful brown eye looked straight at the viewer . . . . I enjoyed the footage of the close-up mom and babe – and as for that little one enjoying the water – it was hilarious!
It was great to see so many animals of different species at the water hole too – like sitting in my car and watching them.
Thanks for these great videos!
Hi Sal!
I must have watched that baby have fun in the water 100 times! So cute! Love the close-ups too. They are such inquisitive animals!
xx, lin
Awesome to see all the animals at the waterhole. I’m sitting here wondering what it is that attracts them to the camera. Could it be that they hear it working. With the Elephants range of hearing I think that could be what fascinates them… Just a thought. Lovely to see a blog post again. I’ve missed them.
Thanks, Denise!
I think the elephants were so close to the trail cam, because it was in the shade. And then it sparked an interest! So lovely watching them up close!
thank you for sharing,,, love that camera trap !
Me too! Thanks, Anne-Marie, so happy we have them back in the veld again!
Birds eye chillis – break them and smear the juice on the camera boxes and on the trees/mountings. I know eles don’t like them. Use clingwrap or disposable gloves and wash hands well after handling. Wash VERY WELL. Not just because of your eyes.
They used to use birds eye chillis as colour garnish on sergeants mess snack trays. One bloke used to show off how he liked hot stuff by eating them. A friend broke a piece off one and tried it but flinched away. After another beer he went to the loo and when he came back, after an inordinately long time, he looked as if he had been crying. Fortified with a beer he told of the agony of going for a pee and forgetting about the traces of chilli still on his hands…
Hahahahaha, Erik that poor guy! Shame! Ok, noted. It will be a fun experiment to see the animals reaction!
I think perhaps animals, and efelumps in particular, have such an acute sense of smell that maybe the chilli sort of BURNS them inside their smelling equipment and that is why they avoid it – take a look at this link
http://www.hwctf.org/Davies%20T%20E%20et%20al%202011%20Effectiveness%20of%20intervention%20methods%20against%20crop%20raiding%20elephants.pdf
…and googling this brings up a whole lot of research and comment on it. ” experiments using chili paste to deter elephant in east Africa “