Earth-Touch Blog

It was a fairly quiet morning in Moremi. There were plenty of tracks in the sand, but not much was being sighted. It was mid-morning when we approached a clearing and spotted the resident pack of wild dogs (Lycaon pictus), lying in the open, sunning themselves. The dogs were looking hungry, but paid only the slightest attention to passing prey species. It was a full 2 hours later before they started to move. The pack went into the mopane (Colophospermum mopane) forests fringing the permanent water. They were trying to flush any prey towards the water, trapping it, which should…

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I know that from an outside perspective it looks like we have the best jobs in the world but being out in the field is by no means stress free. Ultimately our cameramen have the job of conveying how beautifully intricate a certain place is and the more spectacular the location, the harder their job becomes. So every now and then even the underwater crew have to take a break and go on holiday. Due to the fact that Grant spends a disproportionate amount of time in the water we decided to go to the opposite end of the wildlife…

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A successful hunt means a tasty meal for the lion pride. But the feast is interrupted when elephants come crashing through.

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As we came round a corner on the road, there were a number of vultures in the trees and on the ground. Obviously something had died here and we discovered a dead spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta) close to the road. On closer inspection, it appeared to have been killed by lions. There was a large bite mark on the hyaenas back and this is a typically fatal injury when tau (Panthera leo) kill a hyaena. Besides some scavenging from the vultures, there was little sign that anything else had fed on the carcass. Hoping that the tau were still close,…

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We found a lone tau (Panthera leo) on Setshi (candle-pod Acacia, Acacia hebeclada) Plains. The lioness appeared to be distressed and was roaring as she walked across the open plain. It was not the long distance roaring, but low contact calls. We recognised her as one of the Xakanaxa lionesses and she was calling, trying to locate the rest of her pride. Whisker patterns are individual to each lion, like a fingerprint and she has a distinctive inverted “V” on her left side. She was moving towards the new Xakanaxa airstrip, which was where the rest of the pride had…

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While out looking for the letotse (Acinonyx jubatus) coalition this morning, the matharelwa (Lycaon pictus) crossed over third bridge and we found them in the grass on the edge of one of the pans. They had been hunting impala (Aepyceros melampus) in the tree line, and had been unsuccessful, so they were regrouping when we came across them. Once they were all back together, the alpha pair led the way and the pack moved off into the mohata (Kalahari apple-leaf, Lonchocarpus nelsii) forest. In the shade of the mohata and motsebe (large fever-berry, Croton megalobotrys), they spent the day resting.…

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It’s a good day for hunting for a leopard and a pack of wild dogs.

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