Night time action at Simba camp!

In April we were very kindly donated a Wingscapes bird camera trap by Sheri and Owen Hogle from the Wild Bird Center in Utah, which gave us some wonderful photos of birds during the day. But we were even more excited when they told us they were also sending a Bushnell Trail Sentry camera trap which can be used at night! This means we can also see what carnivores are out here, and hopefully try and identify some lions.

To get started we put the camera up 5 minutes walk from our camp, and tied up some bait that we had earlier got to use with lions. We got some amazing results! Here are some of the highlights of our first three nights with the camera trap up.

Spotted hyenas were our most common visitor, with over 200 photos of them over the three nights!

We also had visits from black-backed jackals…

a white-tailed mongoose….

an elephant….

and even a serval cat, which came back two nights in a row!

Our photos on the third night were finally put to an end when an inquisitive animal covered the lens in a rather dirty mess! Unfortunately the camera didn’t pick up the culprit but we are guessing it was a spotted hyena!

This has now been cleaned off, ready for another night of investigations! Now that we have a better understanding of the camera we are going to put it up near to some fresh lion tracks, or hopefully a fresh lion kill, to try to get some photos of lions. We’ll keep you posted with all our results from the camera trap. Thank you once again Sheri and Owen!