18 October 2010

Last Collection From The Quarry

I've moved all my camera traps from the quarry. In the end I only photographed Dassies and a Small Grey Mongoose at the quarry. I was hoping for signs of other mammals, but I couldn't find anything to convince me to leave the cameras another week. It has been over a month since I started camera trapping at Tygerberg's quarry and I never expected much more than the Dassies in the first place.

So, to wrap things up, here are some more Dassie photographs and a few birds.

Dassie/Rock Hyrax (Klipdassie - Procavia capensis) fattening up some more

I'm sure a Caracal will drop by every now and again, but I've got bigger/smaller fish to fry and don't feel like waiting around for a Caracal to come pussyfooting around.

Dassies going about doing Dassie things

Some, rather common, feathered friends also visited. There are a few Egyptian Geese living in the quarry and I'm surprised I didn't get any photographs of them. They hang around close to where the cameras were set out and always shout at me.

Hadeda Ibis (Hadeda - Bostrychia hagedash) coming for a closer look

The local Helmeted Guineafowl (Tarentaal - Numida meleagris) making sure everything is in order (the Dassies might have lodged a complaint)

The local pair of Red-winged Starlings (Rooivlerkspreeu - Onychognathus morio)

"Anonymous" commented on a recently post that there used to be a pair of Peregrine Falcons in the quarry long ago. Well, I think everybody will be happy to know that there are still falcons breeding there.

I was peacefully standing around inspecting the boulders for camera trap locations when suddenly I got dive-bombed out of nowhere by one of the falcons. As it turned out I was to close to the nest, so I moved away. The falcon then landed in a tree on the opposite side of the quarry.

Peregrine Falcon (Swerfvalk - Falco peregrine Falcon)  not happy with me hanging around to close so the nest

Sorry for the bad photograph. I couldn't even see it with the naked eye, but I had some idea of where it landed and took a blind shot at it.

2 comments:

  1. Could that dassie be expecting? No wonder she called in the secret police...

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  2. There are a couple of young ones around, so it might be. One of my books says that around here babies are born Sep-Oct.

    (I just hope I don't get into trouble again with the law... I've been getting along well with them lately.)

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