What else is out there at night besides hyenas?

Here are a few photos from our Shompole camera traps to give you an idea of the diversity of life-forms wandering around there at night. See if you can identify all these animals. I'll post answers in my next blog entry.

Candid camera---striped hyena style

After my last entry about the new guys, which included a photo of them checking a camera trap in Shompole, someone asked that I post some photos taken by the camera traps. So here are a couple fun ones. We set out camera traps in two different ways, at striped hyena dens and in an area-wide grid. These tell us different things: the cameras at dens tell us about whether the dens are occupied, if so by whom, and who else drops by each den to visit. The cameras set out in the grid tell us where there are hyenas that are unfamiliar to us, and they also tell us about which animals other than striped hyenas occur in the vicinity of each camera on each day. The grid cameras are "baited" with scents, but the den cameras are not baited. The top photo here shows a young striped hyena rubbing against a stick pounded into the ground near the camera; we have dipped pipe cleaners in specific commercially-avaialable scents and wrapped those around the stick. Like so many other mammalian carnivores, striped hyenas like to rub against strong-smelling things, and that's what's happening here. Note how fully bristled this kid's tail is while he's rubbing--- just like a bottle brush. That's a hyena's way of telling you he's pretty excited about those scents!

The bottom photo shows a scene at a den with mom (farthest from camera chewing on a bone), baby (in middle) and an adult male visitor (perhaps dad; that remains to be determined). Who knew these "solitary" carnivores led such busy social lives!

Meet the new guys

Although we will all miss Kate's wonderful blog entries, we can now look forward to blog entries by our two new students, David Green and Jeff Smith (shown here watching Joey Verge check a camera trap at a striped hyena den in Shompole). Both Jeff & Dave joined the project in April, and Kate trained them before she left. They will be monitoring the spotted hyena clans on the western side of the Masai Mara.

In addition, Joey Verge (shown here atop our Landcruiser, listening for a lost striped hyena), who you may recall has been working on striped hyenas in Shompole, Kenya for the past several months, will be moving to the Mara later in June to work on spotted hyenas. Thus you can expect to see posts on this blog from all three of these guys in the coming months.

Caught in the act

Apparently, adult hyenas can be pesky too. Every few nights, hyenas from the Serena North Clan come into camp and act like they own the place. They steal shoes, eat buckets, chew on tarps, and generally cause trouble. I decided it was high time to go into stealth mode and catch the culprits in the act.

However, I wasn’t crazy about the idea of hiding out at night, waiting for hungry hyenas to come find me. Luckily, our own Andy Flies lent me a motion sensor camera with a super-cool night vision feature. That way, I could photograph the trespassers without fear of imminent disembowelment.

And, lo and behold, on night #3, the stakeout paid off.


Sauer - a young female who’s been hanging around the den recently - decided to pay us a visit. She was even kind enough to pose sideways for the camera so that I could ID her. Unfortunately, she was also kind enough to eat my last bar of soap.


I’m off to Nairobi for a week (good thing, since I'm out of soap), but the stakeout will continue when I return...