Two cool still nights provided perfect conditions for our call ups. Too much wind can disrupt the distance the call carries and in the past we have had to postpone our survey last minute because the wind was too high. The first site didn’t bode well for a productive night with no visual or vocal response, but spirits soon picked up at site number two where we were rewarded with two Spotted Hyaenas coming in. While they are more familiar to most people that their brown relatives, they seem to be more scarce here, and we certainly see them much less often. This may be due their being persecuted more heavily by farmers before the land was protected, due to their more predatory nature and due to the ease of locating them as a result of their vocalisations. It may be that they were more easy to wipe out by poisoning, which was commonly used in this area in the past, due their tendency to forage together. Brown Hyaenas are more likely to forage alone, and so a poisoning incident would maybe kill only one clan member than several. Happily, Brown Hyaenas seem to be doing very well here and all evidence points to the Spotted Hyaenas making a comeback.
The past eighteen months has seen the first Spotted Hyaenas returning to farmland surrounding Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve in over a decade, and the good news is that all the farmers we have spoken to seem to be welcoming them back. The next generation of young farmers seem to be more receptive to the idea of protecting their stock rather than eradicating the predators, so the future is looking good.

In total, we called in six Spotted Hyaenas, four Black-backed Jackals, four Lions and five Brown Hyaenas. Of the Brown Hyaenas, four came into one site at the same time, which is very unusual. As it was the first site of the night, just after dark, I suspect that we were calling near their den site and that they were all still nearby at the beginning of their evenings foraging. The site was near a dry riverbed, which is known to be a preferred choice for Brown Hyaena den sites.

This week we will be taking our speakers up to Mapungubwe National Park to carry out our surveys there. Call-ups we have carried out there in the past have shown good numbers of Spotted Hyaenas, and there have been reports of more lions moving into the park, so we are very excited to see what comes in.

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