Zakouma 2015: Returning to Wildest Africa in Style

[inyathi]

@@Marks Thanks

 

Although it’s still only very few, more birders will have seen the black-breasted barbet in Uganda than in Zakouma and there may well be more photos of it that just haven’t been put on the web. For a long time in Uganda you really couldn’t go anywhere north of Murchison Falls NP because of the LRA but since they’ve been driven out and into Central Africa it has become possible to visit this area and you can now drive from Murchison Falls NP to Kidepo NP but it takes 8hrs. Most people going to Kidepo fly which obviously adds to the expense this I would guess is partly why birding tours don’t go looking for the barbet it’s too expensive. One of the Ugandan photos was taken somewhere quite some way from from Kidepo by Nik Borrow who is a senior tour leader for BirdQuest and co-wrote the bird book I was using in Zakouma but I’m pretty sure BirdQuest don’t actually look for the barbet on their Uganda tours. While you don’t have to go all the way to Kidepo I don’t know how close the nearest suitable fig trees that might have barbets are to Murchison Falls and whether or not you could drive there and back in a day I suspect it might be a little too far or at least make for a very long day. Even so I would think that the really serious birders who need to see this bird will try to see it in Uganda rather than Zakouma though having said that I can imagine some might be tempted to drive from N’Djamena to Zakouma and stay at Tinga to look for the barbet. Perhaps a few future guests of Camp Nomade will also be interested in birds enough to want to see it, if there are fig trees in fruit then you only need spare 10mins to try your luck looking for it.

 

Thanks to everyone else who has commented also

 

@@Soukous

 

On any trip I go on I always have a daily checklist, if i’m going on a birding tour I would expect to be given one covering all the birds and usually the principal mammals but otherwise I create my own. This is quite easy because you can find bird lists for I think every country in the world and even for specific states/provinces from the website Avibase and you can usually find a mammals list on Wikipedia or elsewhere on the web, for Africa I would use my Kingdon Field Guide to check the list is accurate. I only include the large mammals and the smaller ones that I have a good chance of seeing, leaving out almost all of the small rodents, insectivores and bats that I’m unlikely to be able to see or identify. I then just copy and paste the names into an Excel spreadsheet and adjust the number of columns to fit the days of my trip putting the date for each day at the top of each one, with a totals column at the end. I always include plenty of space at the end to write in any species that I didn’t include or that I may have missed off by mistake and for reptiles or anything else of interest I might see and put a diary page at the beginning to briefly record where I went each day. For last year’s trip I obtained list of the birds and mammals of Zakouma from the African Parks website so for this year I modified the list and increased the number of days. We were actually all given checklists for the birds and other animals when we arrived at Camp Nomade, while more up to date than mine their checklists are only designed for 7 day safaris.

 

I certainly couldn’t have included as much detail in this report without keeping a daily checklist, going through my list I quite often find I saw a particular species on more occasions than I would have thought just from memory. Also the great thing about having a daily list is it does help me to identify all of the birds that I photographed. Not so much with this trip but certainly after other trips I’ve looked at a photo and thought now what is this bird either because I just can’t remember or it’s not the best photo so being able look at the shooting date and then check my list is very useful. Of course when I’m filling in my checklist I don’t unfortunately always remember every single bird so I can’t guarantee that I haven’t left out a few by mistake.

 

On last year’s trip I took the Birds of Africa South of the Sahara this time around I took the Birds of Western Africa by Nik Borrow and Ron Demey this saved a bit of weight and it slightly easier to use having so many fewer species in it. Also the maps are much bigger although as I discovered a few of them are not accurate as there are a few species that occur in Zakouma that are not shown on the maps but then distribution maps are very seldom entirely accurate. I also had the e-book version of the Birds of East Africa by Stevenson and Fanshawe on my iPad while this book obviously doesn’t cover Chad there are only I think about 6 species on the Zakouma list that aren’t in it and it’s always useful to have some different illustrations to look at and it has bird calls.

[inyathi]

Complete Bird List

 

Common Ostrich

White pelican

Pink-backed pelican

Little Egret

Intermediate Egret

Great white egret

Cattle Egret

Sqaucco heron

Black-crowned night heron

Grey heron

Black-headed heron

Purple heron

Goliath heron

Hammerkop

Sacred ibis

Glossy Ibis

Hadada

African spoonbill

African open-billed stork

Saddle-billed stork

Woolly-necked stork

White stork

Marabou

Yellow-billed stork

White-faced whistling duck

Garganey

Northern pintail

Knob-billed duck

Spur-winged goose

Egyptian goose

Secretary bird

Black kite

Hooded vulture

Lappet-faced vulture

Rüpell’s griffon vulture

African white-backed vulture

African fish eagle

Wahlberg’s eagle

Tawny eagle

Long-crested eagle

African hawk eagle

Booted eagle

Martial eagle

Bateleur

Brown snake eagle

Western banded snake eagle

Beaudouin’s snake eagle

African harrier hawk

Eurasian marsh harrier

Pallid harrier

Grasshopper buzzard

Dark chanting goshawk

Gabar goshawk

Grey kestrel

Lanner falcon

Helmeted guineafowl

Clapperton’s francolin

Stone partridge

African jacana

Black-crowned crane

Black-bellied bustard

Senegal thick-knee

Spotted thick-knee

Common pratincole

Egyptian plover

Spur-winged plover

Black-headed plover

African wattled plover

Spotted redshank

Common redshank

Common sandpiper

Wood sandpiper

Marsh sandpiper

Greenshank

Ruff

Temminck’s stint

Common stilt

White-winged black tern

Four-banded sandgrouse

Speckled pigeon (NDJ and Zakouma)

Bruce’s green pigeon

Feral pigeon (NDJ only)

African mourning dove

African collared dove

European turtle dove

Vinaceous dove

Laughing dove

Namaqua dove

Black-billed wood dove

Rose-ringed parakeet

Meyer’s parrot

African cuckoo

Senegal coucal

African scops owl

Giant eagle owl

Greyish eagle owl

Plain nightjar

Long-tailed nightjar

African palm swift

Blue-naped mousebird

Eurasian hoopoe

Green wood-hoopoe

Black scimitarbill

Pied kingfisher

Grey-headed kingfisher

Malachite kingfisher

Abyssinian roller

Northern carmine bee-eater

Red-throated bee-eater

Little green bee-eater

Little bee-eater

Abyssinian ground hornbill

African grey hornbill

Northern red-billed hornbill

Yellow-fronted tinkerbird

Viellot’s barbet

White-headed barbet

Black-breasted barbet

Grey woodpecker

Brown-backed woodpecker

Chestnut-backed sparrowlark

Red-throated pipit

Yellow wagtail

Common bulbul (NDJ only)

Rufous-tailed scrub robin

Whinchat

Tawny-flanked prinia

Green-backed eremomela

Northern crombec

Brown babbler

African paradise flycatcher

White-shouldered tit

Scarlet-chested sunbird

Isabelline shrike

Woodchat shrike

Grey-backed fiscal

Black-headed gonolek

Fork-tailed drongo

Piapiac

Pied crow

Yellow-billed oxpecker

Lesser blue-eared glossy starling

Greater blue-eared glossy starling

Long-tailed starling

House sparrow (NDJ only)

Bush petronia (NDJ only)

Heuglin’s masked weaver

Village weaver

Red-billed quelea

Black-rumped waxbill

Red-cheeked cordon-bleu

Red-billed firefinch (NDJ and Zakouma)

 

My total for the whole trip was 149 species and just for Zakouma 145, which is 37 more species than the 108 species I saw in Zakouma last year, 8 of them were so called ‘lifers’, which isn’t bad, since I’d already scored 14 lifers last year. The updated park list includes 383 species, this is 8 more species than last year, so there are certainly more birds we could have seen, ahead of last year’s trip I marked the species that I hadn’t seen before and counted 44, going back through my list after this trip, there are now only 22 species left on the park list, that I’ve never seen before. Of these remaining species, a few of them are regional migrants that move north or south, according to the rains for example the red-necked buzzard Buteo auguralis flies further south to breed in the dry season, returning north again when the rains start, whereas as far as I know the African swallow-tailed kite Chelictonia rioccourii moves the opposite way. Then there are birds like the white-crowned cliff chat Thamnolaea coronata, that I can only assume is found over in the west of the park, where there are some inselbergs, because there is nothing remotely like a cliff anywhere in the east where we went. So at least a few of the remaining 22 new species, can be crossed of the list, as I probably had no reasonable chance of seeing them. Perhaps if we had spent time in for example some of the woodlands surrounding Rigueik, specifically looking for birds or even just looking for herds of roan antelopes, then it’s possible that I might have picked up a few more new ones.

 

However, this was not a birding trip, I wasn’t determined to see every single species I’m quite a keen birder but not that keen I certainly didn’t go to Zakouma to spend precious time searching for sun larks Galerida modesta for example. I’m not that big on larks or other LBJs, but if I do ever decide I want to see a sun lark, I would go to somewhere over in the Western Sahel, where searching for it wouldn’t mean missing out on more spectacular birds or herds of big game, as might have been the case if we'd looked for it in Zakouma. There are a few species it would have been nice to have seen like the little grey woodpecker Dendropicos elachus, the grey-headed batis Batis orientalis and the pygmy sunbird Hedydipna platurus, but I don’t really know enough about these birds or some of the others I missed, to know whether I could have in fact seen them, if I’d known a bit more about where to look for them, or whether it was actually just bad luck that I missed some of them. Either way I’m not really disappointed, that I missed them any more than I’m disappointed not to have seen certain mammals like red-flanked duiker or ground pangolin, you can’t see everything or do everything that you might want to do on a safari. I saw the most important bird I wanted to see, the black-breasted barbet and also Vieillot’s and the Beaudouin’s snake eagle and Clapperton’s francolin, so overall I’m pretty happy with the birds I saw. It would be pretty hard to be disappointed after a safari as amazing as this one was.

Edited October 10, 2021 by inyathi

[twaffle]

An extraordinary list of birds, for sure. I get the feeling that your journey is almost done, so where to next? Would you return to Zakouma or are there new destinations that are pulling you in?

[inyathi]

@@twaffle Still a bit more to come, I can think of plenty of reasons to want to return to Zakouma but having really seen it this time even more so than last year I do have to consider that it is a lot of money and there’s still plenty of the world left to see including other parts of Africa. So while I will definitely follow developments in Zakouma with keen interest I’m not sure if I will go back at least there are probably other places I would rather go to first before I do go back. Over time the park may start to lose a little bit of its wildness but it will always remain a truly extraordinary place, I haven’t decided on my next travel plans just yet.

[inyathi]

Reptiles

 

We didn’t see a huge variety of different reptiles and sadly no African spurred tortoises and no snakes, I imagine there must be more than a few different snakes in Zakouma, but it’s quite normal in my experience, not to see any snakes on safari or only very few.

 

West African Crocodiles

 

One species that is definitely common in Zakouma all allong the Salamat is the West African crocodile (Crocodylus suchus) at the time of my visit, I assumed that these reptiles were the familiar Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) found in Eastern and Southern Africa, but in fact they're not, the West African crocodile was first identified in 1807, but was not actually recognised as a separate species until 2003, and since my visit to Zakouma, I've learned that this is the species found in the park. The abundance of fish in the river, supports a very healthy population of these huge reptiles. Indeed there are so many fish that locals say the crocodiles never eat mammals, only fish, but given the size of the some of the crocs I saw, this is a theory I certainly didn’t want to put to the test.

 

Remarkably the Defassa waterbuck at Tim seemed quite happy to do so.

 

 

Those crocs weren’t huge over on the other side of the pool were some rather larger ones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crocodiles on the Salamat

 

 

 

To escape from Zakouma’s ferocious heat, the Salamat’s crocodiles dig caves in the river bank, just like those on the Katuma River in Katavi NP in Tanzania are well known to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 29, 2020 by inyathi

[inyathi]

Nile Monitor

 

Africa’s largest lizard the Nile monitor Varanus niloticus is a voracious predator that can be found along the length of the Nile and throughout Sub-Saharan Africa anywhere where there is water they’re only absent from the driest desert areas of the Horn of Africa, the Namib and the Cape.

 

The one seen in the first three photos is I think one of the largest ever seen, they don't grow as large as their Asian cousin the water monitor Varanus salvator but this one seemed almost as big as some of the water monitors I've seen.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 25, 2020 by inyathi

[Tom Kellie]

Nile Monitor

 

Africa’s largest lizard the Nile monitor Varanus niloticus is a voracious predator that can be found along the length of the Nile and throughout Sub-Saharan Africa anywhere where there is water they’re only absent from the driest desert areas of the Horn of Africa, the Namib and the Cape.

 

The one seen in the first three photos is I think one of the largest ever seen, they don't grow as large as their Asian cousin the water monitor Varanus salvator but this one seemed almost as big as some of the water monitors I've seen.

 

 

~ @@inyathi

 

That's an impressive monitor!

I had no idea that Nile monitors attained such dimensions.

The water monitors observed here in Asia seldom whip their tails upward as what's shown in your image above.

Looking at it may give a slight sense of what it may have been like to observe dinosaurs in the Triassic and Jurassic eras.

Your species-by-species approach is useful for understanding what was observed. The care and effort to prepare your trip report richly merits the highest respect.

What impresses me most is the high educational value of your approach to trip report writing.

Many, many thanks!

Tom K.

[inyathi]

While I have a selection of books on the mammals and birds that I can refer to, I don’t have any on reptiles, so if I have decent photos of some lizard or other reptile somewhere, I rely on the internet to try and identify it. The most useful website that I have found is The Reptile Database, it doesn’t matter if you have no idea what the species or genus might be, if you use their advanced search, you can just type for example lizards into the ‘Higher taxa’ box and Chad into ‘Distribution’ and get a list of all the lizards in Chad. Then just click each one, until you find a match, they don’t have photos of every species and for some species the photos aren’t that helpful. If they don’t have photos of something, it says “we have no photos, try to find some by Google image search” and if you just click the Google logo it will come up with the images. The results from Google image searches, can be pretty mixed and you can end up with photos of a whole lot of different species, but usually if the species you’re looking for is quite common, you should be able to find it. Using the Reptile Database I was able to identify all of the lizards, I photographed on a recent trip to Guyana, I wouldn’t really have had a clue what they were otherwise.

 

Much as is the case with birds, lizards that were in the past considered to be a single species, have now been split in to several different species, this does make identifying them that much more complicated, as different websites will say different things. For these final two species I’ve gone with what the Reptile Database says, the distribution maps they provide only show the countries that the species occur in and not their range within those countries, so what their exact distributions are I’m not sure.

 

African Five-lined Skink

 

At least according to the Reptile Database, this is an African five lined skink or rainbow mabuya (Trachylepis quinquetaeniata) however. most other websites I’ve looked state that this species comes from Southern Africa, but that is not what the map on the Reptile Database shows. If there is a different species in Central Africa, I can’t find an alternative species name and it looks pretty much the same, as some of the pictures of Trachylepis quinquetaeniata on the web, so whether it is in fact exactly the same or a very close relative or a recent split, I don’t really know.

 

 

At Tim on the Salamat

Edited May 29, 2020 by inyathi

[inyathi]

Common Agama

 

In recent years agama lizards have evidently been split in to a number of different species, so as I understand it the common agama (Agama agama) seen here is a Western and Central African species and those in Eastern and Southern Africa are now different species.

 

 

 n

At Tim on the Salamat

 

 

In the garden of the Kempinski Hotel in N'Djamena

 

Edited May 29, 2020 by inyathi

[Tom Kellie]

African Five-lined Skink

 

At least according to the Reptile Database this is an African five lined skink or rainbow mabuya Trachylepis quinquetaeniata however most other websites I’ve looked state that this species comes from Southern Africa but that is not what the map on the Reptile Database shows. If there is a different species in Central Africa I can’t find an alternative species name and it looks pretty much the same as some of the pictures of Trachylepis quinquetaeniata on the web so whether it is in fact exactly the same or a very close relative or a recent split I don’t really know.

 

At Tim on the Salamat

 

~ @@inyathi

 

When I read your description above, it increased my confidence in posting an image made last October in Samburu.

#1543 in http://safaritalk.net/topic/8568-a-picture-a-day/page-78#entry164263

There had been confusion in the field guides and online images available here concerning both identity and binomial nomenclature.

I'd elected to withhold the image as I was uncertain as to what it was and didn't want to sow confusion.

As soon as I saw your photograph above I said to myself: ‘That's it!’

I hope that what I've posted is accurate. Please know that your careful wording above and your explanation of the Reptile Database are highly appreciated.

Tom K.

[inyathi]

Trail Camera

 

I ‘m not sure that doing my report the way that I have made it any easier and certainly didn’t make it any shorter, I presumed that all I had to do was choose the photos and videos and the text would as it were write itself. Of course collecting the links for all the photos and videos and making sure everything is laid out exactly as I want it, always takes a lot longer than I think it will. All the photos and videos in my report thus far were taken with a Canon EOS 70D or a 50D as stated at the start, but I also took a third camera with me, a Little Acorn trail camera. This is one of the cheaper models of trail cam, it takes very acceptable photos and videos, but nothing that’s going win you the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition, no matter how clever you are at setting it up.

 

It’s tempting to put a trail camera up somewhere in camp, maybe along the path to your tent to see what visits in the night, especially if in the past you’ve woken up to find interesting spoor outside your front door. However, if you've just got the one camera, then I think this is a mistake, particularly in a relatively busy camp even a small one where you have staff and other tourists constantly walking up and down the paths, you will mostly get lots of photos and videos of people. It may not be that conspicuous during the day but at night the Ltl Acorn operates by infrared, so when it switches on the panel of lights comes on bright red. While some animals may not be able to see the lights they will be very obvious to any people that walk past, so even if you haven’t said you’ve put a camera up, everyone will pretty quickly know that you have and where it is. You could well then get lots of videos of people fooling around or trying to avoid the camera, as well as people just walking past. The other problem with all the people walking up down, is that all the spoor is quite quickly obliterated, so you can’t really use spoor, to work out where best to position the camera and just have to take potluck. Then of course, some species may not come into camp anyway or only very rarely, so unless you can find a path that has very little human traffic on it, you’ll do quite well to get anything particularly interesting. A much better idea is to consult with your guide and set the camera up somewhere away from the camp, but not so far away that it’s going to be inconvenient when you have to collect it again before you leave. As long as you’ve set it up properly, then there’s no need to keep checking on it just remember to collect it, when you are leaving.

 

The best place to put it is next to a game trail going to water, that has plenty of spoor on it so you know it is well used and you want to position the camera so that it is pointing along the trail, that way it will catch animals as they come towards the camera or as they are moving away from it. Obviously, if it is pointing directly at the trail it will only catch animals as they pass directly in front of it. The camera comes with a strap so that you can attach it to a tree, however, I normally just mount mine on a small ground spike which you have to buy separately, I bought mine from Wildlife Watching Supplies. It’s much easier to set the camera up this way, than having to strap it to a tree and easier when you want to collect it again, of course it is just above the ground which does make it a bit vulnerable a passing hyaena, could conceivably decide to chew it up. Although it’s not attached to a tree, it’s a good idea to put it at the base of one, so that it won’t get knocked over by any animals, you obviously don’t want a large herd of buffalos walking all over it. A few olive baboons had quite a close look at my camera and one or two other animals had a sniff at it, but otherwise the animals left it alone. Wherever you position it you need to make sure there’s no vegetation in front of it, that will set it off every time the wind blows, 300 videos of leaves or grass blowing in the wind is not only very boring to have to look through, but a major waste of battery power.

 

I have mine set so that it takes a single photogaph followed by 30 seconds of video, you can set it for longer than 30 seconds, but I think that 30 is enough, whereas shorter than that isn’t, if you set it for less you’ll end up with a lot of videos, that cut out at just the wrong moment. I don’t know about other trail cams, but with the Ltl Acorn when you are viewing videos on the cameras screen, once you start playing a video you have to wait until it finishes, before you can view the next one, this is another reason not to set the video for longer than 30 seconds. Going through the videos on the camera uses a fair bit of battery power and in any case the screen is pretty small, you really need to view them on a bigger screen to see them properly. Unfortunately the video format is AVI and an iPad which I have, cannot play AVIs, although you can get apps that will allow it to play or convert AVIs, I don’t think there’s a way you can actually do it without having a PC. when you import the videos from the Ltl Acorn to the iPad they go into the photos folder and without a PC there’s no way to transfer them out of there. So really you need a laptop that you can view AVIs on, unless anyone else knows of a way to view them on an iPad. The camera and the backplate that it attaches to, each take 4 AA batteries I use (Sanyo) Eneloop rechargeables I didn’t spend too much time viewing the photos and videos and didn’t have to replace the batteries once though I had spare set.

 

I hardly need say, given everything I’ve posted in this report so far, that I was really quite astonished at the results I got, at Rigueik Squack suggested putting the camera at a spot where one of the guides had had a trail camera set up, just before we arrived. This was right next to a well used game trail, just where before it crossed the road and went out on to the pan only a few minutes from Camp Nomade, this meant that it was watching both the trail and the road so any animals day or night going to or from the water on the pan or walking just along the road, would be captured as they passed by. I left it there for the duration of our stay at Rigueik at the start of the trip collecting it when we moved and then putting it back in the same spot for the final night before we left Zakouma.

 

Unfortunately I did make one tiresome mistake when I first set the camera up at Rigueik, before I left home I took all the batteries out and recharged them, but forgot to reset the clock afterwards and possibly because the UK and Chad are in the same time zone, I didn’t check to see that the clock was correct before I set the camera up. As a result all of the time stamps on the photos and videos that the camera took when we were first at Riguiek are totally wrong and therefore meaningless. After leaving Rigueik I realised when reviewing some of the photos that the clock was completely wrong, when I set the camera up by the Salamat, I noted down the time that was on the camera and then corrected the clock but for some reason failed to note down the correct time. So I don’t know what the exact time was when I corrected the clock, I can only guesstimate from the photos the camera took while I was setting it up, this has led me to think that the clock was about 8hrs and 40mins behind where it should have been. Having made a similar mistake with one of my regular cameras before, I have some software for editing the exif data of my photos so I can change the shooting date and time, but obviously the photos and videos would still have the wrong time and date stamped on them. However, it occurred to me that I could quite easily change the time stamps using Photoshop, a bit of a bore to do but I knew it would annoy me, if I didn’t at least change the ones I’ve uploaded. I didn’t want to have photos clearly taken at night with a time stamp stating they were taken at half past one in the afternoon, so the times on the main batch of photos taken at Rigueik have all been changed and are only approximate, I haven’t been able to do anything about the vidoes. Looking at the photos taken at around or just before dawn, some of them look to me slightly too dark compared to photos taken with my other cameras at around the same time, so it may be, that they were actually taken at least 10 minutes or more earlier earlier than the times I’ve put on them.

 

Rather than upload each video separately I decided as some of them needed shortening that it would be better to combine them and create a series of short compilations.

 

To start things off here are some Lelwel hartebeest

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx0ACJCb79g

 

 

Edited July 26, 2021 by inyathi

[inyathi]

Here are some buffalos

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mu_8LtvlhU

 

 

[inyathi]

Time for a few daytime animals

 

Common Warthog

 

To make up for not having any photos earlier in the report here's a Tantalus monkey Chlorocebus tantalus budgetti

Patas monkeys, common warthog and tantalus monkey

Edited July 9, 2015 by inyathi

[jeremie]

@@inyathi

This is a fantastic tool!

Do you know what products are now on the market and what are their prices, batteries and memory characteristics?

I would love to buy some. As far as I know Bushnell sell some camera trap on the Amazon.

[Zim Girl]

@@inyathi

 

We bought the same trail cam a few months ago, so really appreciate your detailed set up instructions, we will be taking it with us to Zim this year. We have just come back from Scotland and did manage to capture Red Deer, but were not entirely sure what time settings to use, so your comments are very helpful.

 

Enjoying this report immensely.

[Marks]

Love the last few posts. The buffalo video is really great...they really look like half-real apparitions strolling through the night.

You offer great tips for setting up that kind of camera.

 

@@jeremie You may want to check this thread out for more recommendations on specific models of trail/trap cam:

 

http://safaritalk.net/topic/10327-infrared-trap-camera-for-use-at-camps/

[jeremie]

Thanks @@Marks

[inyathi]

@@jeremie While I had wondered about getting a trail cam for some time I confess I was given this one so I don’t know that much about all of the different makes and models available but at lot of them certainly at the lower end of the range are probably very similar to mine. As I understand it these cameras are predominantly used by hunters in the US to monitor the movements of the deer that they are intending to shoot and for that they don’t need some thing that’s going to produce really high quality images. Mine is 12 mega pixels the jpeg photos it takes are around 2 MB the 30 second videos are somewhere between 40-65 MB, it uses an SD card the same as my Canon Eos 70D so at the moment I have just 3 cards 2 32GB ones and one 16GB so I tend to use the 16GB card in the trail cam. If you set it just to take photos it should get around 8,000 on a 16GB card and if you’ve set it to take 30 second videos then it should be able to take around 300. This is of course another important reason to make extra sure that when you set the camera up it’s not going to be taking hundreds of videos of the wind in the grass because that would very quickly fill the card. The last thing you want is for the camera to be sitting there doing nothing because the card is full. If you’re just a tourist using the camera on a normal safari then you’re probably not going to be leaving the camera in the same spot for more than a few of days and nights anyway so if it’s just filming animals that wander by you would be unlikely to fill the card before you had to collect the camera. If you’re leaving it in the same spot for weeks on end as I do at home or as you might do if you’re a researcher or if you’re perhaps working at a safari camp then the simplest thing whenever you want to check on it is just to take the card out and put a fresh one in. I also have a Nexto PSD so I can transfer the photos on to that and then clear the card if necessary however with a fairly basic camera like the Ltl Acorn you don’t need the very best and fastest cards available, so given how cheap some of the cards are now I might be inclined to load it with a 64GB card which should be more than sufficient for almost every eventuality.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtaLuOpX0JQ

 

Bohor Reedbuck

 

 

 

Giraffe

 

North African Crested Porcupine

 

I was very pleased when I saw I had got a photo of a porcupine I didn't anticipate that I would actually see a pair of these impressive rodents very well on the final night of the trip.

Edited December 15, 2018 by inyathi

[inyathi]

Going back out for the afternoon drive

[inyathi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04mMFLR8Y7k

[inyathi]

Some more buffalos I got more photos and videos of buffalos than anything else.

 

 

 

 

While the two photos were taken on the 4th of April these videos were taken on the last night on the 10th/11th so the clock setting is correct the last part appears to show us leaving camp at 05:08.

 

Edited December 15, 2018 by inyathi

[inyathi]

A few of Zakouma's carnivores

 

Honey Badger with youngster

 

Lion

 

@@Big_Dog I said at some point a that I might sneak in a shot of a hyaena I wasn't personally able to get a shot of the one spotted hyaena we actually saw as it ran off through the bush too fast, but we had heard them occasionally at Rigueik even if hearing them over the frogs was a challenge. However this trail cam shot certainly confirmed their presence, perhaps they're just much more active at night than during the day because of the heat.

 

 

African Civets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought when I put the camera back in the same spot for the last night that I'd probably caught everything I could hope to catch at Rigueik but when I checked the camera in the morning I was pleased to be proved wrong when I saw it had picked up this serval.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 15, 2018 by inyathi

[inyathi]

Some more baboons at Rigueik

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 15, 2018 by inyathi

[inyathi]

After we left Rigueik and move to our fly camp on the Salamat I placed the camera for one night beside a trail down to the river this didn't capture any nocturnal activity but there was plenty going on in the daytime. Particularly nice to see was this big herd of Central African buffalos showing off the variety of different shades of brown that these animals come in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 19, 2018 by inyathi

[inyathi]

As well as buffalos there were plenty of waterbucks, kobs and baboons around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 19, 2018 by inyathi