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Let's see your Pangolin pics...


Game Warden

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  • 3 months later...

My first post - hope you enjoy the pics.

Taken at Tswalu, August 2013.

Tracker spotted tracks from the vehicle and together with the ranger, spent 45 minutes tracking it on foot (after asking us if it was OK to spend time doing do first!) through the sand and grass - and it was worth the wait!

 

 

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michael-ibk

What a great first post, welcome to Safaritalk. I dream of a Pangolin sighting like that - or any Pangolin sighting, as a matter of fact. :)

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  • 4 months later...

I've got some from Sangha Lodge in Central African Republic from Feb 2015. This is the black bellied pangolin or long tailed pangolin. They are completely arboreal but this one, Pangi, was rescued form the local bush meat market. Rod Cassidy and his wife raised her until she could live on her own in the forest which she does to this day. The local Ba'aka were employed to locate ants for Pangi to eat. It's quite remarkable she survived and is the only known long tailed pangolin to be reared and set free. They still keep tabs on her daily.

 

The light in the forest is difficult to get a clear pic and pangi was in constant motion cantilevered out with her tail holding her in place...but you can get an idea of how special a pangolin she is. I'll also post a video or two. I think I did for my trip report to CAR but this post resides in a different location so maybe y'all haven't seen it previously.

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Some vids. I like the sounds of the forest you can hear in the background:

 

 

This gives you a good idea of how pangolins move in the trees. Pangi lives wild now but when I visited Sangha, they had to take her out multiple times a day to get her fill of ants. The Ba'aka would located the ant nests and let her eat her fill. Her instincts were to go ever upward and so they had to keep an eye on her or shed climb out of reach.

 

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@@gatoratlarge This film of a pangolin is simply spectacular. I hope to visit Sangha in 2018 even if it won't be easy to combine with Zakouma. I know that Colin Bell the former head of Wilderness Safari who is a friend of Rod's said that it was the literally the most spectacular place in the world. Of course I'll take his opinion quite seriously.

Edited by optig
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@@optig it was a place that had a big impact on me that is for certain. I plan to go back some day. It is amazing...

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@@gatoratlarge Rod told me that one should visit both in the wet and the dry season. I will undoubtedly visit during both seasons. I really want to visit Zakouma, and Congo (Brazzaville) as well. I hope that Gabon will eventually take safari tourism seriously because as we know very well it has awesome potential. Furthermore, it needs to diversify it's economy.

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  • 2 months later...
Hammer_of_the_Gods

A pangolin mother and youngster I saw last week at Namiri Plains in the Serengeti. A first for me. :)

 

Edited by Hammer_of_the_Gods
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  • 10 months later...

Saw loads of pangolin in my 2 years as a guide in the Kalahari

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@Kosielategan Fabulous shot. Were all the sightings at Tswalu or are there any other places that are reliable for Pangolin in the Kalahari? I would love to see a pangolin but Tswalu is way over my budget!  

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@Kosielategan Woohooo great to see you on the forum! for those who don't know, Kosie is an amazing guide who guided me and my OH almost 2x in Tswalu. not only is he an unassuming and very nice gentleman, he is also a great photographer. He's now a private guide altho at Tswalu he was much sought after by photographic groups to guide them. 

 

Welcome to ST, Kosie! 

 

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So we were in Central Kruger in June. Driving around and approaching a dirt road, two cars one staying and one with small children leaving.  

 

we stop, hi hello, and i ask him what did you guys find ? He says a word - in afrikaner- I have no idea. so he pulls out the Kruger map/book and points to a picture of a pangolin.  and we go NO WAAY !!

so we head over to the other car and they are the original spotters who actually saw it in the middle of the road and then it ran into the bush and is between the 2nd and 3rd bush they say. about 15-20 feet away. So we wait, more cars come, some cars leave.. nothing happening.  We were originally looking for a rest room when we stumbled on to this. So we head over to the rest area and then think// should we go back ? Why not.

so we drive back, by then the last car is leaving. and the pangolin never showed itself.

 

So i park myself in a bit of elevation. Tell my son to focus the camera to the spot (between 2nd and 3rd bush).  I cut the engine. and predict a la Moses..  if no car comes along, it will come out in 5 minutes. Folks have been disturbing it all along.  Now there is no body. let us see.

 

5 minutes later..   pops out the Holy grail of Kruger safari !!    Amazing. over the moon.    

 

 

 

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On 1/28/2018 at 9:00 PM, kittykat23uk said:

@Kosielategan Fabulous shot. Were all the sightings at Tswalu or are there any other places that are reliable for Pangolin in the Kalahari? I would love to see a pangolin but Tswalu is way over my budget!  

All photos taken at Tswalu yes. Very lucky and fortunate to see that many of these special creatures

Edited by Kosielategan
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23 hours ago, Kitsafari said:

@Kosielategan Woohooo great to see you on the forum! for those who don't know, Kosie is an amazing guide who guided me and my OH almost 2x in Tswalu. not only is he an unassuming and very nice gentleman, he is also a great photographer. He's now a private guide altho at Tswalu he was much sought after by photographic groups to guide them. 

 

Welcome to ST, Kosie! 

 

Thank you @Kitsafari was a great couple of days. Hope to see you again one day! See if we can get you a better aardvark.. 

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  • 6 months later...

First off, a sorry.
I’ve been gone a long time, I know. Completing your undergrad and masters makes you a very busy person, but now I’m back! And back with the greatest sighting of them all…you know why I’m in this thread…for the prodigal sighting.

I did my MSc fieldwork in south Africa, and included a nice trip to the Kruger at the end. After a drowsy morning driving from my overnight holt at Preteriuskop to my three nights at Skukuza, sightings were surprisingly threadbare for the south. SA’s weather was weird this year, with long lasting rains making everything very green for the start of winter, a freak hailstorm weeks before my arrival and strong winds or thick fogs abounded in my time in the park. Relative to my glory days in September in earlier trips, sightings; whilst still good, were thinner this year and with poorer light to capture them in.
I’ve waned on night drives a bit over the years too. I still go on a few each time, but not nightly as I did in my earlier days. They’re often hit and miss.

Sometimes, the hits are a bullseye

The drive started well. The Kruger ecosystem wasted no time in replacing the giant panther ‘Vin Diesel’, laid low by a mix of TB and his old age, with a new male as equally colossal. The largest leopard I’ve ever seen and my first fully mature male with a thick dewlap and enormous musculature that befits those who have climbed the totem pole of maturity in spotted cats. My photos were lacklustre to say the least, and this was bothering me. Clearly, I had done something to bugger my camera and I was swatting through the setting to find out. (It later turned out to be as simple as shutter speed and me being out of practice).
After he’d strolled leisurely into the riverbed, we continued on and I looked at my photos, dismayed. Well, I comforted myself, you’ve seen leopards before and got good pictures. And there will be future leopards (there were, but no good pics frustratingly).
I was now banking there wouldn’t be anything I hadn’t seen before. How wrong.

The spotlights got movement up ahead and I looked up. Couldn’t see any eyeshine, and it was small. Small and brown and squat.
A scrubhare, surely.
We have two voices in our head, the big one and the small one. The big one is our inner monologue, the small one is never anything but doubt. The voice that nags ‘Are you sure?’ after every wager, ‘You might fail…’ after every test and ‘You’re too ugly’ after every proposition to the opposite sex.
This time, the small voice said as we approached ‘What if it’s a pangolin?
Ridiculous. It’s a scrubhare. What else?
Can’t see any fur.
Well it's dusty.
Are those scales?
N-no…
Is it…
It can’t be…


Both voices finally came to an agreement that I wound up gasping out loud.
“It can’t be!?”
I was standing now, and the truck grinding to a halt. There it was, right in front of me and back turned.
“Oh my god, it can’t be! Do you know what this means!?”

“Is it an armadillo?” Another guest asked mildly.

An armadillo. Fool. I snapped pictures. They were awful. Bugger. I dejectly put my camera back on the seat and returned to marvel. The exquisite scales. It’s tiny, narrow face as it turned to shuffle off into the night. It’s hunched arms poised and folded in front of it. Images logged in my memory until death.
And now I arise. To join the crucible, the band of bush brothers and sisters, the we happy few, who have seen on. The Manis, the myth, the legend. The rarest of the rare, the apex sighting, the one people live and die without seeing.  
The pangolin.

“So you don’t see these often then?” Another guest enquired. I guess you could say that.

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offshorebirder

Congrats on the Masters and the Pangolin  @Big_Dog!    And on the huge Leopard as well.

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A moment you will never forget @Big_Dog. Still to happen for me?

 

Great news on your Masters. Well done.

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Thanks very much all! :)
@wilddog it was pure luck for me...any hopes of a trip to Tswalu in future?

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3 hours ago, Big_Dog said:

Thanks very much all! :)
@wilddog it was pure luck for me...any hopes of a trip to Tswalu in future?

 

Not for me . Mara and Zim currently planned in next 2 years.

 

I did just miss a couple of sightings in Kafue e.g 'day before' and 'last week'. :(

 

Never mind my time will come :)

Edited by wilddog
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  • 2 years later...

These pics are from  a safari in Tswalu Private Game Reserve three years ago but it is an excellent place to see a Temminck's ground pangolin.  I am absolutely fascinated by their perfect cylindrical shape!

 

Our sharp eyed guides spotted the distinctive tracks of the pangolin across the Kalahari sand road...we hopped out and they followed the tracks often in circles (for a half hour or so) until we found the burrow it had dug for the daylight hours.  We came back at dusk/dark and just waited silently.  Before long, the pangolin emerged.  They called the researcher who came out and did some measurements thinking it had not been "tagged" before.  If memory serves it was a female but it had been quite a while since she had been observed.  After a couple checks and measures she was released into the night to do her thing. 

 

Pangolin tracks:

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Finding her out of the burrow in the early evening---camera isn't very good at night:

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Taking measurements:

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