Dung beetles smell of dung

20th November 2013

Tuesday 12th November 2013

Another nine hours on drives today as part of our tracking course. My performance in the morning was pretty pure but I started to get the hang of it as the day went by.

Indeed I was very happy with my level three porcupine but then came crashing back down to earth when I missed a level one jackal. In the assessment it would have been plus three points immediately followed by minus three. It’s going to be very tough.

We returned to Galon Dam where we saw the leopard last night. Who knows we could have been lucky two nights in a row but it wasn’t to be. Instead we had to settle for seeing his tracks and a good big five sighting on the way home.

One of my favourite little critters out here is the dung beetle and they’re beginning to appear from their winter hideaway. One of them joined me as I studied this evening, the only down side is that they sometimes can really stink of, dung.