Want to be zoomie?

Installing a movable camera at a water hole in Africa is only one step in bringing a great viewing experience to viewers all around the world. If there is nobody to move this camera to find and follow the animals that come to drink or walk by, then a lot will be missed.

WildEarth counts itself fortunate to have a small group of very dedicated people that help us to catch as much of the action as possible: Our zoomies! The intention is, or rather was, that each of them would take a couple of two hour 'shifts' each week at times that would suit them.

Unfortunately, and despite some heroic efforts from the group with some zoomies often taking more than a shift a day!, the current group is not large enough to keep the cam moving 24/7. As always, people's lives change; some have less time, others simply want to simply sit back and enjoy watching the streams. So once in a while we need to replenish the ranks, and this is one such time.

A further reason is the upcoming launch of an additional waterhole camera next week at an exciting location that will be familiar to many of our long-term viewers. More on that soon...

Through the grapevine/bush telegraph, some people have already shown interest in joining the zoomie ranks, but we'd like to give everyone a chance to put their names forward. So if you are reasonably handy on a computer, patient and not easily frustrated (sometimes the cam does not play along), can distinguish between an impala and a kudu, and are willing and able to do an average 3-5 shifts of zooming a week, please let us know at zoomies@wildearth.tv.

You'll find the zoomies are a great and fun bunch and will give you all the help and advice you need to get going. So come forward and help us bring Africa to the world.

--Peter

Thornybush Game drives to start!

The crew at Thornybush Game Reserve are chomping at the bit to go LIVE and share the beauty of this magnificent piece of African bush with all of you. Not everything is fully in place and tested yet. But, as those of you who  have been with us for a long time know, WE believe there is no test like a LIVE test!

Yesterday and today we have been doing some extensive tweaking and we believe WE are ready for this next step. Between drives we will still be working on extending our signal range, improving picture quality, and streamlining operations, but there's no reason we can't do this while also broadcasting.

So, join us on Thursday, May 16th at 06:30 Central African Time (0430 UTC) as we set out to discover the many wonders Thornybush Game Reserve has to offer, starting with the area surrounding our basecamp. Driving around the area today we already had some great sightings and saw several leopard tracks, so we're hopeful we might be in for some great encounters from the get-go. Make sure you're on the jigga, so you won't miss any of it.

And, above all, tune in on time to be the first to find out who our new presenter is...

---Peter

Drive times: 06:30 - 09:30 CAT and 15:00 - 17:30 CAT

Watch it here:                            http://lite.wildearth.tv/thornybush-safari

(Ustream viewing to be added soon.)

Ask questions of the presenter: drivequestions@wildearth.tv

Give feedback on the drives:     drivefeedback@wildearth.tv

The Kalahari Meerkat Update

Well it has been quite some time since we’ve given you an update on what’s happening out in the Kalahari, so sit back and prepare yourself for a tale of meerkats, technical complications, and heat! However, as we have a lot to catch you up on, let’s break it down and start with the nitty griity shall we?

Now, as you all know our Gosa gang have not been Live streaming since mid-year, and many many many of you have deeply expressed your thoughts and concerns regarding this. As time passed, your frustrations together with those of the crew and our technical team have been mounting and we have not been able to address this issue properly due mainly to the fact that we did not have any time frame in which the problem could be fixed. But what is that problem you ask? Well, it’s a complicated one that has two sides. The first is that the meerkats disappeared for over a month. We’re unsure of the reasons but the entire group moved out of the area and hence out of the Live coverage area of the tower. After fruitless grid searches we never found where they went, but luckily they decided to come back, albeit with a very skittish nature. The second issue concerns the actual data link of the Live stream. Again, slightly complicated but basically the signal that is sent out from our tower has been progressively ‘choking’ which means that less and less data is able to be sent due to some unknown issue on the signal link. However, as far as we can determine, this ‘choking’ may be happening on the link outside of the reserve which means that it is out of our hands and the issue needs to be dealt with by the relevant service provider. These past few months have seen numerous tests and countless hours spent trying to ascertain how we can streamline things more on our side, however we have not made much progress and so still await the verdict on the external data lines to try see what’s been going on. So, that’s it in a nutshell, which is why crew updates have been few and far between because we’ve had no internet at all. It’s not that we’ve forgotten about our global meerkaters out there, it’s simply that we haven’t had the means to communicate with you out here in the Kalahari.

As it stands now we are still desperately trying to rectify the Live stream issue. If it comes to the point that we are just too isolated out here to rectify it without throwing a few million dollars at the issue we will obviously let you know, but we’re trying our best to get you back into the action.

A cellphone capture of Kalahari Meerkats 3D
at the film festival in Hollywood. You can see
the seats in front.

So what has been happening in the meantime? Well as most of you know, the meerkat project is a 3D documentary production that was made Live so that you, our intrepid global meerkat viewers,  could watch and listen to us as we moved through the Kalahari filming the meerkats, and true to form the crew and I have still been filming religiously every day and we have filmed some incredible events! Obviously all of this is for our Kalahari Meerkats 3D documentary and so all that footage has made its way back to HQ and we are proud to say that we are about to start editing Episode 6! It’s been 9 months since we landed here and I am proud of my crew for the amazing production we have been working on. Kalahari Meerkats Episode 1 even aired at a 3D film festival in Hollywood, with yours truly on the big screen. Who would have imagined that this smelly meerkat adventurer would have his mug showing up on the big time screen!?

But enough of technicalities and fancy film screenings! What about the Gosa Gang?

Cleo and the Gosa gang have been doing fairly well over these few weeks. The members are healthy and Cleo’s pregnancy went very well. I expect the pups to come out the burrow any day now so stay tuned for that! Jacos Dune group have had their pups and seem to be doing well, although they’re still holding on to a section of the old Gosa gang territory but should start venturing farther afield now that we’re into summer. Malaki is still together with Cleo and the two have become a formidable force. The Gosa gang are having to deal with an exceptionally hot start to the summer with temperatures already at 38 Cᴼ and no sign of rain yet. On the other hand though, Delilah was bitten by a snake (possibly a puffadder) and is in a bad way. She was sitting outside the burrow when we found her but disappeared below a few moments later. Meerkats are known to be able to survive a snakebite so hopefully she’ll be back on her feet in a few days’ time.

Again I sincerely apologise for the lack of communication, but having a team out in the Kalahari with no internet communications for so long can be very problematic when it comes to getting some up to date news.

I’ll post some recent pictures on the site soon

Warm regards

Rob

Rob’s song for the day: Sting – Desert Rose

Don’t forget to keep in touch with me on Facebook & Twitter

The fall of Gandalf, and the rise of Malaki

The fall of any powerful leader always creates ripples across the pond, and nature is no different.

As you know, yesterday marked five weeks since Gandalf disappeared from the Gosa meerkat gang. Without warning, without a trace, he just vanished. Did he leave? Was he kicked out? Was he taken by a hawk? Or a Jackal? Bitten by a snake? We have no way of knowing. Day after day the crew counted and recounted the Gosa gang, hoping that we were simply missing the tell-tale markings we use to identify him. But those markings were never seen again, and Cleopatra and the family seemed to drop into a state of worry and confusion.

The loss of an alpha male in any society opens up a few avenues which, if explored, can change the entire direction of the family group. We saw this too in our very own Gosa gang. With Gandalf now gone, there was no dominant male. Impressively, Starsky was first to step up. Starsky? The clown? Yes! The one and only! No ore shenanigans, no ore wrestling, it’s time to grow up. Starsky has now started sharing sentry duty with Matimba and Cleo, and seems to have a very good eye for danger. Hutch too has started acting a little more responsible, but sees to allow starsky to take the lead in most things. The other males in the group (Brutus, Napoleon and Dingaan) don’t seem interested in any form of leadership. They still move with Delilah and prefer to keep their heads below the radar when it comes to leading the group.

And what of Cleo? A Queen without a King. Strictly speaking, she will choose another mate when one presents himself. But that’s the biologist in me. Many times over during my academic career greyed haired scientists with ink stained fingers and opaque lab coats warned me about anthropomorphising any event concerning animals. And yet, over these past few weeks of watching Cleo sit on sentry duty, I cannot help but notice that sense of longing, the sense of emptiness that Cleo has displayed in her behaviour. It’s difficult to describe, but it’s unmistakable. And yet, she has a family to look after and protect and needs an alpha male by her side.

That’s when Malaki arrived.

Dark, broad-headed and solid to the core, Malaki (Mal-ak-eye) arrived on the scene as mysteriously as Gandalf left. At first we assumed he was from a neighbouring gang, but none of the neighbouring meerkat groups are missing any members and so he is officially branded “origin unknown”. We first noticed him about a week and a half ago, snooping around the edge of the group and showing a lot of interest in Cleo. In the days following that encounter, Malaki was able to get close to Cleo and began to forage with her and groom her. The rest of the gang slowly accepted him, until one evening at Northern Burrow the whole family was seen grooming together outside one of the sleeping chambers. A quick succession, but a necessary one for the group to succeed. The next few months will be a testing one for our new alpha male.

And so, we bid a sad farewell to Gandalf, the leader who we lost to the sunset of the Kalahari.

…or did we…

Last night one of the rangers presented me with a photo he took of a very habituated meerkat at Birds Nest burrow. I’m not 100% sure, but it does look like the man himself, Gandalf. If it is him, we will have to wait and see what transpires. He is now alone, and caught between three large meerkat groups.

Time will tell

Rob

Rob’s song for the day: Coyotes – Richard Thompson

Facebook | Twitter

Snow, meerkats and Balloons in the Kalahari

The Kalahari is one of those places that is no-holds-barred when it comes to the weather and early Winter here definitely kicked off with a bang.  Slowly but surely it started getting colder, the meerkats started coming out a bit later, and the WildEarth film crew started drinking more coffee than Coca-Cola. That was to be expected, so all was well, yes?

No.

A cold front the likes of which are very rare hit South Africa like a slap on a bull’s backside, and that’s when things went awry. First we were hit by icy winds, which brought the temperature straight down to -1ᵒC on Friday afternoon. That night the winds picked up, the temperature slowly dropped, and by 06h30 the next morning we were at -4ᵒC with slight rain and high winds. Needless to say, the meerkats stayed below ground, and the crew stayed behind closed doors. Then a peculiar thing happened. The crew and I went outside to see what the weather was doing, and we were met with a frigid Kalahari and a grey haze of soft sleet. Suddenly the sleet stopped falling and started floating around. That’s weird! The three of us must have looked like Martians in a toy store with the quizzical expressions painted blatantly on our faces. And then, the light bulb flickered on, and we realised it was snowing! As we stood amongst this euphoria of floating ice in the Kalahari we just burst out laughing! We’d never seen snow before, and here we were in the Kalahari of all places and it was simply drifting down right in front of us. Magical!

Photo by Tiara Walters

Unfortunately it only snowed for around 2mins and then turned back into sleet, forcing the crew and I back under cover.

Two days later the weather had cleared up and we were back with the Gosa meerkat gang while they foraged out near their Northern burrow. The weather was clear and some old friends of mine arrived as some guests had booked a balloon safari with them. Marc is a highly experienced balloon pilot (or bubble jockey as he calls it) and the reserve often uses him for the balloon safaris over the Kalahari. As usual, Marc and I were chatting away by the fire-side and he (as usual) agreed to let me slap our 3D cameras to the side of the balloon basket to get some great landscape footage from up high. The next morning while the crew went out to film the meerkats, I went with Marc and his ground crew to help set up the balloon. Wow those things are massive up close! Pressurizing the envelope (the balloon), hitting the burners to heat up the air in the envelope, and getting everything ready for take-off was just fascinating to watch. The guests arrived and hopped in the basket, and then Marc turned to me and said “Rob, you wanna join us?”. What a question!! I’ve never been up close to a balloon before, let alone been in one. In one swift, fluid, Kalahari-ninja-like move I grabbed my camera and was into the basket with everybody, lens prepped, teeth gleaming from cheek to cheek.

Balloon Kalahari Safari

A few blast from the burner *PWAAP*-*POP*-*POP* and we were off like a feather, over the trees and bye-bye terra firma! Absolutely amazing! The world really is a different place when you’re a few feet higher than usual. Down below springbok wound their way through the bushes, and trees turned into small fluffy green flowers as we climbed higher and higher. I could see the dunes off to the West, the low mountain range as it meandered its way South, and the warm, crisp sun as we created our very own sunrise climbing through the shadow of the mountains.

It put things in perspective for me. Here we were filming 1ft high meerkats occupying an area roughly 6kms² and that is everything to them. Their lives, their burrows, their food, everything. Yet they were part of a much, much bigger system and an integral part of a chain that impacts so many other animals in so many ways. Including humans, through our media.

It was the ripple effect theory, and I was staring at the pond.

From that extraordinary height it just made me feel very small. Like a bigger meerkat (and more scruffy looking) in a larger territory, but yet still having areas around me I have yet to explore. That fire for exploration will always burn inside me, and it is projects such as Kalahari Meerkats 3D that, like the burners on the hot air balloon, provide those little fiery blasts of energy that keep that adventurous spirit afloat, and it makes me smile.

Don’t forget to tune into my crew and I Live as we move through the Gosa gang territory filming their daily lives in 3D.

Rob

Rob’s song for the day: The Great Heart - Johnny Clegg

Facebook | Twitter