New chapter in the story of Umgede Hide
Back from our travels
It has been a while since we published any blog and our apologies for that, but we have been busy in the background with various things.
After Easter we did enjoy a family break away in the Cape. No sooner had we returned from there when Mel and Ian were offered an opportunity to attend Indaba, Africa’s largest tourism marketing conference. This was something we couldn’t turn down. We spent 4 days trying to promote the camp and create new partnerships and rekindle old acquaintances.
Since we returned from our travels though we have been busy hosting various guests at the camp and monitoring the cameras.
Back-up power supply installed in the hide
Our latest addition to the hide was a reolink camera kindly donated by Chris Du Plessis from Photos of Africa. This has given us an opportunity to start sharing videos with our followers on Social media.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook if you want to see these updates, #antaresbushcamp.
Soon we shall be installing a server to go with it and we should be able to start streaming a live video which you can all follow in real time.
To make the camera even more effective we have also installed an inverter in the hide and a dedicated WiFi router for the camera. This will ensure that it runs continuously without the load-shedding interruptions. Good news for all our guests is that the lights now stay on during the power outages and so you can continue to make full use of the hide throughout the night. The inverter isn’t big enough to cope with a boiling kettle however, so for now there is a small compromise which will be explained to guests on arrival!
We are certainly very excited about these recent changes and the new chapter in the story of Umgede Hide.
Wildlife sightings from the hide
From a wildlife aspect the hide has been really busy recently. The bush really is drying up quickly now, despite the occasional rain shower. The trees are starting to show their Autumn colours and it won’t be long before most of the trees lose their leaves for winter, and visibility in the bush improves.
Two months is a long time to go back over for animal sightings but in that time we have had among others:-
Lion, Leopard, Hyena, Wild dog, Buffalo, Honey Badger, Giraffe, Zebra, Nyala, Bushbuck, Waterbuck, Kudu, Warthog, Impala, and Elephant in abundance, as well as a few good birds too.
The quelea are starting to flock together and are often accompanied by many of the other finches and seed eaters. The flock of green wood-hoopoes are inspecting their nest hole again, so I suspect they will be producing another clutch of offspring soon. A green backed heron has been a regular visitor recently.
