david korte photographs

It is Christmas eve, and I am bicycling along a laterite track to check on my camera trap.  It has been in place for a week since my last visit.  The extreme heat and humidity shortens the battery life, making it advisable to freshen the batteries at regular intervals.

Concealing my bike behind a mess of vegetation, I notice a set of hippo tracks heading along the sandy path bordering some inundated forest.  I lose the tracks abruptly as they turn off to a lagoon.  Now a  set of elephant tracks appear, so fresh I can see the detail from the soles of its feet where they press into the sand.  Monkeys have crossed the track everywhere, and I hear moustached monkeys  in the trees as they chip out their warning calls, scuttling through the branches on my left.  Butterflies dazzle across the track in flashes of blue and purple and black and white.  200 meters into the sand track, I come to a patch of disturbed ground.  Sand has been dug and thrown from the track; it appears something  has been running off down the trail.  As I continue, I begin to see a wide flat footprint here, and a set of knuckle-prints there, suggesting that a gorilla has been moving quickly along the path.  It looks like several, perhaps a small band of gorillas have passed this way, very recently.  So recently, in fact, I am feeling a little nervous, and I strain to hear every rustle and crack in the bush.  With a few hundred meters to walk before reaching my camera, I can only hope that the gorillas have continued along the path ahead, and that the camera was ready to capture their passing.

I have been fortunate today.  The gorillas have crossed through the camera zone, and later when I have returned to Yenzi, I see that they were running in the dark of the previous evening well after sundown when they should have been in repose.  Something must have alarmed them to be traveling in such haste and after dark, eyes reflecting back from the flash of infra-red illumination.  It could have been a hunter, or people driving a vehicle nearby.  Perhaps a leopard, or an angry elephant.  A swarm of bees, or even a marching army of ants.  Without something triggering the camera trap behind the gorillas, it is impossible to know what caused their exodus.

I count ten gorillas in total, including two females with infants riding their shoulders, a few juveniles, and a large silverback male bringing up the rear.  The silverback hangs back momentarily, perhaps sensing the presence of the camera, before resuming his departure.