Transects

We walked purposefully. The sun hasn’t shown up in the sky as yet, and the skies were clear. Perfect day to establish the transects. We worked on the map the day before, choosing carefully where the transects will be laid down. We used ArcGIS to measure each of them, carefully outlining where they will be placed. Armed with GPS receivers, flagging tapes, markers, hacienda map, tarpaulin cut into rectangles that will be used as tags, water, and some food, we set off. This is going to be a long day.

Elusive

We’ve been here for 20 days now.  Our day surveys have yielded a few scats, but the tracks were scarce. The dawn and evening surveys yielded no leopard cat sighting. Others have seen them, but the beautiful cat continues to elude us.

It left something behind…

We left the rest house a little later than desired. No dawn survey today; it was only 5:30 in the morning but the light has gotten there first. We should’ve gone for 4 AM. We’ll go poop searching instead. We went to Najalin River. No such luck. I wasn’t about to give up. I told Jeric we’re going to search the northern parts of the hacienda. It was still cool, although the sun was already up. Jeric was walking in front of me, our eyes were scouring the road between cane parcels. He stopped, and exclaimed, “Tracks!” I hurried to where he was, and lo and behold, leopard cat tracks. Our first tracks! And here we thought the substrate wasn’t suitable for retaining the small paw print of this light-footed animal. Perhaps the conditions should be right for it do so. Afternoon rains soften the soil enough for the leopard cat’s feet to leave an imprint, and no rain in the evening and the following morning hardens the soil, preserving the tracks temporarily.

We followed the small paw prints. There was more heading west, on the road! I went trigger-crazy. I probably took photos of almost all the prints we saw. GPS coordinates were not forgotten. We realized the tracks went both ways: east and west. Was the cat following something? We found some overlapping prints, like the hind foot stepping on the fore foot. I took out the caliper and measured a number of tracks. Almost the same size for the same foot. Must be the same cat?