| We all love our wildlife and I think the bushbuck have a special place in our hearts. Over the years we have seen them grow in confidence around human beings – they aren’t so quick to dash off when they see a person on the road, and in many gardens, they continue browsing while people go about their business. We can observe them at our leisure and learn a bit about bushbuck behaviour – even bushbuck vocalisations. That short sharp bark of alarm, for example.
A question that came up was – just as a matter of interest – how many bushbuck are there? Is the number increasing? We’ve all seen juveniles, some very tiny. The population must be growing, surely?
We thought we would have a go at estimating the numbers, and decided the easiest way to do it would be to ask everyone to take photos and send them to Sonny Janeke. And people responded with enthusiasm. 150 photos were sent over the next 6-8 weeks. It is just one more demonstration of how Links residents get involved and we are extremely grateful for it.
Once Sonny started sorting the photos and discarding the ones that were out of focus, he realised a fundamental flaw in our approach. We should have asked for people to send pictures of both sides of each animal. The clearest identification feature of a bushbuck is the pattern of the dots on its flanks, but the pattern on the right flank is usually different from the pattern on the left. Oops.
We will get that right next time, but for this time round Sonny made the best estimation with what we have. He sorted the photos into adults and juveniles, males and females, left side and right side, and then made sketches of the dot patterns on their flanks. He was then able to group duplicates together, and finally to estimate the Links bushbuck population.
It seems that we have, conservatively, a total of 37 bushbuck, of which 16 are males and 21 are females. Most are adults, but there are eight juveniles. Sonny stresses that this is a conservative number, as shyer, less-confident animals may be staying out of the busy areas and keeping to the smallholdings and unbuilt areas on the southern side of the estate.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the census, and a big thank you to Sonny for work he put into doing the analysis. There are of course also other antelope species on the Links, but the focus was on bushbuck. We will repeat the exercise next year at the same time. |
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