I joke about it, but I sometimes do think that the animals prefer putting on a show when they know I am off drive. Needless to say that the highlights of this past week all happened when I was off drive packing boxes and all sorts of other fun things.
The usual perpetrators are the cheetahs, and it was thus no surprise that after my previous guests jokingly asked for “cheetahs and pangolins” during their stay that I heard that Scotch and Ginger had picked up fresh tracks for a single male cheetah in the eastern open areas close to camp. It didn’t take too long for the male to be located resting on an open area whilst I continued to unpack boxes.
As if that wasn’t enough, a couple of days later, I was out on a run when I heard that a pangolin had been located not far from Nkhari Homestead (the destination for all of my boxes as Monique, Nova and I make that camp our home for the next couple of months whilst our home gets a new roof). Fortuitously, the pangolin happened to be no more thana few hundred metres off my planned route, so I popped in to have a look – it was huge, possibly the biggest pangolin I have seen! I was keeping an eye on the pangolin until Tristan’s guests arrived, and upon greeting them, Tristan rubbed salt in my wounds to say that the guests had seen an aardvark the night before! Talk about a lucky few days – cheetah, aardvark and pangolin in less than 48 hours! As if that wasn’t enough, Dzindza leopardess spent a couple of days with a kill to the west of camp, the River Pride, their cubs and the Vuyela males were found with a large male waterbuck kill (one more taking our total of waterbucks in the eastern-block down to zero), and then also the pride-sans-cubs with a zebra kill. Clearly, I picked the wrong weekend to move homes!
That is not to say that I had had a bad week, but it was a little more work than the previous weeks. The River Pride and their cubs remained in the eastern sections along the Machaton River, but sadly it appears as though they too have lost a cub, with there now only being signs of four cubs (instead of five). We caught up with the pride a couple of times when I was on drive, but I was sad that they missed out on a large buffalo bull carcass just east of camp. The pride had been resting not far off during the day, but returned to the den that evening. During the night the hyenas found the carcass and began their fighting – usually enough to draw in some lions, and with the roars of a single Vuyela male getting closer, we headed out in the morning fully expecting to find a male lion or five feasting on the carcass. Instead we found about ten very nervous hyenas; even when the vultures descended to finish off the remains later in the morning, it failed to bring in any lions. The next morning, with very little of the carcass left, there were signs that a lion had been there, but without any real meat to be garnered from the carcass, he decided to move off.
The roars of the four Birmingham Breakaway males to the south-west may have drawn their attention, but we heard no response from the Vuyelas to the intruders’ roars. The next morning the foursome of young males moved west, but time will tell if they will be tolerated this close to Vuyela male territory. It was possible that these roars did keep the Sark Breakaways further north; they were seen twice on our north-western boundary, and we had them for a day on Nkhari after they had been found with a warthog kill – not a great meal for 16 lions, and it was clear that the young cubs were struggling to get a good meal with so many adults around. The Giraffe Pride was reported a couple of times in the west this week, but none of us ventured that far west to see them.
On the leopard front, we had a quiet first half of the week with these spotted beauties, but Jack did manage to track down a trio of leopards; Xiwumbane and Nyeleti were mating but making life very tricky for us as we tried to follow them across a series of drainage lines. Upon going around, Xiwumbane was following behind a smaller leopard that kept running off – very odd for Nyeleti, but the answer soon revealed itself when we saw that as the leopard ran off, it had a set of golden jewels and was in fact a young male! Xiwumbane didn’t pursue him, and then spent the day looking for Nyeleti – the honeymooners appeared at the camp waterhole and in front of the lodge before heading south and disappearing.
It was a week of herds; the elephants picked up noticeably from last week, and the herds continued to frequent the waterhole in front of camp, with the herds spending most days in close proximity to the camp. We also got a couple of visits from a herd of 200-odd buffalo! The first large buffalo herd that has visited our dam this winter. They however played second-fiddle to the herd in the western areas that spent a few days around the area. Upon first sight of the herd resting alongside the Zebenine riverbed, I estimated their numbers to be around 500-600, but when we caught up with them making their way to a small waterhole a couple of days later, my estimate shot up greatly, and we estimated that they could be close to (if not in-excess-of) 1,000 animals!
A highlight of the week for me was following a crash of rhinos that stumbled upon our roosting male ostrich; until this point only Tristan had seen the nest whilst following a pack of wild dogs in the area a few weeks back. This time Jack spotted the male as the rhinos casually grazed towards him; quite expectedly, when the short-sighted rhinos got within a few meters of the next, the ostrich jumped up and hissed sending some 10,000kgs of rhinos scattering off in the other direction! We had a look, and the male was incubating a clutch of 18 eggs. With an expected hatching rate of 30 percent, we are hoping to see at least six small chicks in the coming weeks.
The last report was to say that the first Wahlberg’s eagles have arrived, and the Knobthorns have started to flower in some areas – still far from a full bloom from all the Knobthorns, but I eagerly await that period – always one of my favourites at the end of these dry winters!
That is all from me for this week, so will catch up again next Monday!
Cheers
Chad
