Birds in the rain

As most probably have understood by now, we have become quite the bird nerds and always get excited when seeing new or rare species... and going down to the coast provided us with an excellent opportunity to see birds we usually don't see, since this part of the country is a totally different biome to that we are used to in Makalali.

The weather may have brought out the “rain bird”, Burchell’s coucal, that is said to only call right before and after rains… and during rains, so most often in a high rainfall area such as this, I guess. We do see and hear this species from time to time but they are a bit more timid in Makalali than they were down here.

We were lucky to have a number of nice bird sightings, especially vultures that were feeding on a carcass close to the road

and yellow billed kites, which were everywhere. They are very agile in the air and totally unafraid and gladly fly a few meters above your head. This one had just eaten a worm next to the car (if you can call the Tazz a car...) and was the hovering above us in the fairly strong winds.

The one species we wanted to see though was the relative of Jonny's all time favourite bird (helmeted guineafowl). He was ecstatic when we came across some crested guineafowls. They look rather funny in the rain since their crests become drenched and make them look like they are having a really bad hair day

We also saw purple-crested turacos, which are really beautyful birds with purple, blue and green feathers.

The black-shouldered kite is the one raptor that hovers the most when hunting and we saw them doing this a lot.

The martial eagle is a majestic bird that we don't encounter too often and you rarely find them perched close enough for descent pictures.

The guesthouse we stayed in for a couple of nights was appropriately named Hornbill house. As we drove up to the house we were greeted by a noisy group of trumpeter hornbills and they seemed to be the most common bird in the town of St Lucia... a very sympathetic bird if I may say so.

/A

Over the hills and far away

A few weeks ago we had a week off again and this time we decided to head down to the coast and Hluhluwe-Umfolozi National Park. Unfortunately we had decided to rent a cheaper car this time so we got a Toyota Tazz, which we had never heard of before, but we will never ever forget it. Over the hills and far away it took us… at a speed of about 30 kph uphill! Because of this, heavy rains closer to the coast and road works for 200 km in the mountains bordering Swaziland, we arrived at our first camp a couple of hours later than planned. Exhausted we fell asleep in a small wood cabin, to the sound of rain on the roof.

Hluhluwe-Umfolozi is famous for their successful rhino breeding program and what do you know, rhinos were the first animals we encountered the next morning, shortly after entering through the gate. All together we saw over 80 white rhinos during our five nights’ stay and sometimes they came pretty close to the car, like this cow and her quite big calf enjoying a mud bath.This national park is very beautiful with its rivers and green hills and sometimes we just sat down in one of the picnic spots and enjoyed the scenary and the sounds of the wild.It was raining a couple of the days but not all animals seemed to mind too much. The dung beetles were very active despite the weather and it was rather amusing watching these little guys rolling their dung balls around in all directions.Zebras are usually calm and cute and don’t do much except for grazing, but these two were fighting and even brought each other down on the knees. It can’t have been the first time either since they both were quite scarred, as were a few others in the herd.One morning we decided to go on an organized game drive with one of the park’s guides. This we did for two reasons, to experience what it is like and also because you get much higher than in the stupid Tazz. We did not see much we hadn’t already seen, but you don’t feel as intimidated by all the animals in a bigger game viewing vehicle as you do in a small car for old women. Elephants soon circled around the car and a few of the calves were playing happily without taking notice of us.The last day we all of a sudden saw a female cheetah crossing the road. She seemed to be searching for something so we stopped and turned off the engine. When cheetahs call they sound almost like a bird and we hoped this meant that she had cubs close by. After a while two cubs came running down the hill towards her and we enjoyed half an hour in their company before they disappeared into the bush.St Lucia wetlands park has become part of a much larger national park now and we stayed for a couple of nights in the touristy but charming town with the same name.We visited the wetlands during the next couple of days and were yet again greeted by rhinos, but also red duiker and baboons. In the afternoon we decided to play tourists again and jumped on one of the boats that cruise the estuary in search of hippos and crocodiles.The drive back "home" was an interesting experience. We had flats on three tires (two of them twice!) on the highway in the pouring rain. With a lot of help (again, twice) we managed to get to a small town with a 24 hour garage. Luckily we decided on staying there over night... the thunderstorm that night was magnificent, but would not have been a lot of fun to be driving around in.

/A

Kruger weekend

Since Kruger isn’t very far away from the Bushwise camp, we decided to go there one weekend after the test we usually have on Saturdays. It is relaxing to get away for a while and we arrived at the Palaborwa Gate at about eleven, after one hour’s drive. The first thing you see is usually elephants and we weren’t disappointed… after just a couple of minutes we had seen both elephants, impalas (below) and kudus. In the afternoon we went down a loop we really hadn’t planned on taking at first, but we are glad we did. First we saw this young rock monitor that didn’t seem to mind us at all! It was crawling around on the ground next to the car minding its own business, awesome!
Around a bend we came upon six lions at a zebra kill! This is truly one of the coolest sightings so far. They were grawling a bit when they got too close to eachother, but they were probably already quite full since they didn’t seem overly bothered. We watched them eat for a while and then they lay down in the shade, panting and digesting their meal. Their bellies were huge and all they wanted to do was sleep, as lions often do. Once in a while one of them took a small bite of the zebra but without any real enthusiasm.

The relaxed pose of the lioness lying on her side with her paw in the tree is absolutely adorable, and she was lying like that for at least an hour without moving much. Unfortunately it was getting late in the afternoon and we still had two hours drive to the Mopani camp in Kruger and so we had to leave them and get going. The next morning we had an encounter with some curious dwarf mongooses that were trying to warm up on this rather cool morning. A short while later we had our road blocked by this huge elephant bull. We had been driving for about an hour on the same road and didn’t want to turn around so we waited to see what he was going to do. Since he was in musth, we didn’t want to get too close. We switched the engine of and hoped that he would pass us or maybe move into the bush again. After ten minutes of indecicive-ness on his part, a car came from the opposite direction, startling him a bit. He turned around and started walking in their direction and they had to reverse a couple of 100 meters. There we were two cars maybe 400 meters apart with an elephant in between. After about twenty more minutes he moved off into the bush in the direction from which he had come. Just before leaving the Kruger on Sunday afternoon we spotted a couple of spotted hyenas next to the road, right on the spot where a leopard had been seen earlier. Since they were eating our guess is that they probably had taken over a kill that had been made by the cat the same morning. After a well needed brake we were heading back to the Bushwise camp for a week of frogs and dangerous game on the schedule.

/A

Khaki fever

Supposedly guides in uniform attract a lot of attention from the guests… I really don’t see why: dorky pictures, as promised.

/A

Sleep out

So far, we have been on a couple of sleep outs in the reserve, sleeping on our mats under the stars, listening to the African night. Nothing makes you sleep better!

On the first sleep out the whole group stayed in one of the ephemeral drainage lines for two nights. We took food and water with us and also dug our own toilets. At the camp fire we told some ghost stories and listened to the calls of hyenas. During the night we took turns being on guard and just as Jonny and I were going to bed, after our 3.00-4.00 shift, the hyena calls were getting close enough for us to hear the vibrations in their calls… that is how you know they are VERY close. Someone was snoring like a truck driver at our end of the drainage line and we just had to move… next day we all discovered it was Helen (!), not one of the guys as we had supposed. We also checked the hyena tracks… close, as I said.

Spring had just arrived and the days were pretty hot, so we were quite happy to go to one of the camps, using their pool the whole afternoon after the first night. In the afternoon most people decided to stay where we had set up camp and the rest of us went on a drive. We did see some lions, but they were hiding in dense bushes, but we had some really great bird sightings like this lilac breasted roller and (which we see almost every day but they are exceptionally pretty birds, I think) and also a couple of tawny eagles, that didn't mind our company too much.That night everybody was pretty tired, so after an … hmmm… interesting wildebeest stew and Jonny’s camp fire baked bread (a life saver) we went to bed early. Jonny had trouble relaxing though, since some of the guys had spotted a rhino close by earlier in the evening and he could hear some big animal moving around about 50 meters away. I told him that it’s probably a wildebeest, attracted by the smell of his grandma.. but the next morning we did see rhino tracks, not far away from our camp…

On the second sleep out we were divided into group A and B and my group (A) went with the manager of Bushwise, Mark. He is an excellent guide and teacher and I was pretty happy to be driving this evening. First thing we drove up to a 24 year old elephant bull that we had heard breaking branches as soon as we got in to Makalali. He was browsing quite happily from a tree next to the road. I was thrilled since I had for a long time worried about not having had any close encounters with potentially dangerous animals while it was me driving. The elephant became a bit too curious and since one of the students was on the tracker seat Mark told him to go away, which he did.
This night we slept in bird hides which meant that we didn’t have to be on guard duty. We woke up at about 5.00 to the sound of hyenas calling. This caused us to pack up quickly and then rush to the car to search for them… without any luck this time though.

/A