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It’s Christmas Eve and the animals are already partying.
The elephants found another wallow and the calves just couldn’t contain themselves. They sure seemed to be winding up for Christmas.
But before finding the elephants I was on the search for the Nduna pride. Travelling down past Chipinyuluzi pan rocking my way across country pitted with elephants tracks deep in the dry mud, I eventually found them in the tall grass country. With only ears popping out the grass-work they really weren’t any good to me and were into sleep mode anyway.
With the elephants going wild, by midday I threw in the towel. The Christmas Eve bug was biting.
I won’t be out filming for the next couple of days but will be posting clips for those 2 days. These are clips shot over the last couple of weeks.
I hope you all have a very Merry Wildcast Christmas.
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It was almost a bad hair day!
I was filming the buffalo this afternoon and just about to put the camera away when I noticed one of the switches on the wrong setting. This meant all that footage would have been useless, so I thought. I wasn’t too concerned as the footage wasn’t anything unique, but back at base I found it all to be just fine.
This morning Mandlovu and her herd were near Lisililije spring. We followed them into the hills as far as we could. And a ways up there found another spring that they were using and this time the cows were dominating the fresh water from the spring keeping the youngsters away.
With them moving out of range deeper into the hills, I took the girls to go check out some other springs. Chikwelane is flowing pretty strongly. There weren’t any elephant there at the time but they are using this spring too.
I was told about another pan to the south of the reserve that was a good spot for black rhino. It was a pan I didn’t know about. Anyway I spent the afternoon there with most of the time just waiting. Eventually a lone warthog boar came for his afternoon session followed by the herd of buffalo.
And by dusk I was still out of luck with black rhino, so called it a day.
I was out early as usual but was snookered by the lions.
I got to Nduna dam just to see the pride move into the hills to the south and out of sight. They were surely lying up there for the day still off loading the buffalo they pigged on yesterday.
A part of the elephant herd had moved back into the Chimbiya area but Mandlovu and others stayed up on the Nyamsaan system.
And then it was back to camp early today to service my vehicle before heading out again in the afternoon.
Working on Banyini before sunset, the light was stunning and the green green pastures down there gave such rich colours.
And many animals are taking advantage of them. The impala with all their little lambs, zebras with their foals and of course the herd of wildebeest. They are such humorous animals and usually entertaining, but unfortunately they aren’t the brightest of animals in the bush.
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We rushed out to the lions on the buffalo carcass being sure to get there at first light.
But they had beaten us to it. Just as we arrived the lions were on their way out having finished that whole buffalo bull in less than 24 hours. Now that takes some eating!
And then of course the vultures piled in. Not 20minutes later the carcass was nothing else but clean bones. Those birds are so efficient in cleaning up carcasses. And they’re lucky too they can’t smell. That carcass was truly high when we were there.
There was very fresh evidence of a herd of buffalo having moved through the area and they must have disturbed the lions and possibly chased some of them off. When buffalo smell blood they go wild and are not pleasant to be on the receiving end of.
We later picked up the herd drinking at Bandama pan.
And the elephants were right in the north at Chipanguchi pan loving the water and brilliantly green grass.
About an hour later they moved into the shade in the mopanie woodland to stay cool. The girls and friends then took to the mud and I confess I just had to join them too!
Eventually I managed to get the girls out of there to give the elephants another turn in their wallow.
The wildebeest started dropping their calves about a week ago. These little guys on Banyini, stay close to their mother’s sides at all times until they are a little older. This is their only defence should any predators try their luck. Hyaenas and wild dogs sure will do if they come across them. But for now there’s been no sign of the wild dogs for a week or so.
So many elephants, so many photographs and so much footage.
Mandlovu’s herd had been joined by the rest of the breeding herd and all were in the northeast.
With so many elephant around there was something happening all the time. Some were feeding while others wallowing and the bulls just being their normal nuisance testing all the females. They really don’t have any manners. They just sidle up to any cow and take a sniff. It all just seems so rude. Typical male chauvinists.
The herd, about 80 elephants, moved into a clearing and were grazing for about an hour. All these elephants out in the open was truly awesome and it gave me a much better idea of all the little herds within the bigger herd.
Then suddenly there was trumpeting to the north. A big tuskless female took off in that direction. I followed. She met up with a trumpeting youngster. They stood around heads held high. Then the cow ran off towards some other elephants screaming. A younger cow turned her back on her and reversed into her. The screaming continued from animals all around. But it was mostly this big cow that was agitated. She kept running off in different directions wherever there was an elephant screaming.
And as suddenly as it all started it all calmed down.
I haven’t a clue what that was all about. And the amazing thing was that in all this commotion and tension the elephants ignored me. Which was of course a good thing, because usually in situations like this they get really up tight with intruders.
Soon after this activity the herd headed south, but again Mandlovu took her herd north. Another unanswerable move.
Earlier this morning the Banyini pride were on Banyini lazing around. And close to them were these zebra. The one foal had this big injury on its side. It didn’t look that fresh and probably not caused by the same lions. The injury was superficial, only the skin had been ripped aside, so it should heal fine.
Just before sunset I found the Nduna pride a long way south on a buffalo carcass. They had probably killed it earlier this morning. All were scattered away from the carcass well well fed and the vultures weren’t daring it to come down for a nibble. After waiting all day they’ve now got all night waiting too. And maybe even another day of waiting.
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We had another early start and already when we picked up the lions at dawn they were in the process of passing out for the day.
Well that was until the black rhino bull entered the scene. We saw him moving around in the bush in the background and the young male lion went to investigate. The rhino, with its bad eyesight would only have seen movement, which was enough to make it charge. But this was really of no consequence to the lion as it bolted out the way.
Then the rhino suddenly found itself confronted by our vehicle. A stationary monster. Not sure what to do and trying to keep face he charged, stopped, charged again, stopped, charged and ran off.
We were lucky to have called his bluff, and it was incredible to see the speed that such a huge beast can attain.
Once he had moved off in his cloud of dust the lions did pass out for the rest of the day.
Mandlovu and her herd had split off from the main herd and were right up in the very northeast corner of the reserve. Trailing them was a young bull.
The country they were in was horribly thick and had me cursing as they kept moving deeper and deeper into the thickets. At least the thick bush did provide lots of shade from the scorching sun. Temperatures just didn’t let up again today.
The rest of the breeding herd had moved south into more respectable country and ended up swimming in Nduna dam. Now that’s what elephants should be doing.
The mopanie bush did though provide us with another find, mopanie worms. These colourful worms can at times be found in their thousands crawling over and denuding all mopanie trees of their leaves. But I think the ones we found were an early batch and out in small numbers. I climbed to the top of a tree to get a worm to show the girls. They couldn’t believe that people eat them as a delicacy either fresh, dried or fried and now sometimes tinned. I didn’t venture that far as to show them how yummy they really are.
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