Daily Archive for February 1st, 2007

Lions watch sunset & moonrise: Video

A small herd of buffalo bulls were wallowing down near the Mahande river. They’re a little nervous these guys in the deep south, so I approached slowly.

Necks above the rest
Suddenly, coming from the side, I saw a big elephant bull bearing down on me. He was a big dude and looked really threatening but not scary enough. I stopped and he came to an abrupt halt too.

High stepping charge

Still frustrated, being in musth, he turned his attention on the buffalo and chased them all over the place. All the while a few other elephants stood calmly feeding close by.

Chasing buffalo
When these guys are in musth they have a serious change in attitude and can at times be really dangerous especially if one is on foot. And it’s also when they’re in this hormonal stage that they give the females a hard time and cause havoc in the herds. These are the guys who usually get to mate with any female in oestrus.
This bull finally left the buffalo, and lost interest in me, to go and join the herd.

Mushroom patch
In the early morning I had the lions north of Nduna and spent a few hours with them totally passed out. Eventually I left them to it at mid-morning.
But when I got back there in the afternoon there was no sign of them. We had had a little rain about midday, so presumably the lions used this cool weather to move on.
Eventually I picked them up right on the northern boundary. Sleeping.

Spaced out
It’s always a concern when these guys are moving around the boundary as they might find a hole in the fence, usually caused by elephant, and hit soft targets (cattle, goats) on the other side. It is then that they get persecuted. At least for now they are still in the reserve.

Hiding

Chinzwini No.9

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Chinzwini 8A

Another giraffe below the other and also just below the elephant’s back legs.

Great conformation again.

Chinzwini 9

Tjololo 31st January 2000

The Tjololo Diaries

31st January 2000
Tjololo feeling hard done by, decided he too would kill a young kudu calf in the early hours. He stumbled onto the small calf where it had been stashed away by its mother and left to lie low. When Tjololo approached it instinctively stayed down. But unfortunately this time the tactic didn’t work. Tjololo walked straight into it. Later while feeding he suddenly had to scramble up a tree with the carcass when a hyaena arrived.


For most of the night Tjololo had been patrolling to the north of his territory seeming to yet again be pushing his boundaries even further north almost to the Maxipiri river.
In the early evening Tjellers was still with her kudu carcass.
Although no filming was done, the night did provide a lot of interesting little critters. Spotted eagle owl, baby chameleon, small spotted genet, locusts huddled together for the night, chin-spot batis roosting and others.