Hot hot hot!
And getting very dry for this time of year. Apparently we’re about 200mm below our average for this time of year and that’s quite something when we only average 560mm and the rainy season only lasts a couple more months.
There is apparently a cyclone off the Mozambique coast, which is moving towards land and this will possibly bring rain in about a week. Generally these cyclones don’t hit the coast in a big way and we’re still further inland so they don’t normally cause us any damage. Although in 2000, the big one that hit us in South Africa also hit here causing substantial floods.
The lions were out of it at dawn as temperatures kept rising. And even when 2 impala blundered upon they only woke when they were already running away in fright.
I got a call from the game scouts that storks were landing in their thousands in the Runde river in the far south of the property. I raced down there (being careful on the gas as there isn’t any available at present) and sure enough, where I had filmed the hippos the other day, 2000 or more Abdim’s Storks were descending and landing in the riverbed to drink and bathe and then sun themselves.
And the ever present enormous crocodiles that live there were patrolling the shore waiting for any unsuspecting bird.
Access to the river was nice and open, but that was a ways up from the Storks and I wanted to get up close. This meant climbing through thick undergrowth on the banks of the river. Then down a well eroded hippo path and into the water giving me just the slightest window on the storks.
Bad place for me to be especially when at that very moment I was filming a croc approaching the storks.
I could always kick myself for getting into these situations, but only after the fact. I think the drive to get the image is like a drug to me and I tend to brush these issues aside. Maybe I’ll eventually get wiser with age.
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