African wildlife adventures live from the bush
Elephant herds can travel vast distances in search of better grazing. Here at Malilangwe they often cover various habitats depending on the season. In this particular case they ventured across the Chiredzi river and were making their way back in to the reserve.
The herd took some time to enjoy the water and then moved off into the Tortillis Woodlands.
In a new scene we are faced with a huge array of figures ranging from humans to animals. One that is quite striking is this herd giraffe with a huge amount of chemical wear due to exposure. It seems like there could be four animals in this group.
Unfortunately Dale and Richard were men down with some mysterious bug. But it did give me the opportunity to have an outing with Annette and the kids, which they always so enjoy.
We didn’t see much game but they sure had fun playing in the river bed.
It was a day of comedy.
I was out in the morning with the girls when we came across this herd of wildebeest. As we approached they slowly moved off. But left this youngster behind.
At first when I saw him I thought he was dead. And even through the binoculars I couldn’t see any sign of breathing. But then eventually I saw an ear twitch. So what was wrong with this little fellow? Was he really sick and couldn’t get up?
We decided to investigate. As we left the vehicle the rest of the herd alarm snorted madly from about 50m away. Still there was no change in the calf.
We walked closer whispering to each other. Now about 5m from the calf it still wasn’t reacting to our presence. I tossed a small clod of sand onto its stomach, which also had no effect. Its eyes were open and seemed to be looking around. Now I was convinced the little guy was seriously sick.
The whole time now the herd were snorting madly. Then we decided to speak up normally. The little guys slowly got up onto his chest and then seeing us, he took a double take and realising he was in grave danger took off out of there.
The girls thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen.
He must have been in a really deep deep sleep.
Then driving home later in the day a Francolin was running down the road ahead of the vehicle. Suddenly it decided to change course and in the process skidded in the loose sand landing briefly on its side before taking off into the bush. This too brought a roar of laughter from the girls.
But their laughter was short lived when came across a male lion on a buffalo kill. The carcass was old and very rotten with piles of maggots. But the smell was something else and nearly had the girls bringing up down my neck.
10th April 2000
Not being able to get to the very south eastern corner of Tjololo’s territory we presume he’s still in Kruger as there are no signs of him coming west. Early in the morning we did have 3 well fed young male lions on the move westwards from that area.
The Ngoboswana female leopard left her cub chilling out in a tree while she was out working. Just one of those facts of life.
Richard and Dale had a rough night being relieved of their supper as some bug took hold of them. Hopefully a good rest will sort them out.
Subscribe to our RSS feed:
Subscribe to our Video Podcast:
Recent Comments