We tried but without success.
The lions were moving in the Makeche area, which is on the heavy black clay soils. These soils after all the rain we’ve had are just not passable. I even nearly got stuck on the road.
Also any off-road driving in these conditions would leave terrible scars in the veld.
So we had to leave the lions.

IMG_2556
With all the rain of course come all the bugs and driving at night becomes a little nightmare as the bugs are attracted to our lights. And especially last night when clouds of flying ants came straight into our spotlights and then down our shirts! The only evidence of the millions of flying ants at dawn were the little piles of their wings where they congregated in certain ‘hot spots’.
IMG_2526
All the pans were alive with frogs and toads and much noise. But as usual whenever we put light on these amphibians they either move off or go quiet. Except for some of these toads I filmed. After that I just couldn’t get ‘Arthur’ out of my mind! I definitely wasn’t going to rest near one of those pans. Instead we packed it in and headed back to camp.
I was out at dawn to witness another awesome African sunrise.

IMG_2504
Then it was on to the trail of the impala herds. I spent until around 10am with a large herd with many ‘popping soon’ mommies. It could be any day now that they give birth. I’ll just keep at it and hope to get lucky.

IMG_2537
All over Banyini the herds of plains game were around grazing.

IMG_2545
And amazingly I saw a group of 8 jackals moving together in what looked like a pack. But being jackals and constantly on the move I wasn’t able to make out if it was one or two families. It looked like 3 adults and 5 pups. The pups would now be about 3 months old. The pack were just trotting around foraging for insects.

IMG_2520


Share Wildcast with the world: E-Mail This Post/Page del.icio.us:King Arthur of Toads: Video  digg:King Arthur of Toads: Video  technorati:King Arthur of Toads: Video  Y!:King Arthur of Toads: Video


3 Responses to “King Arthur of Toads: Video”

  1. Gravatar Icon 1 Ivanova de lasse

    Hi Kim,

    I had a good laugh. How long can they go on for? Don’t their vocal chords get dry? Ha, Ha!

    Great video to start my morning!

    Ivanova

  2. Gravatar Icon 2 Cheeky

    Hey Kim,

    WOW! What a ‘cute’ story to go along with the video - you’ve got quite an imagination!! Laughed myself silly & now I’ll never look at Toad’s the same again - further more - everytime I hear the name Arthur - well, you know what I’ll be thinking…!!

    Fun video!!

  3. Gravatar Icon 3 Janet

    I think it’s actually a begging, pleading call for “Martha”. . . . . .

    Mother Nature (in a moment of delightful mischief) has not yet told him that most of the girls in his pond are NOT called Martha . . .

    :-)

Leave a Reply