Daily Archive for December 6th, 2007

Elephants and Storm Brewing at Dusk: Video

Again it rained last night but really just a drizzle, which continued for some time after dawn.
I was out their getting a little wet but not unpleasantly so.
Small stripes
And again I was on the trail of popping impala without success. I then spent some time with a herd of Wildebeest. There were 2 new calves in the herd and all the other moms are heavily pregnant. Again I was hoping to get lucky with one of them, but it was only hope.

Weird worm
When they moved on a single hyaena came drifting through the area as only they can. Its interest was suddenly peaked when it saw the calves but the herd bull was quick to see off the spotted dude.
Moving on the elephants were typically in the Albizia woodland again casually stuffing their faces with the flush of everything green.
Tuchem came over again for his little greeting, pulled some grass tufts from under my car and moved on.

Getting personal
I was in a small clearing and the elephants had been all around me, but when I awoke from oopsy, dozing off, they had all moved away. Then suddenly there was panic and the herds all stampeded south. I followed at a distance and they kept going onto the wet clay soils, totally out of bounds for me.

3 sizes
I never know what it is that gets the herds to stampede, but I think what happens is, one elephant gets a fright and takes off. This scares those surrounding it and they too take off. Which scares others they run passed and they take off and soon the whole herd stampedes. They probably only stop when someone starts wondering what all the running is about and one by one they come to stop.

Green pastures
It was only late in the afternoon that the elephants had moved back north again and as the clouds were building in the south and east a few bulls ventured out into the open to take full advantage of the fresh green flush around Chivi pan.
As the clouds built up with the sun setting the colours changed from blues, greys and whites, to reds, orange and gold.

Sunset 12/05

Tjololo 5th December 2000

The Tjololo Diaries
5th December 2000
It was unusual to find Tjololo on the move soon after we’d headed out. It was still very hot and usually he’d lie up until it cooled down. Luckily he was back on home ground anyway. But he soon rested up until around sunset before continuing on his boundary patrol westwards along the river.
Not seeing much of him now as the undergrowth along the rivers is very thick, we headed off to the hyaena den but with no activity there headed back on the trail of Tjololo.
He left the river and headed north. Another young impala was unfortunate to be his next victim. Again using his “chaos” tactic to surprise the little fellow. He carried the carry a few hundred and treed it to feed and then rested up.


We went back to the hyaena den and waited there. In the early hours 2 of the cubs came out to play and a little later an adult arrived. So at last I was able to get some useful footage around the den.
At dawn Tjololo finished off his meal and headed into the river.
A couple of lionesses graced us with the presence a while after sunrise but as it got hot they rested up.