Psychedelic Elephant: Video

Dawn produced a new trampling of elephant tracks heading east from the airstrip. It wasn’t long and I’d caught up with them. It was Toothpick and others, a herd of about 15 elephant.

There’d been some rain in the early hours and the elephant were loving dusting themselves with the moist red soils.

After being with them about an hour a young female had a sense of humour collapse and wanted to take it out on me. Well not really, but she made a big fuss of it, charging at the car and then trashing any bush next to her. Then running off and coming back from another angle trashing the next bush. And each time I moved she came again screaming and trashing bushes. A couple of other youngsters joined her and I was treated to this symphony of screaming elephants trashing bushes.
And as quickly as it started, it stopped and they were feeding only meters away.

I left the herd and followed up on reports of many elephant at Bandama.

The herds I had there yesterday were back and Spud was dominating the clean water coming in to the pan. He was boss here for about half an hour. Having quenched his thirst he moved into the pan for some relief from the hormones driving him insane. He’s in full musth and not comfortable with himself. Anything to relieve his state of discomfort.
He left he herds and headed west on his own.
I left the elephant and back to camp to get the blog up this afternoon as tonight we start our night shift again.

There was still plenty of cloud around at dawn following the rains, but they provided just the perfect gap at dawn letting through the most lovely light against the dark background of the skies.