Tambotie trees are not the friendliest of trees to have around. Their poisonous latex is a major irritation for the skin, even shavings from the wood will cause a serious rash. And just boiling water on a fire made with tambotie logs will give you incredibly bad diarrhoea. It’s really not a wood you want to have around. But it’s probably cos of these properties that tambotie wood is extremely resistant to termites and posts made with it last for 10’s of years.
But for some animals the tree is almost a delicacy. When they drop their leaf towards the end of the dry season, the antelope will spend hours delicately sifting through leaf matter just to pick up the fallen tambotie leaves. And porcupines will often ring bark tambotie trees they love the bark so much. Black rhino too love feeding on the twigs.
But man just has to keep away from it.
With summer rains not too far away we’re beginning to get those build ups of moisture and the cold misty dawns provide for stunning and moody mornings. Sadly they don’t last very long as the sun burns them off.
Whenever I see a misty dawn approaching I find myself rushing around searching for any animals to film in those moody landscapes and invariably I come up short! But when I do get lucky it can be so awesome, like the lions I filmed some time ago walking across the savanna in the mist.
Initially when I saw the buffalo they seemed to come sneaking through a gap in the woodlands, but soon they just came barging through ‘en masse’. Hundreds of them came through the narrows and fanned out on the ‘floodplain’ of Sosigi dam. They just kept coming and coming but even in such numbers were still rather nervous to be out there in the open.
Was it lions that have them on edge like this? Surely not when they’re in such numbers they should be safe. Or is it the age old memory of man hunting them for many thousands of years that they still have this instinctive fear for man?
These Egyptian Geese hatched their goslings at Sosigi dam. Where the nest was I don’t know, as they’re so good at hiding them,either in a thicket close by or even a hole high up in a tree. But that was the short walk for the goslings to Sosigi dam. More lay ahead.
For now they’re foraging in Sosidi dam feeding on any aquatic plant life they can find in the muddy waters.
And when a Hadeda alarms close by they all head for the deeper water, their only means of defence being to dive under water, AND of course defence by their extremely aggressive parents.
When I next saw all these little guys they had done a marathon walk of nearly 3kms to Malilangwe dam. You can just imagine those little webbed feet walking through rough country, over the sandstone ridge to the dam. One amazing feat!
Thankfully right now I’m not in my filming car filming, as the usual typical cold, wet, windy English weather is here in full force in Bristol.
Warthogs take real strain in the heat but luckily for them Sosigi dam provides for a great mud wallow. And through the day on really hot days they’ll keep coming back to the dam to cool, back out to graze and back to the dam. Whereas elephants and rhinos will unusually only cool off once a day. Although on Malilangwe dam where the feeding is good they hang around feeding and then pop in to the dam for wallow or swim.
I’m now in the train on my way to Bristol. I think when one has to travel this must be one of the coolest ways to do so. It’s just that much more comfortable and spacious. And with technology today you can do it all on the train. I mean technical stuff!
The Hammerkop’s on Sosigi dam have developed themselves an interesting hunting technique not common for these birds. They fly low over the water surface, almost hovering, in a sort of stall position, and any unsuspecting platana coming up for air is immediately snapped up. The trophy is then taken to shore to start the long task of killing this little victim. And it doesn’t happen easily.
The Hammerkop is not equipped with a bill for biting or tearing, and this platana is too big to swallow in its current live state. And even if the Hammerkop did try and swallow it live, it would grab onto the bill and have the bird in an almighty funk having this thing now attached to it. So the Hammerkop starts bashing and beating the platana on the dry ground, then dipping it in water as if to give it that last bit of hope that it might just be let free, only to continue to be beaten to a pulp again. Only once the platana is supposedly dead and all its limbs dislocated, is it dipped in water for the last time and swallowed whole. I think by this stage it’s much like swallowing an oyster.
I’m now sitting at Oliver Tambo International Airport typing the miserable story of this poor platana. I know I would rather be back there filming the assassination of more platanas (sorry froggies), than being right here. But actually I am rather excited about my trip ahead of me, but also fully aware of the cold and wet I’m letting myself in for. Thankfully I won’t be in my open vehicle for this one.
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