Mkhuze is dry. Very VERY dry! Nsumo Pan is empty. One little mud puddle has about twenty hippos huddling in it, caked in thick mud. Their farts probly don’t even bubble to the surface now.
At the entrance to KuMasinga hide, a chap with stunning new Swarovski binocs and a huge bazooka-like Canon telephoto lens asks, “You a birder?” Spotted my Zeiss binocs I suppose. In the next two minutes he’s told me the Swarovskis are R36 000, only Canon lenses “of course”, Mkhuze was last this dry in 1963 when he first visited, Swarovski gave him the binnies, he wouldn’t pay that much, and his name is Ian Sinclair.
“No shit?!” I said, “I’m a fan, I’ve got all your books”. “Got them here?” he asks. “I’ll sign ’em for you”. Faint Oirish accent. So he walks back to my bakkie with me and does just that in the only one I have with me.
“I’m writing another one. All of Africa’s birds. Photographic. Where are you staying? We’re staying at Ghost Mountain Inn”. “Ah”, I said, “They’re licenced to sell beer and whisky”. He says, “And I’m licenced to drink it, ‘cos I’m Irish!”
In the hide, a bird party is sipping on the nectar of a profusion of red flowers. Fellow Irishman Tommy is photographing them with his bazooka. Ian is guiding him on his Africa trip. “What’s that tree again with those red flowers?” Ian asks of me. “Schotia” I say “Schotia brachypetala“. “Vernacular?” he asks. “Weeping Boer Bean”, I say, thinking he’s having me on. “Ah,” he says.
“I’m going to tell everyone who’ll listen that I told Ian Sinclair something he didn’t know,” I say. “Oh, I’ll deny it,” he says, quick as a flash.
Ian Sinclair! Well that was definitely the most interesting mammal spotted on this trip. Read more about Ian here.
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The feature pic shows the weeping boerbean tree at the waterhole. Ian said visit me if you come to Cape Town. I said I’ll bring whisky.
Enjoyable birding list:
White-backed vulture, yellow-breasted apalis, chin-spot batis, brubru, bulbul, sombre and yellow-bellied greenbul, golden-breasted bunting, orange-breasted bush shrike, camaroptera, yellow-fronted canary, long-billed crombec, pied crow, laughing, red-eyed, and cape turtle doves, emerald-spotted dove, FT drongo, blue-grey flycatcher, crested guineafowl, white helmet-shrike, African hoopoe, trumpeter, crowned and yellow-billed hornbills, YB kite, black-winged lapwing, red-faced mousebird, BH oriole, RB oxpecker, petronia, green pigeon, African pipit, 3-banded plover, puffback, fiscal shrike, bearded scrub robin, scimitarbill, grey-headed sparrow, cape glossy and black-bellied starlings, woolly-necked stork, white-bellied, scarlet-chested, purple-banded and grey sunbirds, wire-tailed swallow, blue waxbill, village and dark-backed weavers, cape white-eye.
Few animals: Tortoise, zebra, nyala, impala, waterbuck, kudu, warthog, giraffe, wildebeest, hippo, terrapin, slender mongoose, rock monitor lizard (Jess spotted these last two). Eleven big male nyala in one tight little herd.
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Went with Jess and Jordi. Tom visited friends. We stayed in the safari tents. A yellow-bellied greenbul ate our crumbs right at my feet on the deck, and two thick-tailed nagapies (bushbaby / galago) raided our kitchen while we ate supper. Everything’s really hungry!
And a tiny little plant all alone in the dry dirt between the tents:
~~oo0oo~~