Just because they’re beautiful.
He looks big but he’s tiny: Those are blades of lawn grass he’s crawling on.
Category Archives: Wildlife, Game Reserves
Garden Bugs
Oops! Almost wet a shield bug when relieving meself in the garden. Had my cellphone on me so took some pics of him and two of his friends. A yellow and black jumping spider moved off before I could snap him.
The shield bug is about the size of a fingernail. The pupa and the brown, orange and black moth are tiny. *click on the pic*
Hwow! Hwange is Hwonderful!
One of Aitch’s list of ‘things to do’ once we knew she had cancer, was to visit her twin sis in Botswana. Janet quickly mustered her network and arranged a trip to Hwange, Zimbabwe’s wonderful big national park. We’d been once before – also with Janet. Her friends Beks and Sarah Ndlovu of African Bush Camps own a concession and run a very special camp at Somalisa in the south-eastern area called Linkwasha.
Beks calls it his Hemingway-style camp. We called it bliss. Unpretentious tents from the outside, luxury inside.
The weather was amazing! Bright sunshine, then huge gathering clouds, then pouring rain and back to sunshine in a few hours. Repeated daily. Enough rain to bring out the bullfrogs – the first time I have seen them, not for lack of looking. They were out for their annual month of ribaldry: Bawdy songs, lewd & lascivious pixicephallic behaviour. Lie still honey, lemme love you! Also gluttony. Then hastily raise a bunch of different-looking kids, and it’s back underground for 11 months of regrets. I was a bit wild; I wonder if she’ll still respect me next season?
The rainstorms were spectacular!
We were dry under the Landcruiser canopy and enjoyed every minute of the downpour. Once, unbeknown to us, Janet at the back had water pouring down her neck and was getting freezing wet! She didn’t want to spoil the beauty and awesomeness so suffered in silence. When she told us back in camp we roared with sympathetic laughter as she turned the air blue with choice expletives!
After the rain there’s sunshine, and the bush telegraph page is wiped clean: New spoor becomes clearly evident. Aha! The lions and cubs passed this way!
After a good soaking the animals would have to drip-dry. We could get under cover and have hot showers, hot drinks and warm dry clothing.
I think Hwange has become my favourite of all Africa’s big parks. It is simply fantastic.
Those sand roads are very special, smooth and quiet; a breakfast spread on a termite mound out on Ngweshla or Kennedy pans is special too.
Prologue – I had dashed off an email to Aitch in February 2009:
Hi Aitch – As ‘they’ so crudely put it, we need to ‘shit, or get off the pot’ as far as a decision to get to Okavango and to Beks Ndlovu’s camps this year. Either soonish (March), or September / October (very hot). We must decide yes or no, and if yes, who could we leave the kids with? Dilemma – K
–oo0oo–
So glad we stayed on the pot! The kids were fine; We got to Botswana eleven months after that email, in January 2010, then flew to Kasane, where Karen & Mike Bullock kindly hosted us; Then Janet trekked us on into Zimbabwe for Aitch’s last – great, unforgettable – Hwange trip.
We’d been before in 1997.
~~oo0oo~~
Head-butting and Healing
Tom and I butted heads today. I decided to take time out and disappear for a quiet hour in a nature reserve. Just as I was about to leave Tom snuck into the back seat and lay down. On the way and the whole time there he slept.
I wandered around, staying near the bakkie, birding and snapping pics.
~~~oo0oo~~~
When we got home two hours later, he woke up and gave me a huge hug.
“Sorry Dad”.
“OK, thanks, m’boy. Sorry Tom”.
All is well with the world.
~~~oo0oo~~~
top pic from Amblers hiking club – thanks!
Zululand Adventure
Went on a magic trip this weekend. Sheila put a trip together led by her friend Don, ex-Melmoth farmer and great birder. The first part was to Melmoth itself – or more accurately nearby Ntonjoneni to friends and fellow farmers Gavon and Sandy. We traveled with another of Skiboat’s many friends, Simon, ex-SADF helicopter pilot, and commercial airline pilot.
Gavon & Sandy farm black wattle for its tannin and Nguni cattle for their marbled meat with its yellow fat (“It’s good for you! It’s grass-fed. White fat means it’s grain-fed”) and have game-fenced 1000ha of their land in the Emakhosini Valley – The Valley of the Kings – together with their neighbours into a beautiful reserve where they run giraffe, buffalo, wildebeasts, nyala, impala etc with their multi-coloured Ngunis (which I was surprised to hear they round up daily to count, and weekly to dip). Next door, Amafa (the official KZN heritage outfit) have bought farms – 12 at last count – and fenced them off to preserve them. We saw lots of game on that land. Also nearby is the 24 000ha Opathe reserve.
What a beautiful valley! Seven Zulu kings and one queen are buried in the valley and you can see – with much of Natal to choose from – why they chose it! There are monuments and museums and sites of interest. Dingaan’s kraal and the site where Piet Retief was killed are preserved and oft-visited by both Die Volk and aBantu. We heard tales of large gatherings, where I guess a whole lot of ‘stirring stuff’ gets spoken! The valley looking unbelievably lush and green and alive with birds. I’m hoping to get some pics from the others. All I have is lunch and some Ngunis. Sheila’s friend Mogs (Marguerite Poland) who wrote the book on the isiZulu names of the ngunis – The Abundant Herds – tells us these three are:
Gavon, Sandy, Don and Sally (Melmoth local) have been doing a twice-yearly bird-count in their area for the last 17yrs for UCT’s bird fellas, the ADU of the Fitztitute. This one’s called CAR for “co-ordinated avifaunal roadcount” – you drive your CAR and check for birds, stopping every 2km to scan. Same route on the same days every year: the last weekend in January and the last weekend in July.
We joined them for this one. Gavon had a new toy: An old white Landcruiser bakkie he has rigged out as an open game-viewing ‘shooting brake.’ The seven of us set out early morning with enough food and drink to have supplied the whole impi that moved through here en route to bliksem-ing the redcoat Poms at Isandlwana in 1879.
What a lovely day. Birding at its best, crisp weather, cool at first on the high hills till the mist burned off as we descended the valley. The count has been dropping over the 17 years. They told us how they used to see plenty storks (we saw none), herons (none), cranes (we saw four blue cranes), secretary birds (one) and raptors (jackal & steppe buzzards, tawny, longcrested, martial & wahlberg’s eagles, vultures, lanner & amur falcons).
Gavon (ca.60) and Don (ca.70) are old Melmoth farming buddies so the quips and insults flew fast and thick. Plenty of puns and lots of unhelpful advice, criticism and suggestions. (eg: – When Don was earnestly pointing out a willow warbler in a fever tree, Sandy leaned over and tried to straighten the crooked end of his finger; – Don’s croc-like sandals squeaked every step he walked, bringing the quip “Hark! What’s that sound! I think it’s a step buzzard!”).
Sunday we went to Dlinza and Ngoye forests. That’s another story.
~~oo0oo~~
Author: Poland, Marguerite and Hammond-Tooke, David; Illustrator: Leigh Voigt; Publisher: Fernwood Press
Spiders, Meadows and Dog Poo
While out on dog poo patrol in the early morning, I came across this spider web in my beautiful meadow (*click on the pic* to see how beautiful!).
The meadow is coming on very nicely since the head executive gardener Tobias Gumede went on leave. A wonderful chap, he struggles with the concept of wu wei – or “Masterful Inactivity” . He feels he ought to be DOING something and I often have to sit him down and ‘splain how I want, very often, to just ‘let it be’.
He does understand (its been over ten years now, after all) but he likes to make sure. He got back this week and we set out a new, even more laid-back protocol for 2015.
Tobias just shakes his head.
Here’s the admonition: If you’re tending your garden closely, and mowing your lawn edge-to-edge, if you only have one type of plant in your lawn (monoculture!) and if you (you don’t!?) use any pesticide, you are not – by any stretch of the imagination – planet-friendly.
Go on: Find an area of your garden you seldom visit (or create such a space) and let it run wild. Save time, save money AND the lil creatures will love ya. Wu Wei!!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Rita wrote: Maybe Tobias is actually back but you can’t find him!
Pierre wrote: Nothing wrong.You have to rest and rotate your pastures.
Me: Exactly. And when you do mow, mow around those tall little grass islands where missed dog poo has caused fertile growth. Masterful inactivity rules!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Wilderness Walk Mfolosi: The Big Six
Lunchtime high on the Momfo cliffs overlooking a great bend in the Mfolosi river. Our guides lit a fire and began to prepare our lunch. We shucked off our light daypacks and settled down for another ‘well-deserved’ break after our gentle amble up the hill.
From our high vantage point we had already seen a buffalo in the sandy river bed, a rhino on the far bank and a lioness hiding behind the reeds on the opposite bank. As we watched she stalked across the wide river bed towards some zebra. She lay down and waited once she was on the near bank. A few more lionesses and a lion walked across the sand to our left, crouching and flanking the zebra, who panicked and dashed off straight towards the first lioness. She pounced in a cloud of dust and she and her target disappeared behind the thorn bush. We strained to see what happened. Did they get their lunch?
After a while they all walked out looking a bit disgusted with themselves. So no, probably not.
While scanning with my telescope I took a good look at the rhino and called out excitedly to the rest. Hey, come and look! It’s uBhejane, not another white rhino like the many we’ve seen. We all had a good look and confirmed the jizz and the hooked lip of the rarely-seen ‘black’ rhino. What a sighting!
Scoping well left of the river up an adjacent valley I noticed baboons in two sycamore figs, the mfolosi tree that give the river and the park its name. Suddenly they started barking and swearing in fluent baboon-vloek, and a magnificent leopard appeared in view, staring up into the tree above him. I got the scope on him and called the others. He was most obliging and waited till all nine of us, including the two rangers had a good look before flicking his long tail and bounding up the tree, to increased pandemonium from the residents. We heard loud shrieks, even ruder words and then much barking and squealing. I watched for a long while to see if I could spot the leopard again. But we didn’t find out if he got his lunch either.
So as far as lunches go, we can only confirm that we definitely ate ours, and that it was the delicious traditional huge white bread sarmies with butter, tomato and raw onion with salt and black pepper, washed down with freshly-brewed Five Roses tea. Mmm mmmm!
Four of the Big Five for lunch. On foot! Actually, sitting on our bums at lunchtime. What a day! And the rhino was the real Big Five member, not the more placid white rhino. The big five idea originated in the days when they were considered the five most dangerous animals to hunt. The days when the way you “got” the big five was to kill them, not just to see them. We joked as we packed up to walk back to base camp that we now needed to see an ele on the way home to round off our lunch. Well, we did. It was almost ridiculous. But thrilling.
And that was not all . . .
The next day our walk took us on a different route. As we crossed the low Mfolosi in the blazing sun we asked our guides if we could swim. ‘Well, you can wallow,’ they said, ‘It’s not deep enough to swim.’ So wallow we did, King Fogg and I; and that’s how we came to spot the Big Six, adding the rare Pink-faced Ceramic-white Freshwater Mfolosi Beluga Whale to our tally of wondrous things spotted in that very special place, the wonderful Mfolosi Wilderness Area.
~~~oo0oo~~~
The next day we walked upon this sleeping pride, loafing on the riverbed. They scattered when they saw us, the male on the right leading the flee-ing, tail tucked ‘tween his legs! They’ve learnt not to trust those dangerous upright pale primates.
~~~oo0oo~~~
baboon-vloek – impolite baboon dialect used when worried
skrik – get a big fright
A Week in Mkhuze
We saw lots of bewilderbeast droppings and lots of bewilderbeasts – many with tiny calves, meals on wobbly hooves to the lions and cheetahs. The big male lion had helped himself to a giraffe calf, so fat pickings this summer. The lions were recently introduced to shake things up in Mkhuze, apparently four in Nov 2013 and four in 2014. So the edible animals are probably on high alert, muttering to each other ‘there goes the neighbourhood.’
Jess and I watched with bated breath as this cheetah and its mate launched into a flat-out sprint after the wildebeasts they’d been watching, but they disappeared before we could see any outcome.
Friends saw the lionesses bring down a wildebeast calf right in front of them at the waterhole. Lots of square-lipped rhino, a baboon sentry up a tree; and a beautiful hunting wasp, all yellow and black rugby jersey colours. Wonderful Mkhuze birdlife as always, 106 species, with cuckoo hawk, nicator, grey-headed bush shrike, wattled lapwing and pygmy kingfisher being my highlights.
Then at last: A hook-lipped rhino! We’ve only seen a few of those over the years. He stood obligingly while we took pictures.
He just stood there as placid as anything. I had long told Jess if we were lucky enough to see one we’d probly just get a glimpse, so she should be ready with her camera! So there’s yet another reason to take everything your parents say with a great big sack of cerebos.
We had lovely weather, including rain, wind and too hot, but mostly perfect, as all the others were short duration and actually pleasant. It’s dry again, so the waterholes were busy. Three of the lady lions launched a run on a wildebeast calf at the waterhole as we watched. Other voyeurs (among whom friend Geoff Kay) told of watching them kill and eat one the day before.
We dipped on eles. Again. Not one; and not a single elephant turd neither. Not one. We drove 450km over the six days and the reward I offered of an ice cream to she who spotted an ele turd (not a whole ele, just a fresh-ish turd!) went unclaimed!
It reminded me of a Free State Reed-ism: “Not a leaf stirred. Not an elephant stirred (geddit?)”
~~~oo0oo~~~
Mkhuze’s Great
Some things I love about Mkhuze:
Those dirt roads between the fever trees (there’s lotsa tar too, these days).
Few people.
Polite people even at a lion kill (‘After you! No, after YOU!’).
Lots of birds.
African time; African efficiency. We had electricity – at times, but not at our site, which I found out after I’d set up camp fully. Couldn’t test, as the generator only runs from 5pm to 10am – which is plenty, but you can’t find out if your site is working if you arrive when it’s not running. No problem, I set up a field kitchen 60m away from my site. We had water – at times. Even hot water at times. The bins had monkey- and baboon-proof lids – some of them.
FRIENDLY inefficient staff: Got any charcoal? Yes. Where? There. You’d looked there, but you go and look again: fokol. Go back. Doesn’t seem to be any. Yes, it is there. Where? I show you. None. HAU!! It was here! Screech of laughter: Hau! So she goes and fetches extra from the stores, hosing herself at the fact that ‘Strue’s Bob, there wasn’t any when she thought there was!
At the waterhole a sexy young thing with a 400mm lens got chatting away to this 59yr old. She musta been 19 in the shade. Burbling away about look at that and watch here for the pygmy kingfisher and have you seen the lions behind that bush and the poor wildebees calf lost its mother and the lions nearly ate it and etc. Fairly unusual for a Seffrican she was. My 17yr old can seldom string two words together to a stranger!
Very little ranger or staff presence so the ous were up and out on game drives well before the meant-to-be time of 5am.
Patrick the ranger on a game drive in his open top Landie stopped me – he recognised us from two previous visits when we went on drives and walks with him – and asked again, ‘Where’s the boy?’ Remarkable really, as the one visit was in May and the other in 2009! I spose we do stand out a bit. I told him Tom thought he’d rather be eaten by a lion than endure two teenage girls for six days.
Mkhuze very dry and huge tracts recently burnt.
The water hole was muddy and hugely popular. Everyone took turns to churn up the mud and poo n pee in it!
As thirsty as they were (they would come running up to it, keen to drink) they showed great reluctance to actually start drinking. But they had no choice.
This morning one of the wildebeests was lying dead next to the edge. Unmarked.
We speculated one of the rhinos had reprimanded it (they had “baleka’d” anything that came near to them as we watched them drink).
The only thing that baleka’d them was a male warthog. When a rhino said to him voetsack, he said No, YOU voetsack and made the rhino move over. Courage!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Note to self: There’s LOTS that needs fixing with your camping equipment!
I forgot the braai grid and couldn’t find one in six shops in Mkhuze village 18km away. I took the wrong gas bottle, didn’t fit. No problem, the girls got cold food* and hot tea – I had grabbed the electric kettle from the kitchen as I left home.
As always, the fridge worked a treat, so in the heat they got plenty of ice-cold drinks and water.
Next time I’m gonna be SO organised . . .
*Don’t feel sorry for them! They got some toasted sarmies from the Rhino Dino once or twice – and Phindile also made us one lekker breakfast.
~~~oo0oo~~~
fokol – none
Hau! – goodness gracious me
baleka – move away! fuckoff! language isiZulu
voetsack – pr: footsack; move away! fuckoff! language Afrikaans
Bliss
I heard a cry on high as I parked on the roof at work. Glancing up I saw two crows cartwheeling, freewheeling, locking claws and spiralling like a propellor high above me. What a magnificent display of flying excellence!
Buzzing around above and below them was a drongo, divebombing and harrassing them, cheeky little blighter. They ignored him and carried on exuberantly showing off. Wow!
Isn’t that amazing!? I said to my 74yr old carguard Bridget as she shuffled up asking “And now?“.
I pointed out the birds.
“Yes,” she says off-handedly, “Those two parents are teaching the young one to fly”.
It’s bliss, it is.
She has taught me about marine mammals too, young Bridget, my Scottish carguard: https://bewilderbeast.org/2018/10/15/bottleneck-bliss/.
The evening sky from my rooftop parking spot
Mkhuze Mantuma Camp
Jess and her two mates giggled away the weekend looking for big beasts. Elephants was what they were after, but they stayed in hiding. Eventually we were placing bets on seeing elephant poo! not even the whole animal! Still no luck. We saw lots of rhino and a a few buffalo instead. Plenty antelope and lots & lots of birds. Beautiful.
Evenings they watched movies while I read Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything (again!) and listened to the nightjar.
Mkhuze is very dry, so all the animals from miles around crowd the waterhole. Mudhole, really – very little water. Amazing that just a few miles away at Nsumo Pan there is miles of shoreline and clear blue water, but we saw very few animals there. Just hippos. Wisely croc-shy, maybe?
Dunno if it was this visit or another, but in walking around the camp I saw the bluest bird I’d ever seen – and it was a Black Cuckooshrike! I would have confidently asserted to you that Black Cuckooshrikes are black. Well, usually, but have a good look in bright sunlight:
Tom back in civilization had a ball too. His weekend was very different to ours: beach, shopping mall, KFC, two movies, a home in Durban North with dogs and pet pythons. Plus he was given three shad his host had caught. He brought them home, scaled them, filleted them and fried them with fresh-cut potato chips. Delicious! Quite the chef, my Tom!
~~~oo0oo~~~
My Namesakes in Mkhuze
A few of my namesakes at Mkhuze this weekend.
Spot the two old rhinos in the shade under the tree? *Click on the pic*
Then you’ll also see how dry it was – the “water” is mainly mud and algae with a rich dose of dung mixed in.
~~oo00oo~~
I saw Joan Rivers Live . .
. . in Las Vegas in 1973! Yikes! Can that be?
She died recently, so I thought of the fun she brought us, and that one time I went to her show. Here’s Zapiro’s take on her funeral:
She was 40yrs old. She was delightfully rude.
Hollywood Reporter – August 1, 1973
Bravo Sid Gathrid of Caesar’s Palace for giving the summer crowds one of the freshest, brightest and most entertaining bookings of the year in the lady stars Petula Clark and Joan Rivers. Destroying the old hand-me-down Strip myth that two females are artistically incompatible and or have ineffectual drawing power, Pet and Joan’s opening string of standingroom-only crowds found the duo irresistible.
There’s a delightful mix-up of interplay of the stars’ talents; Petula does comedy bits and Joan sings! The “raid” on the other’s forte only adds to the evening’s abundance of style, polish and charm.
Songs Performed:
Color My World/You Are the Sunshine of My Life
Don’t Sleep in the Subway – – – – – LISTEN: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2obt60_petula-clark-don-t-sleep-in-the-subway-w-lyrics_music
Beatles medley: Something/Penny Lane/All You Need is Love
You and I (from Goodbye Mr. Chips)
I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love
(How about them grits)
Your Cheatin’ Heart
You’ve Got a Friend
Band introductions
I Don’t Know How to Love Him (from Jesus Christ Superstar)
What the World Needs Now
Downtown
—————————————-
I went with Jim & Katie Patterson, wonderful host family, and Dottie Moffett, kind friend (who had been an exchange student to Cape Town the year before).
And now she’s gone.
~~oo0oo~~
Dottie’s also gone – way too early at 50.
Hluhluwe with a Seibert
Greg Seibert was an exchange student to Harrismith back in 1972. He mailed me in 2014 to say his brother Jeff was coming to SA for work in Port Elizabeth. He’s with General Motors. I said get him up to KZN and we can go to a game reserve. Short notice, so I booked Hluhluwe.
Greg thought he may join us but it didn’t happen. Very sadly.
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
I wrote to friends after: Hared off at short notice to Hluhluwe-Mfolosi park.
Harrismith’s 1972 Rotary exchange student Greg Seibert contacted me to say his brother was in SA. He works for General Motors and I spose he was checking to see if they still sell Chevs in this neck of the woods. He’s from just outside Detroit, Michigan.
Mfolosi was dry and Hluhluwe was burnt, the logs still smouldering from a fire that burnt about half the park. Lots to see in the line of big grey animals plus antelope and painted dogs. Lots of birds, too.
Must get a kombi next time . .
~~oo0oo~~
Photographing Giraffe
Photogiraffing? It’s hard to photograph giraffe in Ithala Game Reserve when you have a Jack-in-the-Box popping up in the jeep right in front of your lens every time you’re ready to depress the shutter. And then the laughter gives camera shake.
Palmiet Rangers
Field Marshal Geoffrey Carruthers OBE VC ESO with bar, decided we needed to jack up the patrolling of the Palmiet Nature Reserve.
So he issued a decree and press-ganged a bunch of people into becoming rangers – Palmiet Rangers! and promised us suitable uniforms for the job.
We thought YAY! something like this:
but all he gave us was this:
We feel very vulnerable on patrol . . .
——-ooo000ooo——-
OBE – Old Bullet with Empire delusions
VC – Very Conservation-minded
ESO with bar – Extinguished Service Order with drinking experience