August 31, 2010

Leopards, leopards and more leopards!


Well after the first week back I can truly say that I am dumbstruck by the quality of all my sightings! Guests are smiling, I am smiling and this all makes the next drive all the more exciting. I am just stuck asking myself, "How the hell could I top all this?"

Well let me tell you....

I was told that my next group of guests were actually past employees of Sabi Sabi and that Mike was actually a ranger some 23 years ago...now that always leads to a bit of apprehension as you know you have a veteran bush fundi on the vehicle and you have to entertain them some how. The other lot were all new to the safari experience so we had a hugely diverse group to please. Fortunately Mike and Gill were completely chilled and turned out to be amazing people, they also loved birds which is a passion of mine.

The first drive started of really relaxed and and we started the drive with a beautiful rhino bull that had just been for a mud bath, and a nice lizzard buzzard. The rest of the drive was enjoyable but quiet with no undue pressure on me to show them anything outrageous.

However the next night the outrageous happened...we went into a leopard sighting after enjoying our sundowners and after about 5 minutes in the sighting she started hunting some impala. We waited patiently as she stalked past the nose of our vehicle towards the unwary impala, when suddenly she broke into a full sprint straight past her initial target. One of the other vehicle said he could hear one of her cubs screaming and she was obviously off to save it. We all charged after her, trying to keep up with her...and as we got closer we could all hear the cub screaming madly and we were sure something had it. "It must be a python" my tracker, Solly, said cause only pythons take that long to kill their prey. She had now crossed the river and we had to make our way round but by the time we got the other side the screaming had stopped. We were all apprehensive about the outcome and were desperately searching for the leopard but there was not a sight or sound of anything around us. Then eventually we saw the mother with a baby duiker in her mouth...it had been the unlucky victim of the python and not the cub, and she had gone and stolen the snakes hard won prize! Back she went in the same direction from which she had come with the small antelope in her mouth.

Again we had to go all the way round the river to relocate her as we knew that she was taking the meat back to her babies. When we found her again she began to contact call for the cubs which didn't hesitate to come out fromthe thick bush and steal the duiker from its mothers jaws. The other cub spent about 5 minutes thanking the mother for the meal with nuzzling and head rubs before the mother moved off to hunt again. We left her to her hunt and made our way back to the lodge in silence just trying to wrap our heads around what we had just witnessed.



The next night we again found our favourite leopard on the hunt again. After we had left her the night before she had made a kill but it was quickly stolen by a hungry hyena and she was left protecting her cubs from its greedy jaws. So as we followed her again, she had a great opportunity to make a kill but didn't take the last step as her prey was just out of reach. After an hour and a half of watching the stalking we noticed that there was a young male leopard also hunting the same group of impala and was completely oblivious to the presence of the female. The hunt turned out to be unsuccessful for both but watching these two cats hunting side by side was quite a sight.

Eventually our luck had to run out and for the last three drives have been quiet on the cat front but we have enjoyed some spectacular rhino, lion and buffalo sightings. Now with all new guests on the vehicle it will be interesting to see if our luck changes for the good again!

August 27, 2010

Back to the Magic

So here I am... back in the bush... and looking forward to some more amazing sightings. Whilst away for my leave things had gone particularly crazy at the lodge and whilst I tried my hardest to make everyone at work jealous about my mad adventures, they kept replying with the most insane sightings. Brett was lucky enough to see a leopard try to steal a cane rat from two honey badgers and get unceremoniously chased away by the two creatures that together don't even match half the leopards weight. Alister and Cameron saw a pangolin, which on its own is an amazing sighting. But this shy and very elusive character was not alone...a leopard saw this armoured animal waddling along and decided that it should test if this was a meal or not. The pangolin just rolled itself into a little ball with all his armour scutes protecting him and the leopard proceeded to play a little pangolin tennis. Fortunately for the pangolin the survived as the leopard got bored and moved off in search of a better meal.

So my first guests arrived the day I started and it was straight back into the swing of things. We got off to an amazing start when on the way back to the lodge from the airport we bumped in a herd of elephants having a morning drink from the dam. This was a bit of a crazy introduction to the bush for them as I had set the bar nice and high. That evening we headed out and started things nicely with a herd of elephants, some rhinos, hyena, plenty general game and we walked into a journey of giraffe.

The next morning we were heading down south in search of the lions, on the way though we bumped into a beautiful male cheetah that decided to pose for all our photos from the top of a termite mound. We then went off tracking the lions...and it wasn't long before we found the pride of 12 lions doing what they do best...sleeping! As the temperature got hotter they started to move into some thicker bush and we left them there to enjoy the rest of their 21 hours of sleep!



Now that we had seen the lions it was now our mission to find a leopard but that evening we couldn't even find any tracks but we still had an amazing time looking at all the other things that nature has to offer, like the birds, trees and of course just the fact of being out in nature. The highlight of the drive was the huge aggregation of wildebeest, impala and zebra that we saw and then enjoyed a beautiful sunset, moonrise and sundowners.




The following morning the whole world seemed to have the same idea as us... FIND LEOPARD.... and the leopards were at least a little obliging in the fact that they had pretty much danced over the whole property that night leaving tracks everywhere. There were four separate groups all tracking different leopards and it was all about choosing the one that would turn out to be the best sighting. I headed south to get in on the action there cause there were less vehicles which would probably translate into more time with the leopard. On the way down we bumped into a clan of 7 hyenas with the fullest bellies...and they we in a chatty mood! These hyenas we cackling and calling all around the vehicle. Once they moved off we went down and saw the leopard in the south in a tree just looking out for breakfast, when she spotted breakfast she bolted down and started stalking. Unfortunately whatever she was hunting was scared off by the sound of our vehicles and we watched her stalk thin air for about an hour before we headed home.



That wasn't to be the last of our leopard sighting that day as we headed out to a male leopard that afternoon that had stolen a kill from a female. When we got there he was fast asleep at the bottom of the tree and then got up into the tree to feed. We left him there and went to see if we could top off the big 5 with our buffalo but didn't get very far before we found the female leopard who's kill had been stolen that morning. She lay next to the car for a bit, when up the road from behind her a warthog came waddling along. She heard him and started stalking...she was no more than 2 metres from the warthog but she figured he was a little big to tackle and didn't follow through...but that still got everyone's heart pounding at a million miles an hour.


 

All this amazing stuff in 3 days...how could it possibly get better?


The guests had left and the new guests arrived and the first night was great with rhino, buffalo and the leopard feeding of the last remaining bits of his kill. The next morning was overcast and miserable but as we drove out of the lodge we were greeted by 5 adult wild dogs with 5 pups and they had just made a kill and were chasing hyenas all over the place!!! INSANITY!!! It started to drizzle as we left the sighting and went to go see some elephants that had been spotted and while enjoying this sighting a herd of 300 buffalo decided that the elephants were not allowed to be the centre of attention alone...the rain started to come down even more and we were now drenched but completely surrounded by buffalo and elephants.



That afternoon I couldn't resist going to see if we could find the dogs again and we did...this time they were more relaxed around the vehicle and we enjoyed the relaxed nature of the sighting until they came across a bushbuck in some thick bush that they managed to catch and while feeding on it a whole clan of about 10 hyenas including pups came in to steal what they could.... the noise was AMAZING.... hyenas whooping, screeching and laughing, the dogs chirping their high pitched barks and there was complete chaos as they chased each other round...



All this excitement just meant that it was time to make some place for the other vehicles and head out for a nice sundowner! On the way we saw all the hyenas together again and watch one of the mothers sucking her baby!



The new group only had lions left on the 'to see list' and the guys had found tracks that morning but no lions. We went in search of these guys and one of the rangers foumd them sleeping in some thick bush! We took it all in as the lions lay belly up, sleeping, with feet twitching as they dreamt about chasing buffalo around the savanna. We went off to enjoy a sundowner and watched a ridiculous sunset when 3 rhinos walked past and then the male decided to try his luck with the female...he mounted her and attempted madly to consummate the relationship but failed dismally! Male rhinos will have to keep a female that is in oestrus in his territory for about 20 days while she plays hard to get, finally she will allow mounting and it will take the male three days worth of mounting before he actually gets the act right...once inside he will go for about 40 minutes with multiple ejaculations to ensure fertilisation...CRAZY!!!



And eventually we get to this morning, during which we followed a female leopard through the bush till she came to a stop and jumped into a marula tree and posed for some photos...



That concludes my first week back at work (if you can call it that) .... lets hope the next week holds even more surprises!

August 24, 2010

Glorious Holidays

As amazing as the bush is, after six weeks of working 18 hour days you tend to get a little tired, and there is nothing more rewarding than a two week holiday. This holiday was building up to be epic and it hadnt even begun yet. My best friend, Ross, had organised a boys weekend away where 12 of us were all heading up to a game farm near the border of Zimbabwe to do some hunting. Only a few of us were going to do the actual hunting but most would walk away with some meat for biltong and dry wors. The topper of it all, was the fact that it was my birthday weekend and it was going to be a raucous party.

After a long scenic drive up to the farm we all arrived and we had already started cooling the beer before we got to the lodge. The weekend was packed with plenty fun and excitement. We unfortunately missed our meat quota by one impala but none the less we had a blast. The definate high was the fact that it was the first time hunting for all the hunters besides me and there are some traditions that needed to be upheld. For all first timers it is madatory that if your first antelope is a female you have to eat some of the heart and if it is a male the unfortunate candidate has to enjoy the testicles... As a matter of decency I offered to cook these tasty morsels for the guys but they all chose the barbaric route of eating it all raw and OBVIOUSLY this idea came up after way too much beer and shooters!

The biltong was all processed at the lodge and it was up to us to head home and find a place to hang it which only took three of us all of six hours to put up racks and hang the meat. Below you can see the end product of our hard work.



The rest of the week was spent in Joburg catching up with friends and family. In the middle of all the catch up sessions i managed to fit in a bit of microlighting which was awesome. The only thing that was not so pleasant about the experience was the fact that it was near freezing on the ground and we were 5000 feet in the air moving at 40km/h....you can imagine the temperature....it took all of about 2 hours before I could feel my toes again.

If you click on the link below you can see some of the photos .

Then it was off for some diving in Sodwana. This was five days of bliss, beer, sun, friendly people and of course some major scuba! I went down to complete my advanced open water diver which I did successfully and it was amazing. The marine life was incredible and I saw everything from rays and turtle to paperfish and scorpion fish. This was exactly the recharge I needed before my next 6 week stint in the bush.

Now its back to the lodge to get into some major photography and see some crazy things...

My first kill

My guests for the next two nights were a family from Columbia, it was there first time on safari and you could see the excitement in their eyes. The 2 young girls aged 7 and 11 were especially excited and asked if I could show them some lions. Fortunately a lion and lioness had caught a buffalo calf very close our camp, Little Bush Camp, the night before and we headed straight out there to start their safari on a high.

Now if you have ever seen lions on an old kill generally all you see are the remains of the prey and fat sleeping lions, however when we got there we were greeted by intense growling. Once we had positioned ourselves we could see that there was very little meat left on the carcass and the two of them were now in a standoff, trying to get what was left of the meat. Suddenly the lioness attempted to pull on the carcass and the lion turned on her and they entered into a huge fight, the noise was incredible and everyone in the sighting sat in awe of the spectacle that they were witnessing… Twenty seconds later they resumed their positions over the carcass and continued growling at one another. I turned to my guests to see their reaction and noticed the 7 year old was firmly tucked under her mothers arm and jaws were all on the floor. We enjoyed the sighting for another 30 minutes before we left to go see what else was out there. We at no stage got more than 2km from the camp and we managed to see elephant, rhino, zebra and a whole host of other general game.

The next afternoon out on drive our mission was to find a leopard. As we got out on drive I heard that some of the other rangers had picked up tracks of a female leopard and were in hot pursuit. When they found her she was nonchalantly strolling down the road. We had a large group in the other lodges and all these vehicles were moving in to see the leopard so I decided that we would go find another one to avoid the rush and spread things out a bit. As we headed away from the area we drove onto an open area and lying just off the road was a magnificent male cheetah. Lying there so regal, looking into the approaching sunset. He sat there posing for the cameras for about 20 minutes before getting up and moving along. We stayed with him for a little while and then made some space for the other vehicles to get in and see this rare and endangered animal.






We stopped and enjoyed a great sundowner spot with the adults enjoying gin and tonics, the kids sipping on cokes and all of us discussing how lucky we were to have seen this beautiful creature. After drinks we headed back to where the leopard was. She was hunting bush buck and our head ranger had been sitting with her for the 30 minutes waiting for something to happen. He left to return to the lodge and the bush buck bolted through Selati Lodge and we caught a glimpse of the leopard circling round to get a better position. We went around to do the same and found the leopard crouched on the road and the bushbuck walking straight towards her. We went lights off so as not to influence the hunt but could fortunately see everything in the moonlight as it was approaching full moon. Everyone sat holding their breath waiting for the action to start…then suddenly the leopard was off and in three strides was on the bush buck. It was over so quickly and quietly. Once the bush buck was dead the leopards pulled her out into the open, as if to show off her prize, and started devouring the animal no more than 10 metres from the vehicle. We watched until she decided to hang the kill in the tree behind the Selati Ranger’s rooms which is no more than 40 metres from Selati Lodge’s entrance.

What an incredible two days, big 5 plus cheetah and a leopard kill. What can I say but… “Another tough day in Africa.”