Filming Wild

Category: birdlife, changing seasons, our life in the wild, wild animals | Date: Jun 20 2008 | By: filmingwild

It must be! For it’s not just the geese who are breeding – it’s the Plovers too, and the Hornbills, and even the Squirrels!

For those of you who read my Wilderness Diary, do you remember our Spur-winged Plover Stories from last year? There was the family two kilometers upriver, which we followed for three weeks (remember the heart-ache when the river flooded and took with it “our” three-week old chicks, who had so bravely withstood all challenges up to that point?), and then there was the pair much closer to home, which we could see from the balcony – probably the very same pair who are nesting again now – who last time lost their eggs to another flood. When (if ever) will these plovers learn not to nest in the river bed where any rise in the water levels threatens their offspring? This pair have not learned any lessons, for wait until you hear where they have nested this time!

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I only managed to spot the nest because I noticed one plover foraging on its own below the house (normally you always see them in pairs) and then I heard their mating call…this made me actively seek out the nest with binoculars from the vantage point of our balcony…and eventually I found it, up to the left of the house, right where the grass is starting to come through, attracting all manner of grazing animals with hooves that could destroy those precious eggs with one misplaced step. There is no cover whatsoever for the nest – what on earth made them build it there? The parent birds have merely scraped out a small depression, collected together a few sticks and stones, and there the mother has laid three perfect eggs.

Perfectly camouflaged eggs

Now, of course, not having noticed it straight away, I cannot say precisely when the eggs were laid, but – coincidentally – I was looking through some of my photos from before I went to Nairobi – I had been photographing various animals grazing on the newly-grassed sandbank, and there in one of the photos of an Egyptian Goose is the plover, already sitting on its nest! So we now know the birds were already sitting on their eggs then (that was 30th May), so they must be hatching soon….?

This is the photo where by chance I noticed the plover sitting on its eggs (see the far left hand side of the picture)

What’s unusual about this pair of nesting plovers, is their “quiet approach” to potential intruders. As you’ll remember, most plover parents are noisy and boisterous in the extreme, in order to drive potential nest-raiders or wreckers away…but this pair seem to be adopting another approach: merely hunkering down and staying firmly put atop their nest, no matter who or what passes by.

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Having said that, occasionally they do get a little nervy and revert to type, emitting their high-pitched chit-chit alarm call and trying to goad the intruder away by “shamming” – pretending they are sitting down on their nest, but in fact are just leading the enemy astray.

Recent daytime passers-by the nest include impala (frequently, including our beautiful young One-Horn and his friend), the Egyptian Geese, Waterbuck and the Hadada Ibis. We’ve also been seeing the tracks of a small leopard on the beach, but hopefully it will leave the plovers in peace.

In all the images below, if you look carefully, you can see the plover crouching low on its nest…also note the Oxpeckers on the back of the young Impala…

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Further down the beach is another pair of plovers, and these are boisterous in the extreme – perhaps they are nesting too? This morning I watched them dive-bombing a troop of vervet monkeys, who did not seem the least concerned, much to the plover’s consternation.

By the way, as I write this, the full moon is flowing in through my office window…so beautiful… I don’t know when I’m actually going to be able to post this, as we’re having problems with our internet connection and only getting about five minutes access to the net every 24 hours…very frustrating, as so much of our work is internet-dependent, as is this blog of course… Living in the middle of nowhere certainly has many advantages, but when your internet is down, you are completely isolated…

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Anyway, back to the story…yes, love must be in the air for it’s not just the Spur-winged Plovers who are feeling broody – the petite Treble-banded Plovers are at it too. The other day, as I was down at the beach photographing their bigger cousins, I happened to catch a glimpse of the little guys mating. The Spur-winged Plovers did not take kindly to that, and immediately chased the Treble-banded Plovers away (how ridiculous is that, I ask you? They’re about a third of the Spur-winged Plovers’ size and no threat to man nor beast…unless you’re a worm, I suppose!)

The Pied Kingfishers were also having a go, but way across the river where I could only get a poor shot of them in flagrante. The Von der Decken Hornbills are courting too (below), and so are the Sparrows!

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Even the Unstriped Ground Squirrels are getting up close and personal. I notice they’ve been digging a huge network of burrows behind the house. It’s all going on here, you know! As an aside, take a closer look at the Ground Squirrels – don’t you think they are just so perfectly adapted for camouflage in the red Tsavo dust? Their mottled fur practically blends into the background.

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As for the Rock Hyraxes, it seems like they have led the way in the love stakes. Here are a couple of very cute little babies as proof, emerging from our woodpile to warm themselves in the morning sun…

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I saw the Dwarf Mongooses again today – their youngsters (which we saw being carried by their nannies back on the 24th May are now big enough to run along with the band themselves, but they’re still quite small and baby-faced. Unfortunately, they had dashed across the road and disappeared into the undergrowth before I had a chance to photograph them.

I took this shot of our road home, just to show you how dry the landscape is becoming inland. Where this photo was taken is only three or four hundred yards from the river’s edge. No wonder a lot of the animals are moving back to the river at the moment…despite the cold, grey, very windy weather, and the temptation of rain clouds which never fall, the country really is getting very dry. The long rains which are meant to fall April through June, have not been good this year.

The big one-horned Impala ram is still at the helm of his harem - we seem them all daily down on the beach.

I went back up to the old Hammerkop nest but could see no sign of the female goose in the nest…either she was hunkering down, or she is not nesting there…the mystery continues…

(It’s almost midnight, so I’m off to bed now - but at least I’ve caught up on a lot my posts which I wrote while our internet was down…a few more to go, and I’ll be up to date again…)

Tags: africa, animal, athi river, bird, birdlife, hadada ibis, impala, kenya, nature, nest, plover, tsavo, waterbuck, wildlife

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Category: our life in the wild, wild animals | Date: Jun 17 2008 | By: filmingwild

The week before we left for Nairobi was quite extraordinary from a big game viewing perspective…you see, when you visit the Masai Mara, you can almost guarantee to tick off all the major big game species within a few days, but in Tsavo, this is quite unusual, due to the different terrain and thicker bush. That’s what makes Tsavo such an exciting ecosystem to me, the fact that you never know what you’re going to see…it has a certain mystique…that’s why it makes such a great destination for the seasoned visitor to Africa who’s here more for the excitement than for a guaranteed viewing of the big five in a day…

With the hinterland drying up, more and more of the big game is coming back to the river, and I think it is this which has made the last few weeks so magical. It started with the antelope – we’ve had regular sightings of Lesser Kudu, big herds of Impala (plus our resident young bachelors, including One-Horn), Waterbuck and of course masses of Dikdik. The Warthogs are back too.

Female Lesser Kudu across the river from the house

One of our resident young Impala rams just below the house

A mother and baby Waterbuck, part of a herd that regularly
drinks from the river just to the right of our house

As for our regulars, the river seems to become more and more crocodile-infested by the day. As well as some really big old boys, we’ve been seeing a lot of small crocodiles, so they’re obviously breeding apace and getting more than enough to eat, with all the fish in the river and the odd bigger meal as well. Talking of regulars, the baboons are around too, in great noisy troops – still coming down onto the sandbank at dusk to play and relax. The hippos too are thriving in their deep water pool at Hippo Bend. I’m planning to write a separate post about them before long.

A small crocodile basks in the sun, behind a trail of hippo tracks

The herd of buffalo that came onto the beach one evening at dusk was somewhat unexpected – over one hundred of them! We watched them from our balcony as they ambled across our sandbank and then crossed the river into the National Park…of course, as luck would have it, the light had already started fading as the sun had fallen below the tree line, but nonetheless I couldn’t resist taking some photos – it’s not every day we can say we had 100 buffaloes in our “back yard”!

As if that weren’t enough, a couple of days later, three old bull buffalo came down for a drink in the river, and one stayed behind for a what looked like a really good wallow.

A jolly good mud bath!

Following on from the buffalo, you can imagine our delight when I heard a crashing and crunching sound from the reeds opposite the house, again late in the evening in fading light: two bull elephants had appeared and were making a hearty meal of the reeds. They were literally right in front of the house and we spent a fabulous fifteen minutes watching them.

Then the two bulls lumbered off upstream, and a few minutes later, when it was almost too dark to make them out, we watched their great dark shapes wade across the river onto our property and disappear into the thick riverine vegetation.

Can you just make out the two dark hulks as they reach our beach?

But that’s not all! The following day – again at last light (oh - the photographer’s frustration!), we were sitting on the balcony enjoying the peace of evening, when suddenly, there on the beach below the house, was a leopard! How long had it been silently sitting there, without us noticing it? What a shame the light was so low, and my photos so fuzzy as a result, but I think you should be able to make out the spotted, feline shape nonetheless…

As I said, what a week that was!

With so much wildlife around over these last few weeks, it’s impossible to include all my photos in posts, but if you want to see more images of the wild animals around and about our Kulafumbi home, you can take a look here:

MAY WILDLIFE: elephants, buffalo, kudu, baboons & more…

JUNE WILDLIFE: crocodiles, leopard, warthogs, squirrels & more…

Tags: africa, animal, big game, buffalo, crocodile, elephant, hippo, impala, kenya, kudu, nature, waterbuck, wildlife

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Category: birdlife, our life in the wild, wild animals | Date: May 29 2008 | By: filmingwild

There’s been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing of wild things over the past few days so I’m going to have to tell you about it all in fits and starts, as I find the time…one thing which is extraordinary is how much the big beach down at Hippo Bend has changed with the high flood waters while we were away. The high ledge has been cut away completely, and now the beach is just huge and flat, with a sudden very tall step up to the riverine vegetation right at the outer edge. The Vervet Monkeys have babies in tow at the moment, as do the baboons. They’re very cheeky and cute, riding “under-slung” beneath their mother’s belly.

Vervet monkey mother & baby

It’s strange not to see our swallows or sandpipers around – they’re up in Europe by now. Nonetheless, it’s certainly been a bird watcher’s paradise recently, with a great variety of eagles soaring on the hot winds, all sorts of other fine-feathered visitors (more about them in upcoming posts) and quite a few comical avian sightings too.

Tell me: what is it about storks and standing on one-leg? The other evening we saw this Marabou Stork performing a “one legged ballet” in the treetops – it transpired (I think) that it was merely trying to balance on a rather precarious perch on a decidedly windy day. It seems that standing on one leg is something the Yellow-billed Storks like to do too…and speaking of Storks, a couple of Woolly-necked Storks are back at Hippo Bend again. They’ve been there for several days in a row now. The light was bad when I photographed them, but nonetheless they deserve to be featured here too, I feel!

One-legged Marabou ballet

Yellow-billed storks get in on the one-legged act

Woolly-necked Storks in dull light

Speaking of all these different storks, brings to mind something which always amazes me, and that is the staggering diversity of nature. Even “small shifts sideways” creates amazing varieties of creatures and plants. Take, for example, the three different types of Hornbills we’ve seen around the house in the last couple of days – similar to each other, yet each so different…

Grey Hornbill in flight

Von der Decken Hornbill, male (compare with female here)

Red-billed Hornbill

Mongooses are another case in point. A few days back, we saw a band of Dwarf Mongooses carrying their tiny babies across the road, en route to a termite mound where they would have been spending the night. Dwarf Mongooses are fascinating little creatures. They’re like bees, in the sense that one animal cannot survive alone without a certain number of others. In order for these tiny mongooses to survive, each band needs to comprise a minimum of four-five members, each with strictly designated roles: the Alpha Female (leader of the pack and the only female to bear young), the Alpha Male, at least one Look-out, and at least one Nanny (if there are two babies in the group, then the Alpha Female will carry one, the Nanny will carry the other. If there are more than two babies, another Nanny is needed.) The mongooses move sleeping sites every day within their territories, carrying their babies in their mouths, in order to lessen the threat from predators, chief among which is the Grey Spitting Cobra.

A Dwarf Mongoose look-out keeps a close watch on us from the top of the termite mound where the band’s babies are hidden

Another social mongoose is the Banded Mongoose, which is bigger than the Dwarf Mongoose and more heavily set than the Black-tipped. As luck would have it, a band just passed by the house this morning. My view of them was not very clear, there were bits of vegetation in the way, but nonetheless I hope you can see their distinctive striped coats which give them their name. This band had big babies with them, already capable of foraging for themselves.

Banded mongooses on the beach, unfortunately slightly obscured by vegetation

The Verraux Eagle Owl and the Pearl Spotted Owlette are also examples of large and small…

The other evening we saw a Verraux Eagle Owl, a giant among birds, in the big riverine trees by Hippo Bend. These owls are HUGE, and they are all the more extraordinary for their pink eyelids, which you see each time they blink. The light was already low when we spotted the owl, so the photo below is a little bit fuzzy.

The giant among owls: the Verraux

At the other end of the scale, a diminutive Pearl-spotted Owlette

As we were walking back to the house, we turned and looked back over our shoulder, and there he was again, this time right underneath the Marabou with a penchant for one-legged ballet…

The Owl and the Marabou…

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Butterflies
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Tags: africa, animals, birds, kenya, nature, tsavo, wildlife

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