Archive for the ‘wild animals’ Category
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!
| 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.
| 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…
| 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…
| 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!
| 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.
| 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… | 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. 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…)
| “Our” hippos seem to be doing rather well. Every time we go down to Hippo Bend, at the far end of our property where the huge white sandbank provides the perfect viewing spot, we seem to see more and more of them in their deep water pool below the rapids.
| After visiting them a few times, you can predict their routine, for there seems to be a set pattern to their behaviour. The hippos spend the heat of each day lethargic, docile and almost entirely submerged in the river, protected from the sun’s cruel burning rays by the water and by special sun-blocking secretions from their skin.
| Then, as soon as the sun dips below the tree-line in the late afternoon, the pod – almost as one - immediately starts to rumble, grumble and stir. (Come the dull light, out come the hippos: yet more frustration for the photographer who relishes the golden light at the day’s end but is thwarted in the pursuit of a great action shot by the hippos’ inactivity while the sun still shines!)
| You are alerted to their imminent activity by the distinctive honking of one or another in the pod, and then inevitably the odd scuffles ensue, as the giants awake from their slumber…suddenly one will lash out at the other, rudely ending the day’s reverie and there will be a great splashing of water and lunging at the speed of lightning (who would have expected it from such a great lumbering beast?).
| And of course there’s a great deal of the obligatory wide-mouthed yawning, just to show who’s boss (there seem to be a few contenders, even amongst the babies who mimic their elders).
| Finally, as the darkness draws the human spectators reluctantly away, they know that in their wake, the hippos will leave the sanctuary of their river and head inland, in search of grass to fill their great stomachs and sustain them for the next day, which will be spent so busily suspended in the cooling water of their deep river pool…
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.
One of our resident young Impala rams just below the house
A mother and baby Waterbuck, part of a herd that regularly 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.
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…
As many of you will know, we are currently working on a series of films under the umbrella heading of “Inspiration”. Each Inspiration film highlights a specific issue, through the eyes of an individual (or small organization) who is involved. The series seeks to create role models, whom others can emulate and learn from. Each film will show how people are benefiting by adopting conservation-based or environmentally sustainable initiatives – benefiting not just in terms of personal wellbeing but financially too. One of our films centers on a man named Kahindi, “The Turtle Watcher” (see photos of Kahindi below). He is fanatical about saving sea turtles, which as you know are highly endangered, despite playing an important role in the biodiversity of our oceans. Working with the Watamu Turtle Watch, Kahindi’s job takes him from the beach where he monitors the coming ashore of turtles to lay their eggs, to the villages of fishing communities who – thanks to people like Kahindi spreading the word – now hand in turtles inadvertently caught in fishing nets. This means the turtles can be returned to the sea, instead of being killed. This is the latest filming report sent in from the field by Simon Trevor, head of AEFF’s production team… The final phase of the filming for our turtle film ended a week ago when Lesley Hannah [Kenyan camerawoman working with AEFF] was able to film a Green Turtle laying her eggs on a beach near Watamu on the Kenya coast.
Close up of the turtle laying her eggs deep in From the start, we felt that this was a vital sequence for the beginning of the film, and we had been waiting for an opportunity to film such an event. It has always struck me as strange that in wildlife documentary making, the beginning of a film is so often the last sequence to be captured on film. Nesting turtles have been witnessed many times around the world but few East Africans will have seen this amazing event… and it is amazing for many reasons. Turtles look old and they are old! (Surely Stephen Spielberg based his famous ET on a turtle? Just look at that head!) Turtles have been around for millions of years. In fact, it is said they would have witnessed the dinosaurs evolve and become extinct… so they would have been coming ashore during the hours of darkness to lay their eggs for aeons… Today in Kenya, as in many parts of the world, turtle nesting sites are becoming crowded out by human activities along the remaining sloping beaches. These secluded areas are vital for the successful hatching of their eggs. We at AEFF hope that this film will help people to understand the role turtles play in the biodiversity of the oceans and make an effort to conserve them. A female turtle returns to lay her eggs on the same shore where she was born, sometimes many years after the moment that she took that first gigantic step in her life of swimming out to sea as a tiny hatchling. She would have been one out of a thousand siblings to have survived and, in the interim period, would have covered hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of ocean. (Astonishingly, male turtles never return to land after they leave their natal beach.) Once a turtle returns to her birthplace to lay her eggs, she will come ashore as many as four times, with intervals of ten to fifteen days between each laying. She can deposit as many as one hundred eggs at a time. This knowledge gave us a better chance of being in the right place at the right time to film a nesting turtle but the odds against us were still formidable. One particular turtle came ashore at 1.30am, but was not spotted until she was already on her way back out to sea. Having spent many exhausting hours searching the beaches over several consecutive nights, Lesley was bitterly disappointed to have missed the turtle coming ashore. But, as the Watamu Turtle Watch ‘watchers’ knew, turtles sometimes come ashore but return to the sea without laying their eggs. This behaviour is known as a “false crawl”. So they all decided to wait and see if she would return again that night somewhere along the same beach… Lo and behold, at 3.30am the enormous reptile reappeared. She came ashore again and this time she settled down to dig a hole for her eggs. Lesley and the ‘watchers’ were careful not to disturb her while she was busy digging, for with the slightest disturbance at this point, she would desert the nest and her precious eggs would be lost forever. Filming could not begin until the turtle was actually dropping her rubbery eggs into the cavity she had dug with her flippers. Once she started laying, nothing seemed to bother her, she just carried on laying. Kahindi was able to walk right up to her and check her flippers. Everyone at Watamu Turtle Watch was excited to see a metal tag they had attached to this same turtle five years ago – when she was laying eggs in exactly the same spot! She was the largest turtle they had ever seen and would have weighed in the region of 250 kilos [550 pounds].
Kahindi checks the tag on the turtle’s flipper, placed there By the time the turtle had laid her eggs and covered the nest it was 8 o’clock in the morning. Fortunately for the turtle, it was a rainy morning so there were no tourists to disturb her on the beach. The only humans who arrived to watch were hotel security guards, no doubt attracted by the “turtle watchers” on the beach so early in the morning. They were amazed and then fascinated by the mother turtle’s behaviour. When our film is finished and is shown on mobile cinemas and on TV, I can imagine how these guards will dine out on how they were actually there when it was being filmed!
8am: the exhausted mother turtle, having covered over her eggs with Just as the turtle laboriously began to haul her huge bulk back towards the ocean, the heavens opened and the rain came down in buckets. Lesley had seen the gathering clouds and had guessed this was going to happen so she had run back down the beach to get an umbrella. And that was how she was able to film the culmination of this amazing event, huddled beneath an umbrella, capturing that magical moment that the mother turtle, her awesome task completed, returned exhausted to the ocean. Well done, Lesley! When you see the film, readers, as I hope you will, you will now know what went on behind the scenes…
As the turtle heads back to the sea, the rain starts pouring down…
Kahindi watches over her as the mother turtle reaches the waves
And off she goes, beneath the pouring rain, back into the ocean…
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… WANT TO SEE MORE PHOTOS? Follow any of these links: Animals
What a feeling it was, having arrived home after dark on Saturday (to the nighttime sounds of elephants, lion and buffalo all around) and then to wake up Sunday morning to that wonderful river view! And how the river has changed since we have been away, leaving in the wake of its ebb and flow, a completely new pattern of sandbanks and islands. Below the house now, we have a long sand spit, which – if it gets the chance before the next flood – will sprout grass and, hopefully, attract a myriad of game.
Looking upstream from the house, you can see how new sandbanks have appeared while others have disappeared…
The corresponding view downstream from the house, also showing how the character of the river has changed since we’ve been away. You can compare different riverscapes, moulded by the water over the days and weeks here. Already since we’ve been back, we’ve had our familiar Waterbuck (five of them in the herd now) and Impala coming down to drink. One of the small rams has lost a horn, so now is a smaller version of the dominant ram in the area who is also, strangely enough, one-horned. Despite this deficiency, he has managed to stay in charge of his harem for a remarkably long time. (We’ve seen both the small bachelor herd and the main herd of impala below the house since getting back.)
Young impala ram who has lost one horn since we’ve been away Sunday and Monday were grey and overcast and there was hardly a crocodile in sight (we only saw one tiny one, forlornly lying out on one of the sandbanks, as if willing the sun to come out), but today was hot and sunny all day, and the crocodiles appeared in their dozens. The herons seem to have disappeared though – both the Grey Heron and the Goliath (although I have seen the diminutive Green-backed Heron). The Yellow-billed Stork who had taken up almost permanent residence below the house also has not shown itself until today, when it landed a little way down from the house. (I presume it is the same stork as it seems to prefer keeping itself to itself, away from the main flock which we can see congregated on the river’s edge at Hippo Bend.)
“Our” Yellow-billed Stork back again But many of the old regulars were here to greet us on Sunday morning: the Spur-winged Plovers, noisy and boisterous as ever, and trying to intimidate the resident troop of Vervet Monkeys (babies in tow); the orange Butterflies busy by the river’s edge; the cacophonic Hadada Ibises, and the Egyptian Geese, in flocks of up to ten birds, all squabbling with one another and trying to challenge the resident pairs which have staked out territories along the river; the Baboon troop that likes to spend the last hour of the day relaxing on the sandbank; the Hammerkops who were busy mating; the Pied Kingfishers, hovering so expertly above the now low and calm river, elegantly poised for the lethal dive onto an unsuspecting fish many feet below; even the Spot-flanked Barbet was in the bushes by the house. Vervet monkey being harassed by plovers Orange butterflies by the river’s edge Hadada Ibis foraging on the beach Baboon in doum palm tree, late evening Pied Kingfisher, poised for the killer dive
Pair of Egyptian Geese feeding at the river’s edge in the golden evening light And some birds had even moved into the house during our absence (alongside the Agama Lizards and Rainbow Skinks who have remained in residence all along): the Sparrows are nesting on our balcony (all the to-ing and fro-ing of the parents to feed the chicks attracting the attention of a curious yet harmless Bulbul) and the Swifts are building a nest inside a disused light socket on our roof. And our regular visitors to the birdbath are back too, including the Glossy Starlings who seem to have some big chicks with them again. (The adults have white eyes and more radiant plumage, while the youngsters have dark eyes). Male Agama Lizard on our bird table, with Bulbul washing in the background Non-breeding male Rainbow Skink eating ants attracted by the bird food
A Sparrow with a mouthful of food for its chicks
A Bulbul comes to see what all the fuss is about
A pair of Little Swifts are nesting in a disused light socket on the roof (don’t worry, there are no live wires in there!)
A stern stare from an adult Glossy Starling! There has not been much rain since we left, and so the landscape is fairly dry. Nonetheless, the sanseviera plants around the house and in our flowerbeds have flourished, sending up countless new spikes from their underground root systems. Ian (my husband) and the guys who work with us were busy with the eternal chores associated with living in the bush, including pumping water from the river, so that laundry and showers and all the normal business of the day can continue…
In the heat of the day, a Tawny Eagle comes down to take a drink Our unexpected homecoming surprise was a gift from Bernard, one of the Wakamba guys who works for us and is obviously a talented craftsman. In our absence, he had made us a tree ingeniously fashioned out of old wire with tiny miniature beehives hanging from it – just, he said, so we never forget the honey thief…
Ian admires our gift from Bernard, a Beehive Tree, cleverly fashioned from old wire. (Some conservation organizations are making similar items from old wire snares, as a way of generating income for communities living in or bordering wildlife areas, and thereby also providing a financial incentive for people to remove snares from their land.) SEE MORE PHOTOS FROM KULAFUMBI SINCE WE’VE BEEN BACK:
Apologies for my long absence. I have been overseas on a work trip, and despite my best intentions, I had no time to blog! Anyway, I am finally back home at Kulafumbi, overlooking “our” familiar yet oh-so-changed river, and back at my desk too, ready to resume blogging on a regular basis. Two big crocs basking in the sun But first, before I tell you of our homecoming and our riverine friends, I’m going to make a brief attempt to update you on events during late March and early April, just before I went away and during which time I neglected this blog in deference to my workload elsewhere (which is not diminishing, incidentally, but which will have to leave some space for this blog from now on, as I do not intend to neglect it again…) The end of March saw the river raging in a spectacular flood, the highest of the year so far. You can follow the whole episode in pictures here.
A Yellow-billed Stork watches the flood waters rising Who would have thought it? We even added a new mammal to our list of animals seen at Kulafumbi, for a Gerenuk suddenly turned up here on 31st March. In fifteen years, we’ve never seen one of them here. It was a female, and she looked panicked, as if she had been running from a predator. She hesitated by the Mtito River, contemplating the leap across, before dashing away again. I managed to get a quick shot of her. You can see the long neck and legs, which make this antelope so distinctive. In fact, in Kiswahili, they are known as the swala twiga (proncounced swara twiga), literally the antelope-giraffe. They are also famous for standing up on their hind legs to browse taller shrubs and bushes.
A female Gerenuk, the first of its kind to visit us Another infrequent visitor appeared in early April, this time in the form of a flower, which seems only to bloom once every few years. No ordinary blossom this one, but a huge black flower with luxuriant petals curling delicately around an extraordinary skyward-seeking spike. How exquisite, you might think, until you bend down to breathe in this giant beauty’s aroma, and are met with the stench of rotting meat. You recoil in disgust but the cloying smell stays with you, haunting your nostrils for the entire walk home. Is this a carnivorous plant then? Sending out its rancid smell to attract hapless insects into that tempting curling cavern, like a siren? Why else would nature have designed it thus? (We have other foul-smelling plants here in the Tsavo region, such as the hydnora abyssinica, for example, which emits a stench of rotting meat to attract insects which then pollinate the plant.)
April saw a multitude of flowers, as the rains continued to fall. Despite our beehive disaster, some of our bees did survive (and now have new homes after a swift reparation job to our hives), for we saw them buzzing around on the delicate blue commelina flowers, which were blossoming in profusion. Unlike the sporadic flowering of the bauhinia during the last rains, this time the bauhinia all flowered together, like snow across the landscape for a couple of short days before shedding their petals like confetti. Strangely, there was not even one “Seagrass Cabbage” leaf in sight – how different to the ‘Short Rains’ when the ground was carpeted with these broad-leafed plants. (The ‘Short Rains’ normally fall in November/December, but last year were late and then persisted into January and early February. The ‘Long Rains’ normally fall during April, May and June. This year, instead of a long dry spell, one rainy season almost followed directly on from the last, with just a few weeks’ gap in between.) CATCH UP ON MORE PHOTOS FROM APRIL 2008:
I thought you might like to see this sequence of photographs as it’s quite fun: it was so hot during March and April that this Goliath Heron took to spending long periods of time just sitting down in the cooling water. When it finally emerged again, it hardly resembled the elegant bird we are so used to seeing!
I’ll start with the bad news. Over the full moon, which fell on the Easter weekend, our beehives were raided. Eleven hives were destroyed and the honey stolen to sell to local brewers who use it to make alcohol – changaa as it is known here. Even worse than our indignation at being robbed, is the fact that honey thieves never leave any honey for the bees that worked so hard to make it. Without that vital honey-filled comb, they won’t be able to reproduce. After the raid, we saw a swarm of bees huddled together in a big mob, clinging to an acacia tree branch, robbed of their home. I felt so sorry for them…in fact, I am furious!
Two of our beehives, burnt out and destroyed (above and below)
Wasted honeycomb which could have sustained a new generation of bees The better news is that, with the river full again, the hippos are happy. One turned up opposite the house, scouting out the reed beds where we often see hippos spending the heat of the day. The following day, a mother hippo appeared in the same place with a small baby…I can’t believe this is the same mother and baby hippo that were living here before – the baby looks smaller, so I think this is a new one. Hippos are one of the only mammals (apart from whales) that give birth underwater. Imagine being a baby hippo and having to swim to the surface before being able to take your very first breath! It’s so lovely having the hippos right here by the house.
Hippo scouting out the reed beds opposite our house
Mother and baby hippo Yesterday, the river was rising and falling every few hours, changing the landscape completely as huge grey storm clouds gathered overhead, preparing for our nightly downpour. (Today is another story again, but that will have to wait for my next post…) There must have been rain to the west of us because the Mtito River started flowing, having been dry for over a month. From the house, we watched as it broke its way into the much larger Athi, crocodiles, herons, egrets and hammerkops congregating at its mouth.
The smaller, seasonal Mtito River starts flowing into the Athi (on the right hand side of the above picture)
A Crocodile and a Grey Heron wait for prey at the mouth of the Mtito River
Oh so elegant: a Grey Heron stands next to a Great White Egret near the Mtito River mouth Unbelievably, the Bauhinia (bauhinia taitensis) are flowering again already, only six weeks or so since they were last out in bloom…In fact, the dry season has been relatively short as the last rainy season ended so late. Unlike last time, when the Bauhinia started flowering in dribs and drabs, with the sudden heavy and sustained rain, the flowers have come out en masse this time, like snow across the landscape. Do you know the feeling when something is so beautiful, it hurts to look at it? This is how I feel when I look at these blossoming Bauhinia bushes, with their pungent yet delicate scent like roses. Each flower-laden bough looks like a ready-made wedding bouquet. Even as they start drying out – ever so soon, for the blossom is short-lived, turning pinkish and shedding its petals like confetti after just 24 hours – they retain an aching beauty.
Our driveway, adorned with Bauhinia taitensis bushes in full bloom
Turning pink, as they start to dry out… Other flowers are blossoming too, including the pink grewia lilacina and clumps of small yellow flowers which I think are triumfetta flavescens. The yellow-flowered creeper on our lawn (which shall remain nameless for the simple reason that I don’t know what it’s called) has produced a wonderful looking fruit that resembles a melon. In our balcony flowerbeds, the most incredible white lilies have self-seeded (pictures below) – they’re similar but not the same as the white lilies I photographed during the last rainy season. They took us completely by surprise – all of a sudden they were there on our balcony in all their glory, and the next day, they were withered and gone…but what a flush of beauty while they lasted!
Hippos are strange, unpredictable creatures. It was 8.15 last Thursday morning, and just as we were finishing breakfast, already sweating in the wake of another stiflingly hot day, a hippo emerged from the river. In the bright, scorching sunlight it walked up out of the water (at a time when most hippos were finding what shade they could in the cover of the reeds, or in secluded pools left in the shallow stream, which was all that was left of our river…). The lumbering beast made its steady way up the steep sandbank, and plodded away into the thick bush. It occurred to me that the hippo probably had a very good reason for its unusual morning meander, but I was none the wiser – perhaps the thick bush provided more respite from the heat than the dwindling river? Or perhaps the hippo had an inkling of what was coming?
Hippo leaving the river as the sun bakes the river… That afternoon, the first splashes of rain cascaded down from an angry sky, hard and stinging, bringing instant relief and releasing us from the clinging, claustrophobic heat. The shower was short and sharp, and did not last long, but while they fell, the raindrops were fat and full of promise… What joy! The rains have broken!
A Yellow-billed Stork continues fishing as the first raindrops fall on the river… In the evening we watched the sky for hours, bewitched by the huge electric storms raging all around us, massive fronts of lighting illuminating the entire firmament like a giant fireworks display, on and on into the night. I felt awe-struck, and privileged, and very, very small before that gigantic stage. There is nothing quite like Nature for putting you in your place, for confirming that – in the big picture – you’re really not all that significant… Fast forward to 3.15am and I am awoken from a deep sleep by a fantastic roar. For a moment I am disorientated, and don’t know what’s happening. And then, in the haze of my early morning mind, it dawns on me: the river is flooding. I stumble out of bed, the moon is large and luminous, and I can see the huge river tumbling and crashing below our balcony. The roar was from this wall of water, plunging its way coastwards in one massive flash flood, whipping yesterday’s placid shallow stream into a frenzied deluge.
From this… …to this, in the blink of a sleepy eye
There’s something quite awe-inspiring about a big river in full flood. Even though you know you are safely above its danger zone, you still have to fight your animal instinct of fear which makes you want to run from it, such is the power of that water and the thundering sound it makes as it crashes beneath you, red and muddy from its cascade through upcountry farming areas where poor land management has left the earth bare and vulnerable to erosion with every bout of rain.
It has rained ever since then (with the obligatory accompaniment of an insect invasion, including a very pretty moth that landed on our bathroom mirror, above), the stormy clouds obliterating all view of the full moon rising at the weekend. A foray into beautiful Tsavo West National Park rewarded us with muddy elephants, a herd of giraffe, a couple of elegant Lesser Kudu and more than a few buffalo…
A lovely Lesser Kudu doe, a wonderfully muddy bull Elephant, and a herd of haughty-looking Giraffe were just a few of the animals we saw in Tsavo West… Yesterday, it was cloudy and rainy all day, the crocodiles starved of any sunlight and barely any warmth…then today we awoke to a totally different morning: back to the scorching heat and the crocodiles returning in droves to bask on the sandbanks, while the Goliath Heron, too hot even to finish washing, just sat down in the river and stayed there (and who could blame it?) I had to take a cold shower at midday, just to fortify myself for the onslaught of the afternoon heat.
The crocodiles were happy to see the sun again, but it was too hot for the Goliath Heron who, half way through its wash, just sat down in the river and stayed there! Tonight, as might be expected, the thunder and lightning are raging again, huge storm clouds fomented in the heat of the day, now towering overhead…and the rain continues, and the bugs multiply, and the flowers prepare to launch into their reproductive cycles once again…the tiny pretty blue commelina flowers are already blooming everywhere you look (including on our nascent lawn) and the sanseviera we transplanted into our garden (both on the balcony and outside) are sending up a proliferation of shoots, the new spikes breaking the surface of the earth like spiky aliens, and reaching up towards the light…
Delicate blue Commelina flowers colonizing our new lawn
Sanseviera (above and below) sending up new spikes
Look at this feast! Today our trusty beehives delivered this bounty, despite there being rather a shortage of bees around this year…obviously enough to make enough honey to go round for us and the guys that work for us. The hives we use are traditional Wakamba beehives: hollowed out logs hung in the trees with wire. They’re not the most efficient type of beehive in the world: we’re planning to buy some more modern, more efficient hives soon. In the meantime, it’s important when harvesting the honey not to take all the combs out of each hive, otherwise there’s nothing left for the bees…I squeezed the incredibly sweet honey out of the combs by hand, which was a sticky experience but well worth it…there’s nothing quite like a slice of homemade bread, fresh out the oven and still warm, with honey from one’s very own beehives…
On the culinary front, I’ve recently started making kefir – for anyone who doesn’t know what this is, it’s a drink/food very like natural yoghurt but apparently with even more health benefits. You start with some ‘grains’ - an ugly-looking lump consisting of bacteria and yeast (which I got from a friend – her grandmother kept the same culture going for 60 years by carefully looking after those all-important grains), put them in milk overnight, and by morning you have a thin yoghurt-like mixture with myriad health benefits. (Even Ian has been persuaded of this, and has a daily glass into which he mixes a little honey.) After making a jugful, you have to carefully sieve the kefir to extract the grain, then place the ugly, magical lump in some water (or milk) to keep it alive and ready to make the next batch. Ian thinks it’s like “The Good Life” all over again [a 1970s English comedy series where a Do-It-Yourself couple tried to live off the land in their tiny English town house, overlooked with amused disdain by their upper-crust neighbours.]….just wait until we have own elephant- and baboon-proof, super-fortified veggie patch!
My goodness it has been HOT – you sweat just getting out of the bed in the morning! The river has been very low, and a huge new mud flat has opened up on Hippo Bend, with interesting sand formations being created by the wind where the mud meets the sand. There were lots of ‘track stories’ on the beach when we were down there the other evening…telling of the passing elephants, and the baboons who were running just ahead of us on the beach, and of storks walking in perfect parallel, and even of the cheetah who’s been back here drinking again….or is this a hyena footprint? They are so difficult to tell apart, and we’ve been hearing a lot of hyena noise around the house recently, loud whooping and the distinctive chuckling noise they make which leads people to say that hyenas laugh… Elephant footprint patterns in the mud Baboon footprint in the sand (the thumb makes it distinctive) Cheetah footprint (notice the claws - unlike other cats, cheetahs cannot retract their claws) The searing heat has been pulling great tall rain clouds and it looks like the rainy season is about to start any day now, with huge wild skies and towering clouds and the smell of moisture on the hot, hot air. Because the last rainy season ended so late here in Tsavo, it seems strange to be contemplating rain again already, but it certainly does seem to be on its way. The wind in the evenings, as the sun slips below the horizon and the temperature drops, has been unbelievably fierce…in fact, it’s been blowing so hard, we think something has snapped in our wind turbine which is looking decidedly sluggish despite the raging winds…
Click to enlarge… These two young impala rams, which have just about taken up permanent residence on our Little Serengeti, have got the right idea – resting up in the shade on the beach during the heat of the day.
Impalas on the beach… The baobab trees have only just dropped all their leaves, which had turned such a bright yellow colour that the trees looked like they were in blossom. They are now bare-boughed again. If the thunder and lighting outside my window beyond the Yatta have anything to say about it though, it seems the trees will be coming out in leaf before too long again…
A yellow-leafed Baobab Tree at the end of February - you would be forgiven it was in flower!
The Baobabs are bare-boughed now, but if the gathering storm clouds have anything to say about it, it won’t be long before they’re coming out in leaf again… Jean-Genie [plural – our genet cats - we initially thought there was just one, but it now turns out there are at least two or three] have become tamer and tamer, and now come right up to our chairs when we’re on the balcony eating dinner. Soon they’ll be tame enough to photograph but I don’t want to frighten them away at this early, delicate stage by using the flash. What the genets leave behind, the ants tidy up – how about this for cooperative labour?
Ants carrying away the chicken scraps after the genet cats have had their fill. More Pictures from March 2008: |
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