Filming Wild

Category: changing seasons, our life in the wild, trees & plants, wild animals | Date: Mar 29 2008 | By: admin

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

Sweet-scented Bauhinia

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!

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Category: birdlife, changing seasons, insect world, our life in the wild, trees & plants, wild animals | Date: Mar 25 2008 | By: admin

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

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