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 20 2008 | By: admin

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

Storks walking in parallel

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:
Wild Animals
Birdlife
Tree Watch
Miscellaneous Views of the Landscape
Big African Skies
People Pics: Our Life in the Wild
Track Stories: Tales Left Behind in the Sand

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