Filming Wild

Category: birdlife, changing seasons, insect world, our life in the wild, trees & plants, wild animals | Date: May 22 2008 | By: filmingwild

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

Hammerkops mating

Pied Kingfisher, poised for the killer dive

Spot-flanked Barbet

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.

Sanseviera fruiting

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:
Animals
Birds
Butterflies
Plants & Flowers
Kulafumbi Landscapes
People Pics

PS. It was Full Moon on Tuesday - the 20th.

Tags: africa, animals, birds, conservation, flowers, kenya, nature, plants, seasons, tsavo, wildlife

4 responses so far

Category: birdlife, changing seasons, insect world, our life in the wild, trees & plants, wild animals | Date: May 20 2008 | By: filmingwild

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.

Crocodiles & Hammerkops

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:
Animals
Birds
Insects and other Creepy-Crawlies
Flowers and Plants
Trees
Athi River in Flood - 29th March 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!

Tags: africa, antelope, bees, bird, crocodiles, flood, flowers, gerenuk, heat, honey, insects, kenya, rain, stork, storm

4 responses so far