New outdoor showers

Our most recent visitors to the lodge have been enjoying the new improvements to Giraffe and Duiker huts, namely the outdoor showers.  With the temperatures soaring in recent weeks (40 degrees last Saturday),  the showers are being well used. 



Outside view of duiker hut outdoor shower

Giraffes admiring the new outdoor shower at Giraffe hut. 

The blossom on these lemon trees in the outside area of duiker shower gives a beautiful scent to the evening air.

I’m hoping these lemon trees in the outdoor showers will survive the frequent visits by the elephants. They make a habit of browsing around the lodge perimeter and think nothing of browsing on the plants inside the fence. 

Our tiny office has also been enlarged considerably, giving us a lot more working space. 

 

 

 

 

Summer has arrived with a bang, temperatures are steadily rising and the trees are beginning to get their summer foliage, but no rain yet.  The grass is very dry and brown with very little water content and we have a steady stream of animals visiting the waterhole to drink.  

 

    

Giraffe eating the knobthorn blossom and leaves.

 

Leopard's View on Facebook

Great news for Facebook followers.  You can now find Leopard's View Game Lodge on Facebook.


 

The year is moving on apace and already Spring is here again.  The knobthorn trees have flowered early this year and the giraffes have been paying their annual visit to feast on the blossom and new leaf growth. 

 

The winter has been a busy one for us here at Leopard’s View with many guests enjoying the lodge and many animals enjoying the waterholes.  The aloes blazed forth with their customary glory and the sun-birds were continuous visitors to the gardens whilst the aloes were in bloom.

 

Elephants have been regular visitors to our part of Oliphants West throughout the winter, including several more visits from the individual who enjoys feeding on the plants in our garden.   The number of broken trees has increased dramatically and just a few days ago there was an almighty crack of breaking wood as a magnificent leadwood was toppled by an elephant who had been drinking at the waterhole just minutes earlier. 

 

Wild dogs have made several more appearances throughout the last few months, usually appearing in the area for a couple of days, amidst great excitement, and then disappearing for months again.  On their last visit we managed to get a close up view and could marvel at their beautiful coats - ‘painted dogs’ is a very apt description for them - each have their own unique patterned coat.

 

 

We had a wonderful lion encounter at the beginning of last month, when two females brought down a zebra on a neighbouring property.  We were privileged to see these two females with eight cubs playing and interacting for some time.  A memorable sighting indeed. 

 

 

 

 

Watch out for the next post in a couple of weeks time about our improvements to giraffe and duiker huts.   

 

 

 

 

Bush wishes to all our readers.

Wild dogs seen from the deck

Ten days ago some guests had an amazing sighting seen from the deck of the lodge.  The weather was dreadful, cold and rainy, which was good for the bush but not so much fun when you are viewing game.  Our guests were very dedicated game viewers and their determination paid off when they were treated to the sight of three wild dogs chasing an impala right next to the small bird bath just below the decks.  Unfortunately, it all happened very quickly and we only got a couple of photographs, one taken by our guest and the other caught on the camera trap – rather blurry I’m afraid.  

Photo taken by our guest Zhao Weo

Camera trap photo

 

 

Did you forget to shut the gate?

Visitors to Leopard’s View will know that we do not have an electric fence around the lodge, but only a small wooden picket fence built early in our time here to keep the browsers out of the lodge gardens; in particular, the duikers, who are very common in our area and will eat anything.  

The gate across the entrance has always been sufficient to keep out anything larger, but one night about ten days ago the gate was left open during the night and in the morning we walked into the lodge to find evidence of a visit by an animal very much larger than a duiker. The piles of dung around the paths and the damage to the plants and fence showed who the culprit was! 

 

 

 

 

The elephant had arrived around midnight and walked around the garden sampling a bit of this and a bit of that.  Luckily, he had left the trees alone and tried the smaller plants instead.  He kept to the paths on the whole, although there are places where he left a tell-tail footprint in the flower bed.  At 6 am he was still around the lodge – although by now outside the fence which he had stepped through and broken to get out.  At 8 o’clock he finally strolled off after drinking from our overflow tank.   

The remains of the beautiful bourganvillia outside the
kitchen

We thought that would be the end of the story, but that evening when we received a call from our staff to say the elephant was back even though the gate had been firmly closed.   As we arrived two minutes later we saw him in the gardens.  The sound of the vehicle was enough to move him off and as we watched he stepped very daintily over the fence and went off into the bush - quite amazing to see.  Unfortunately, this time he had taken a fancy to the group of palms by the small bird pool in the middle of the lodge.  The next two mornings we spent repairing and re-building the potential weak area of the fence – just in case he decided to return again.  As yet we have not had another visit, but they say an elephant never forgets!

Walking over to the water tanks for a drink

 

A salute! ("It was me!")

 

Views of a leopard from the camera traps

The camera traps continue to bring in some exciting and unusual pictures, and at last, we have caught on film the most elusive of our visitors, the leopard.

  In both locations, at the large waterhole and the bird bath we had a very good view of the individual animal.  

In the case of the leopard at the bird bath it was the white tip of the tail which was the first clue to what we had caught on camera.

This leopard then walked towards the bird bath and took a drink before moving off.  Fantastic!  Both of these visits, one earlier this week and the other a few weeks ago, occurred during the middle of the night, so we would definitely have missed the sighting except for the camera trap.  ,

 

 

 

 The leopard was definitely the highlight of the latest downloading, but there are always other delights amongst the other pictures.  Sometimes it is just one snap of an animal, like this elephant that just walked past the camera and then disappeared, or it might be the family of warthogs that have come for a cooling wallow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This beautiful loan, male waterbuck is a regular visitor and of course, the impalas make their appearance almost daily.  There are often unusual close-ups views of the animals like this inquisitive young male impala checking out the camera or the impala at night which produced about 50 shots as he stood in exactly the same spot for minutes on end, twitching an ear or  nose and setting off the camera.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, of course, the giraffe always makes a wonderful picture – whatever the pose!

Marula Feast

This year we have had a bumper harvest of marula fruits from the marula trees around the lodge.  This tree dominates the landscape here in our area of Balule, with its beautiful patterned trunk and its leafy canopy, which gives excellent shade.  Past guests will be able to visualise the tree by the swimming pool which is a male marula tree.  Interestingly, each tree has a specific gender – the female one bearing the fruits and the male one flowers only. 

Outside the kitchen there is a female marula tree. Over the past few weeks the marulas have been falling to the ground, where they ripen and turn from green to yellow and give off a sharp, sweet scent.  The warthogs have visited the harvest on several occasions as well as baboons and of course elephants.

Marula fruits can be used in various food and drink recipes;  a local, very potent, alcolholic beer; jellies and jams and the delicious amarula liqueur.  With the glut of fruit I decided to try making some jelly and collected a bucket full of marulas ready for processing.  Unfortunately, an elephant got to them first!  He came a couple of nights ago and vacuumed the carpet of  marula fruits from the floor, as well as eating the contents of my bucket!  Our two staff, Lucia and Iris, who were woken by the noise, had to make a lot of noise to keep him from also destroying a young baobab we have growing nearby.

The myth of elephants getting drunk on marula juice is not one that will hold up scientifically – they would have to eat well over one thousand fully-fermented marulas in one gigantic feast for the fermented juice to have any effect.  
 

This young warthog enjoys the feast

There are many stories surrounding the marula tree.  The one I like best is that an infusion of the bark can be used to determine the gender of an unborn child.  So bark from a male tree if you want a boy, and bark from a female tree if you want a girl.  Success rate - 50%!

 

Elephants caught on camera

The waterhole camera trap is proving to be a marvellous tool for helping us to keep track of the animals that come to visit the waterhole.  Since we have had it up and running from just before Christmas we have recorded some fantastic sights, many of which we would have missed because they happen very early in the morning, in the middle of the night or because we just do not happen to be watching at that time. 

 

 

 

 

These elephants visited the waterhole before the rains. 
Notice the size of the waterhole.

January's record of sightings proved to be very interesting when we analysed them.  Before the heavy rains came in the middle of the month we were recording, on average, 9 mammal sightings a day.  These could of course be a herd of impala that stayed around for several hours, or a skittish zebra that came, drank and then moved off after only a minute or so.  Then the rain came and for ten days, when we measured 310mm of rain, the mammal count at the waterhole dropped to 1.3 sightings a day.  Not surprising really when there was water everywhere in the bush.  Every stream and river flowed and every little depression in the soil was full of water.  Even now, a month later some of the roads are still too soft to drive on.  Sightings picked up again at the end of the month to 5 a day as the puddles in the bush began to dry out. 

 

 

January has also been an excellent month for elephant sightings at the waterhole, with 9 separate visits.   There has been a selection of different groups and individuals, including a breeding herd with some very small ones.   During the evening on January 11th the camera caught a herd of elephants drinking.  The results were marvellous - one shot trunks up, next shot trunks down, in perfect synchronisation!

 

The rains have started and the waterhole is growing by the minute.
This elephant seems to be enjoying the downpour.