Summer delights!

The plentiful rains of the past month or so have changed the appearance of the bush completely.  The vista down to the waterhole and beyond to the rise is now green and lush with the occasional flash of yellow from the African Weeping Wattle. 

'Baboon's tail' in flower

Game tends to be rather more sparse with all the water available in the surrounding bush, but there are other treats to be found – the very beautiful but short lived flower on the strange looking plant commonly known as ‘baboon’s tail’ is one example.  This stunning flower only appears after rains and then transforms the rather ugly stumpy plant with its lovely blooms.

Giant land snail

The giant land snail also makes an appearance after rains.  Normally we see the empty shells lying around in the bush, bleached white by the sun but recently they have been quite active in the gardens (eating the grass), extraordinary to watch as the giant foot ripples over the ground. 

 

 

 

 

One of our favourite sights at this time of the year is the arrival of the young impalas.  We have spotted the first of these in the last week and had a good sighting of them on the birdpool camera trap. 

 

Kudu and waterbuck have also been making early morning visits to the birdpool.  Look at the times on the pictures; it’s definitely a case of the ‘early bird catches the worm’ in terms of successful game viewing. 

 

To complete our news for this time, a wonderful cloud formation ‘snapped’ at sunset one afternoon from the top of the game viewing tower.

Lion seen on camera trap

The birdpool camera trap has continued to catch the regular visitors during the day and night, with impala, waterbuck and duiker having the highest number of sightings.  We always download the latest photos with a sense of excitement as to what we might have captured during the last week or two and this time we were rewarded with our first lion sighting on the camera trap. 

It was a lone male on 18^th October at 10.31 pm, walking in from the side and then standing for a short while at the bird pool, although not taking a drink.   At that time we had been hearing a lot of lion activity during the night and had on several occasions been convinced they were on our entrance road, so it was a real treat to see him come to the bird pool.

Another great sighting happened just two days ago.  We were returning to the lodge when I spotted a jackal on the road just past our entrance.  We stopped to watch it for a few moments and then were lucky enough to see two small jackal pups come onto the road.  They seemed to be fairly relaxed so we quickly drove back to the lodge and picked up our guests hoping to be able to give them a very good view of jackal and pups.  

We returned to the spot a few minutes later and found that the jackals had a den site in an old termite mound right beside the road.  One was asleep in the long grass and the other was being a bit more active – running about and dashing in and out of the den.  We watched for a couple of minutes and snapped a few photographs.  The sleeping pup is well hidden in the grassy undergrowth.   

Finally, I am posting this picture of the moon rising last night over the waterhole.  Every month as the moon begins to wane it rises over the ridge behind the waterhole and makes a magnificent display.  The photograph does not do it justice but the spectacle is worth recording.  Past guests who have been lucky enough to be with us at this time of the month will I’m sure remember seeing it.