Munch munch munch munch…. The sound of hungry mouths ripping their food to shreds. Not so uncommon a sound to hear out on a drive, but a tad unsettling to hear when you are walking to your room in broad daylight. Particularly when the sound appears to be coming from all around you, and you cannot tell where it originates from. Munch munch munch….. It’s actually thousands and thousands of tiny little mouths – caterpillars, only 3cm long and about 3-4mm wide, are on every Large Fever berry tree, munching away. These are the larval stage of the Green-veined charax butterfly. They move over a tree, and in the space of 48 hours, can totally strip it of every leaf, before moving on to another tree to decimate. Even during the night, you can hear them munching away, sounding like a constant pitterpatter of rain on the roof.
Although the start of the month was oddly quiet for predators, it didn’t take too long for things to pick up. The general game enjoyed the hiatus, and there was plenty of them to see!
Cheetahs made regular appearances this month, but everyone was surprised when a cheetah was found in the camp! Not quite the ‘open plains of the Serengeti’, the cheetah managed to successfully hunt an impala to the eastern side of the staff village, after strolling through the main camp! And not to be out done by the cheetah, on the same day, a lone wild dog decided to chase an impala straight through the Kwara and Little Kwara camps!
There didn’t really seem much point going out on drive that day, but those that did make it, also saw a nice male cheetah relaxing in the Splash area. The fleet mechanic that arrived for a few days inspection of the cars and boats, became a very popular guide, as it seemed each time he was testing a vehicle on drive, or heading to the boat station, he ended up finding a predator. Between cheetahs and lions, he didn’t get much work done, as on radio-ing his findings to the camps was told to ‘stay there until we get there’ by the other guides. The cheetah he found – just as the guests were having brunch – began hunting, and the guests managed to finish their brunch and head out in time to see a kill.
Out on a drive towards the Kwara/Shindi boundary, the vehicle came across two big male lions that were covered in blood. Looking for the source of the blood, nearby, a hippo was located that was badly injured, but had managed to pull itself away from the attacking lions. Another large male lion was left feeling rather hungry, when he managed make a kill – a baby warthog, which would not have been much more than a couple of mouthfuls for him!
The Four Rivers area was productive as well, with two hungry-looking lionesses being seen with their six cubs, and a very shy leopard that we only saw a glimpse of. We saw what is likely to be the same leopard a few days later as well.
Lots of breeding herds of elephants in the area, with lots of babies. A nice time of year to see the families, though lower rainfalls have forced them into the areas where the channels and floodplains still hold good enough water for them to drink. In a month or so, some of the fruit trees (palm, jackal berry, marula) will be ripe, and so every one of these elephants will be battling the monkeys and birds to get to the fruit first.
The remaining four male lions of the Magnificent Seven are now looking a little old, and tired, at around 11-12 years old. This is a ripe old age for lions, and the fact that the four of them have remained together for so long, has probably helped them maintain their status, and limit their injuries. Still with battle scarred faces, and accentuated back bones, the lions could benefit from any help they can get from free lunches…. One stormy afternoon, the four males were snoozing in the shade at Splash Hippo Pools (currently without Hippo and without Pool), when the sounds of distressed elephants came from across the open area, perhaps a kilometre away. The lions immediately stood up, and began trotting part way across the open area, listening to the sounds of what they thought was (hopefully for them) an elephant that was being killed. The sounds stopped, and returned to just normal elephant noise, leaving the lions alert but sitting down in the open area, watching for the chance of any stray young elephant silly enough to wander out of the open away from the huge herd. Looking a little obvious with their big manes, they didn’t stand much chance of doing anything but being trumpeted at by the herd mingling in the treeline.
Quite a few different hyena sightings this month as well – including an unusual sighting of a pair of them feeding on a baboon. No way of telling whether they had managed to catch the baboon themselves, or if they had come up on it already dead, but they seemed to be enjoying it, none-the-less. Another odd sighting of a pair of hyenas fishing: between them, they managed to catch a sharp toothed catfish in the water at Four Rivers.
A special sighting of a python this month too – the sounds of an impala in distress, alerted the guides to an area where they found a sub-adult impala that had been caught by an African rock python. Initially with just one leg trapped, the python quickly wrapped itself around the rest of the animal and suffocated and crushed it. The python then managed to swallow the impala – a big meal that will last it for a good length of time.
