Despite sporadic rains and the odd spectacular thunderstorm, we enjoyed plenty of sunny days in the Central Kalahari. Between game drives and nature walks with the expert bushman trackers of Tau Pan Camp, there was still time to relax around the swimming pool, watching the world go by.
A leopard at the pool!
A resident leopard also shared this idea! Not content with the fresh water being pumped into the pan, she took a lazy stroll up to the pool, where she started drinking and sunning herself on the deck. She returned a few more times to drink and, on the third occasion, decided that she needed a towel. She wandered over a sun bed, pulled a towel off and played with it, rolling around and pulling it. Eventually, the sun became too warm, so she abandoned the toy and strolled into the bush. As you can imagine, the towel is no longer fit for use at the pool! We enjoyed several more leopard sightings from Phukwi Road to the airstrip to Litihau Valley.
Another animal wasn’t quite so congenial. A resident elephant bull demonstrated his abilities while in musth. Being in a heightened state, he broke some trees and trampled the bush around Tau Pan as we observed from a safe distance. Musth comes about when the testosterone levels in male elephants shoot up to over fifty (or more) times their typical level. This is characterised by an oily, foul-smelling urine-like secretion onto the back legs and the leaking of temporin from the temporal gland near the eye. At times of musth, the temporal gland swells up to the size of a tennis ball, and there is a theory that this may be painful, leading to an elephant’s stormy temper. Musth can last for days and up until several months. If you track an elephant and see droplets on top of the footprints emitting a nasty smell, this is one trail that is not worth following!
African wild dogs in the Central Kalahari
A pack of eight African wild dogs plied their trade around Passarge Pan, and we regularly visited the blossoming area to track them down. Passarge harboured grass and water, seducing various herbivores, including springbok, wildebeest, oryx and hartebeest.
Another small pack of two females and four male African wild dogs visited the Tau Pan Camp waterhole with full bellies – a sign of successful hunts in the local area.
Continuing from last month, we enjoyed fantastic cheetah sightings throughout December. A male and female were sharing the camp waterhole, and another group of three (female with sub-adult male and female) frequented the region around Passarge Pan. They focused on springbok prey and, in a wide-open area like Tau Pan where the cheetah can unleash its tremendous speed, the herds of springbok were continuously on the lookout.
Bustards, balls and butterflies
We saw many ground-dwelling birds, including ostriches, secretarybirds and Kori bustards. The Kori is the world’s heaviest flying bird and rightly holds its place as the national bird of Botswana. It was traditionally protected as the bird of the chief, or Kgosi, and is common in folklore.
Mongooses and ground squirrels entertained us daily, along with the black-backed jackals and bat-eared foxes foraging around the pan.
Dung beetles rolled their carefully crafted balls of harvested manure, and we noticed the Brown-veined white butterflies started to flit across the skies along with the Yellow pansy, Blue pansy, Broad-bordered grass yellow and African monarch butterflies.
(Please note: For the safety of the animals, we do not disclose the location of either rhino or pangolin sightings. Accompanying pictures are from our Kwando Photo Library which consists of all your great photo submissions over the years, it may not be the most up to date, but we felt it was worthy of a feature alongside this month’s Sightings Report!)
