Sunday 9 March 2014

5 - 9 March

For the past few days chaos was upon us as the heavens brought with them the rain, allot of rain! 
We had a combined total of 240mm of rain in three days which in turn caused floods! The roads looked like streams and the streams like rivers some even like white water rapids! This of course caused a lot of problems in its own like no cell phone signal, land lines or even internet! 
Game was scares and due to the heavy rain fall we were stuck on the main roads! Mostly impala and water buck and your odd zebra or two were sighted in the first two days. 
We caught our first break with wild dogs and lions. But not the best of views as we were stuck on the roads visibility were limited. The plentiful rain meant migration for fish which most fish-eating animals took advantage of, pied kingfisher, giant kingfisher, hammerkop, fish eagle and many more were highly active as the fish were exposed in the shallow flood plains. Lions started moving more which meant viewing them was a pleasure even the wild dogs were roaming around again! But the leopard known for its elusiveness was still nowhere to be seen.















One afternoon we decided that we were going to change things up as we were tired of driving the same roads over and over again, we were going to do a walk and drive for those who were interested could do a walk and the others could still do a drive. Sean lead the walk showing all the interesting things you would most likely miss on drive such as tracks and signs of animals, flowers, trees and uses of plants, insects and spiders and the occasional sighting of animals on foot, witnessing wildlife in their natural state.

The drive was done by myself, and the roads looked the same except the fact that the sun was shining for the first time in three days! We once again were limited to roads and plains game was plentiful. Lots of young animals were around showing the fruitfulness of the bushveld, but an interesting sighting was at jacks pan, were a woolly-necked stork was trying to eat a western olive toad! We stopped to have a look at the struggle, as the toad had puffed itself to twice the size. While the stork was struggling I noticed Bahuti! The young male leopard was stalking the stork! The stork noticed the spotted cat and flew off leaving us alone with the beautiful leopard. He walked around the pan towards us and stopped to drink the rain water caught in the road. Finally the first leopard in days! 

The next morning also had promising weather and very good lion sightings! Four ways pride on our drive way Styx with cubs at Gowrie main and another Styx female in the west! 












But with all the water pooled up in most areas there was one animal who entertained us the best! Spotted hyenas took a plunge in the water swimming most eagerly! Diving down to grab a stick and just play around! The sun shine brought the wet roads to life as it was teaming with babies of all sorts! Freshly hatched soft- shelled leopard-tortoise, two centimetre baby chameleons, and young snakes of all kinds and even crested francolin chicks. Rain brings the life giving water which allows all living beings to thrive and we are thankful for what we have 

No comments:

Post a Comment