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The Team:
Carl, Julia & Baby Conor: General Manager, Sales & Marketing and their beautiful boy
Marco & Vivian: Managers at Serondella Lodge
David & Kelly: Managers at Monwana Lodge
Hein & Eloise: Relieve Managers at both camps
February 2009:
18 February:
Marco watched as dozens after dozens of Vultures descend on an Impala, who must have been killed by a rival male, while fighting for dominance.
As the pecking order of the different Vulture species unfolded in front of our eyes, all hell broke loose in a coordinated chaos with the White Backed Vultures filling their crops in just 2 min and being pushed out by hungrier ones, which were on the edge of the feast.
23 February:
Marco is surrounded by a herd of Elephants including the little calves, all within a mere 10 m of the vehicle. On the way beck to the lodge a young adolescent bull Elephant tries to assert his dominance over the vehicle and gives them a few threat charges (mock charges). After standing their ground & having to resort to bashing the side of the vehicle, the bull backs off to a safer distance. (Editor’s note: that is a bit scary!!!)
24 February:
Marco: “WHAT A MORNING!!!!”
First they had a brief sighting of a skittish female Leopard… Then a nice sighting of 3 Hyenas playing on the road, with one approaching the vehicle up to 5 m, sniffing them out. They came across a male Cheetah with his baby Impala kill; they also enjoyed a sighting of a mother White Rhino with her 3 month old calf. Finally on their way back to camp, they spot a male Black Rhino next to the road.
At the end of February, Marco & Vivian identified a bat that they haven’t seen here before. They identified it as a Mauritian Tomb Bat. As far as we know it is the first sighting of this specific bat in this area. Well Done!!
March 2009:
On the evening of the 1st of March; Marco, Hein, David & Eloise went out frogging after evening game drive. We had a very successful evening, we identified more than 10 species and 2 indented. We are looking into the unidentified ones.
3 March:
Our pride if 5 Lions killed 2 Wildebeest. The King of the African Bush was on the kill when Marco got there. Slowly the females emerged out from the bushes. The cherry on top of this sighting was when the 15 year old male dragged one of the Wildebeest carcasses across the road 7 m away from the vehicle.
10 March:
Marco and his Guests viewed a herd of approximately 300 Buffalo all around them, with the new calves following their mother’s udders. Massive bulls mingled with and trailed the herd. A few moments earlier a mother White Rhino with her calf just crossed the road in front of them. Not far from the Buffalo, the Elephants were trumpeting. They view at least 30 elephants well spread out while feeding. All the thick-skinned herbivores within a few of hundred meters of each other, now that is luck... Or skill… or a bit of both…
11 March:
Vivian saw a baby Nyala in camp today. It must have been the little guys First Big Expedition into the big, bad world. He still had very wobbly legs, while staying very close to mommy for reassurance. Normally he will stay hidden for 2 – 3 weeks after birth, we suspect because he was staying inside the camp that his mommy knew it was safe to let him out earlier. Good luck little one.
13 March:
While the Monwana guests were having dinner on the grass with Eloise, the herd some trees breaking not to far from camp. We knew it was elephants, so we just sat there hoping that they would come to the pan. After about 10 min of waiting, the first elephant cow emerged from the bushes, to stand under a moonlit evening in the wide open grass area. Shortly afterwards the whole herd came past, the crossed the open area and disappeared like ghosts in the darkness.
14 March:
Monwana has no guests in camp. Hein & Eloise is in camp relaxing, they decide that at 3 pm to go have look at the spot where they found 2 young male Lions and another male on the Kapama side of the fence. When they finally find them again, they get up and run towards the fence to try and fight through it, all three males run down the road while roaring to proclaim their territories. After they came back to camp, probably around 5 pm they look out towards the pan and there is Shabala, the big Elephant bull, feeding next to the pan.
15 March:
Guests left on game drive with Hein, 1 guest stayed in camp. Just after 5 pm, Eloise hears the Vervet Monkeys going crazy (alarm calling from the main area roof). When she gets there to she wants going on she spots the male Leopard walking past the pan towards the road. Eloise calls it in on the Game Drive Channel. Hein asks her to try and relocate the leopard because nobody is close enough. She gets into the extra vehicle and drives to where she suspected he would come out of the bush. And he did. As he started walking down the road one of the Game Drive vehicles joined.
16 March:
Marco and Ramson began tracking a leopard, but bumped into 4 lionesses, which killed a small warthog. They watched them feed and then continued with the leopard tracks. The found the old Leopard female crossing the track ahead of them, they followed her through the bush for a while. She finally lay down 15 m away from them on an exposed open patch and had a great view for a few minutes before she decided to pull a disappearing act on them. To top off their drive, they saw 2 Giraffe ladies posing like supermodels next to the road.
17 March:
Hein wakes up early to do wake up call, just before the leave they spot another leopard walking past the pan, in the same direction as the one that Eloise tracked 2 days before. The finally find him on game drive after 3 hours of tracking him on foot.
Eloise went with Hein on the afternoon game drive. They went to look for the elephants but had to wait a bit before they could go to the sighting so they decided to do a detour. They drove up to a dam in the southern parts of the reserve, when they got there they saw that a big herd of buffalo were having their mid afternoon mud bath and drinking. It was an incredible sight to be seen, as the little babies follow their mommies into the water, while the bulls were already lying down in the mud. They even saw a bull swim, yes SWIM, across the dam to the other side.
They left the buffalo to do their duties. They went to the elephants and had another amazing sighting as all the elephants came towards the vehicle, to come and eat on the shrubs that were on the other side of the vehicle. There was even a baby elephant trying to drink from its mommy while she was walking away.
They ended it off with finding a mommy White rhino with her calf, next to the road, just grazing. The baby came closer to the vehicle a couple of times to have a good look at them.
22 March:
Monwana guests are having a boma dinner, when they heard a male leopard calling not to far from camp. We decided we are going to go have a look, hopefully we can find him. We heard him call several times more while we were out, finally got him walking down the road. Every couple of minutes he called again. Then we finally heard a reply to his call, he literally turned around walked where he came from. We lost him, when he disappeared into the bushes.
When we got back to camp for our dessert, there was a heard of approximately 400 buffalo sleeping at the pan in front of the main area. We even heard the lions roaring in the distance. What an evening??? |
