Very close to the Shingwedzi Rest Camp in the Kruger National Park we found this interesting beast. I think it is a nice challenge…
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Here there are a couple of pictures that reveal the mystery in case you did not.
I am not sure if the monitor lizard “beast” lives in the tree hole or whether it was raiding a nest in search of prey.
It was clearly enjoying watching the cars going by!
When on safari, finding a leopard is the cherry on the cake. These scarce predators are hard to find as they are very secretive and cunning animals. The fact that protected areas are shrinking does not help their conservation status either. Luckily, as you will see, the Kruger National Park (KNP) still remains an excellent place to spot these elusive and beautiful cats.
This year our “out of Zimbabwe” travel included South Africa and Botswana where we visited the KNP at the beginning and at the end of our trip and the Kgalagadi Trans-frontier Park in between. Quite a journey (about seven thousand km!) but well worth it.
The first visit to the KNP included the northern section as this is the closest to Zimbabwe. We visited three camps: Sirheni Bushveld camp, Shingwedzi Rest camp and Bateleur Bushveld camp.
While we did find other interesting things in Sirheni and Shingwedzi (that I will tell you about soon), it was while arriving at Bateleur that things became really exciting. Near the “Red Rocks”, the main attraction near Bateleur, we found a dead impala under a tree. Fellow travellers informed us that a leopard had killed it and that it was a female with a cub. Scared by the vehicles they had left the kill and hid somewhere.
We decided to wait quietly and were rewarded. After about an hour we saw a movement up the tree just above the kill and, soon enough, we could see a leopard moving in the thick foliage. A few minutes later it climbed down. It was the youngster that, hungry, started to feed on the impala. The area was very bushy and photography was difficult but it was a good sight.
After a while the cub walked in front of us and briefly joined its mother. We had a glimpse of the female that immediately hid again in the long grass while the cub returned to the impala. We waited a bit more but as we still had to check-in at our camp we decided to leave making a note of the site to return later.
So, quite encouraged by our find we re-joined the road towards Bateleur camp. We had not travelled more than a couple of kilometres when we heard the alarm snorting of impala and found that a large number were looking in the same direction while calling in alarm! This situation can indicate the presence of a predator. I need to clarify that in the Southern Africa’s more bushy landscapes you need to take all possible signs into account to find game.
We stopped and waited and when we saw that the monkeys, guinea fowls and francolins -among others- joined the chorus, our belief that a predator was near firmed up. After a short while we spotted another leopard! It was waking in parallel to us in a direction that would take it to the river, on the other side of the road. The leopard ignored us and it never hesitated once on the direction it was traveling. We watched it walk, still followed by its mobbing retinue but completely unmoved, until it went down the river!
Finding three leopards in a couple of hours left us rather stunned and we thought that Bateleur was “the place” to spot leopards. Well, as usual we were wrong! During the four days we spent there the leopards carefully avoided us! However, there was more to come on our return to the KNP later on.
On the second visit to the KNP about two weeks later, we entered through the Paul Kruger’s gate and headed for the Olifants Rest camp. About one kilometre from the gate a bunch of cars marked the whereabouts of a sleeping leopard! As our journey was still long, we left it and continued towards Olifants where we arrived late in the afternoon.
Olifants Rest camp is probably the most spectacular of the KNP camps as it is built on a cliff that overlooks the Olifants river, located quite a way below, offering a breathtaking view of the river and its environment. We were fortunate to have booked one of the “river view” bungalows so we could just sit in our verandah and take in the scenery opening up below us!
The morning after our arrival, after a “breakfast with a view” we drove towards Olifants satellite camp Balule [1] and then followed the Timbavati river, an area well known because of its white lions. The latter are not albinos but a leucistic form, similar to the starling reported in this blog [2].
We knew that to find white lions was very unlikely as most of them are now in captivity or game reserves nearby but we had driven through this area earlier on another journey and found it very attractive. It did not disappoint us. Fortunately, the river had water and we found lots of water birds, including a family of saddle-bill storks fishing at a stagnant pool.
Further on, on another stretch of the river we spotted a pair of ibis and, while trying to confirm that they were the rarer purple rather than the more common glossy, I spanned the area a couple of metres to their left and I could not believe my eyes: a large leopard was lying down next to the birds! I was very excited, as I had never experienced such an accidental find! I believe that the leopard was walking to the river to drink at the time we appeared and its reaction was to crouch not to be seen!
We waited and watched. After a couple of minutes, it stood up and walked to a small water pool where it drank for a couple of minutes and then, as it is often the case with leopards, it disappeared in the thicket.
We drove back really excited by the find and, before reaching our camp, we had a fleeting sighting of yet another leopard well inside the thick bush!
After a fruitless early drive looking for the leopard spotted near camp we decided to relax at our bungalow to take in the beauty of the Olifants river as we could lots of animals coming to drink and to graze there. That morning, apart from the usual hundreds of impala and dozens of waterbuck we could also see lots of greater kudu and a few bushbuck. However, our attention was focused on a couple of elephant families enjoying drinking and bathing.
While busy watching I heard my wife saying, “the elephants are scared” and then I could hear their loud alarm calls. Immediately I heard her saying “there is a hyena walking behind the elephants towards the water” and immediately, “oh gosh, there is a leopard drinking also!” As I wanted to see it, she explained me where it was so I started looking and, after a while, I spotted it. After a while the leopard moved “it stood up” I said. “No” replied my wife, “it is still drinking”. We started to argue but then we realized that we were in fact looking at two different leopards on the river bed!
The afternoon of our last day we spent it back at the Timbavati river. It was during this time and before arriving to a pan called Ratel that, lo and behold, a leopard was looking at us from a donga and, of course, it immediately took off before we could do anything, as usual and we could not see it again!
So that was our experience in the KNP where we spotted nine leopards in a couple of weeks, a marvelous experience that we know it will not be repeated and certainly it will not be forgotten!.
[1] Interestingly, this was one of the few camps where people of all races were allowed during the Apartheid times!
[2] https://bushsnobinafrica.wordpress.com/2017/01/05/odd-bird/
This curious “beast” was spotted while driving around in the Kruger National Park. This is what we saw. Can you see it also?
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Here it is, in case you failed…
Although the hamerkop (Scopus umbretta) is the sole member of the genus, it is now believed that it has genetic similarities that are closer to the pelicans and shoebill stork than other water birds.
We find these true Cinderella of the swamps extremely interesting despite being rather common and overshadowed by the most colourful species. Perhaps their better known feature is their huge nests that take them 2 to 4 months to complete and that are often used by other birds as well.
I have mentioned that these birds frequently visit our former pool (now a water reservoir) in Harare and spending long hours stalking the African clawed frogs [1]. I was intrigued by how the frogs were caught as I always heard a splash but, by the time I looked, the frog had already been caught.
A couple of years ago, while camping at Shumba in Hwange National Park [2] I had the chance of seeing a hamerkop hovering over the dam there but it was evening and I could not watch it long enough to find out whether it was fishing or on some other kind of display so the mystery continued.
Luckily, during our visit to the Kruger National Park early in October we were stationed at a water pond waiting for large game to come to drink and, during the time, we were entertained by a couple of hamerkop that were feeding and we could watch them at leisure and resolve the issue.
Each bird repeated a routine that involved landing on shore and, after a time that went from a few seconds to a couple of minutes of walking about, take off and fly very slowly over the water with dangling feet and slow wing beats that would keep it just above it. During the hovering its feet sometimes touched the water and it occasionally would drag them on the water surface.
While we were there the bird was performing this routine constantly and our comment was that it must be effective for the bird to spend all this flying energy on this, apparently, futile activity. The answer to our questions came after about an hour when the bird suddenly landed in the water with feet and beak and emerged victorious with a frog!
It then took off from the water and proceeded to eat it. Unluckily, after its success the bird landed on the opposite shore of the dam so I could not even guess at the identity of the frog and only managed poor pictures.
[1] See: https://bushsnobinafrica.wordpress.com/2015/09/05/garden-and-gadgets/
[2] See: https://bushsnobinafrica.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/watched-at-shumba/
A loud “crack” woke me up from my after lunch nap, or at least I think that that was the reason for the interruption of my daily ritual (well, I must confess that sometimes I wake up myself up with my own snoring but that is another matter…).
In any case, when I regained my faculties after a while (a slower process as you grow up), I did not hearing it again but I became aware of some loud splashing noises nearby. My son helped me to focus and informed me that -apparently- a croc had caught something and that our campers next door had seen the action.
I had already made contact with our neighbours -coming from Zambia- as soon as they arrived earlier to warn them about the viciousness of the baboons at the campsite that forced us to get a guard as described earlier. In fact, despite my cautioning, they still suffered the consequences while they were away on their first game drive, although they had taken the normal precautions that are usually enough!
So, I went to see them to find out what they had seen. Luckily they had not only witnessed the event but also taken pictures of it! They had detected the commotion in the water and heard the noise. A crocodile had caught a rather large terrapin and, after kit was trying to devour it.
The crocodile eating the terrapin. Picture by Eloise Wells.
The event was a surprise to me as we usually see both terrapins and crocodiles sharing their water territories ignoring each other! Perhaps the terrapin was already dead when the saurian found it? We will never know.
The victim was rather large but eventually the croc had managed to break its carapace -the crack- and it was busy trying to swallow by the time I watched. Although I could not help feeling sorry for the unfortunate victim, it was an interesting event, worth mentioning.
The crocodile was busy for a few hours until it moved off and we lost it for a while. It reappeared later a few metres downriver with its mouth closed so we believe that it had already consumed its prey.
The crocodile after the event. Picture by Julio A de Castro.
Believing that only to write about this would not have been enough, I asked our neighbours to let me have some of the photographs of the event for this post and they kindly did so. Thanks to their generous contribution I am able to share them with you as the story that, without pictures, would not have been the same.
A Bushsnob out of Africa 