Several species of doves occur in Mana Pools National Park in Zimbabwe. Some of them such as the Ring-necked Dove (Streptopelia capicola) is frequently ignored because of its abundance.
During one of our visits to the park in September 2018, among a flock of these doves we spotted one that did not quite match the expected bird, so we looked at it more carefully.
From a distance, its plumage appeared paler that its companions and it looked “washed” in certain areas of its body.
We had seen leucism before (See: https://bushsnob.com/2017/01/05/odd-bird/) and I have described the phenomenon as follows: “Animal coloration can deviate from the standard, from complete melanism to albinism. Leucism (leukism) is one of the intermediate forms defined as a phenotype resulting from blemishes in pigment cell differentiation during development with the consequence that the entire animal or patches of its body being white as they lack the cells capable of making pigment”.
I believe that what we observed this time is a case of “dilution”, a condition where the plumage colour often appears ‘washed out’ (i.e. ‘diluted’). In dilution, melanin cells are present (unlike in leucistic birds) but produce less pigment than normal. Clearly, humans need to classify everything!
In September 2019, while walking through the grounds of the now defunct Kingdom hotel at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, we observed a monitor lizard eating what looked like a fruit-eating bat.
Unfortunately, we did not see if the bat was caught while alive or the monitor was feeding on a dead bat found on the ground of the hotel. The monitor consumed the entire bat.
A Google search indicated that this is not an unusual event and that both snakes and lizards are known to predate on bats all over the world.
Testaccio hill. Picture credit: Public Domain, File:Testaccio monte dei cocci 051204-12-13.JPG. Lalupa assumed (based on copyright claims).
Rome is known for countless features, both human made and natural. Among the latter there are the famous Seven Hills namely Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal and Viminal, in alphabetical order.
Although there are others such as the Vatican, Pincian, Janiculan and the Sacred Mount, these are not counted among the traditional Seven Hills, being outside the boundaries of ancient Rome.
There is even a man-made hill, the object of this post: the Testaccio.
This peculiar hill is made almost totally of fragments of ancient Roman pottery, nearly all discarded amphorae dating from the time of the Roman Empire. It covers an area of two hectares at its base (one kilometre circumference and 35 metres high). It was built with an estimated 53 million amphorae, and it is located a short distance away from the east bank of the River Tiber.
The amphorae used were mainly of one kind that carried 70 litres of olive oil, and it is estimated that they had contained 6 billion litres! The olive oil that the amphorae carried came from several places, mainly the Guadalquivir region of modern Spain, Tripolitania (Libya) and Byzacena (Tunisia).
The hill is not the product of haphazardly discarding broken amphorae, but it was purposedly designed as a series of terraces supported by the less damaged amphorae and filled with sherds for stability. The amphorae were probably difficult to recycle or reuse after a while as the oil would have permeated them rendering them useless.
During the Roman Empire Testaccio was an important trade centre where workers building the slaughterhouses in the area settled. Today, the area is known for its good food, and it is one of the places we frequent when in Rome we feel like a good meal.
But it was not the food nor the hill´s architecture that roused our curiosity. Not even the fact that, in 1849, a gun battery was placed there by Garibaldi to defend Rome against the French! It was the surprise we got while walking towards a restaurant on a hot evening when a very cold air stream hit our legs.
We stopped and looked around to identify the air conditioner, doubting that there would be one which there was not, of course. Instead, with the light of our cell phones we found a hole in the earth from where the cold stream of air came from.
We debated how that could be and thought that there may have been a cold underground water current such as the ones I described earlier that cooled the air (See: https://bushsnob.com/2017/07/16/the-nasoni-of-rome-1/).
The doubt persisted for a whole year until we returned to Testaccio for another meal, this time earlier. Showing the discovery to a friend, we met a kind gentleman staying at the bottom of the hill that offered us to climb it, an offer that we agreed to take up at another time. When we asked him about the cold air blowing from that hole, he invited us to enter a courtyard nearby and there was also a door through which more cold air was blowing and then a window and other places as well.
Then the truth of the situation was revealed and some of its use and probably economic relevance became clear. The hill´s innards were “discovered” to have strong cooling attributes that are believed to be caused by the ventilation produced by its porous structure. This made it ideal for storing wine during the heat of the Roman summer, and caves were excavated for that purpose.
Some restaurants have windows that show the hill structure and probably also serve as coolers for both patrons and probably the wine stored there as well.
While travelling from Uruguay to Salta in northern Argentina, you cross several Argentinian provinces. We saw this sign and we could not read it. Thinking that the reason was its small letters or our old eyes, we got close to it and realized that the reason was different.
To avoid you the inconvenience of having to rotate your computer, I have turned the pictures!
I can more or less translate the sign: “Santiago del Estero Judiciary. Criminal and Correctional Magistrate’s Court”. The reasons for its special orientation are, however, the subject of debate!
Gwango Heritage Resort, just outside Hwange National Park.
While walking around the place we came to this scene that reminded me of some very large leeches I saw in swampy areas of Western Ethiopia that attached inside the mouth of cattle.
Clearly the elephants were having a drink from the pool to dilute the muddy water they got from the waterhole!
The following sequence of the encounter of two youngsters, a crocodile and a waterbuck, was captured by Julio A. de Castro and I believe that it does not need any explanation to see the funny side!
Again, timing is critical and both a fast photographer and a good camera can produce great sequences like this one!
I remember from our time in Kenya, our many hours spent fishing for bass in Lake Naivasha. At that time we were always accompanied by the fish eagle calls, what I considered one of the great sounds of Africa. Several times we tried to cheat the eagles to come and take one of our dead fishes that we offered to them aiming at catching on film the action of the eagle the moment it took the fish.
We did this, after seeing great pictures in international wildlife magazines, thinking that the pictures were within our reach. We attempted it a few times with our cameras that were not electronic like today and that required that we took our film cartridges for developing after the event. What we found was not impressive! We either had a dead fish floating on the water or a splash, the anterior or posterior half of an eagle but we could never capture the actual sequence.
That is why I am writing this post as, during our visit to Masuma in Hwange National Park, there was a resident fish eagle that attempted to pick pieces of the dead impala as well as remains of dead fish that were floating about in the dam. Remembering my earlier Kenya experience, I decided not to attempt to take pictures to the eagle so, the following sequence was captured by my son that did not have a bad past experience on his shoulders that would impair his ability to press the shutter in a timely fashion
Although I prefer red wine, I must recognize that beer is the most popular drink around here.
Wherever I have fished or gone on safari, beer drinking accompanies these activities. So I have seen a few different scenarios of it happening on boats and cars to the point that someone once told me while fishing in the Zambezi that in fact they were “beer drinkers with a fishing problem”!
Despite the above, what we saw during our recent visit to Masuma still surprised us as we consider it the most advanced system so far.
Picture by J.A. de Castro
Clearly, these visitors had their priorities right and used the available space appropriately!
We learnt later that the beer was home made and, according to our specialists, of very good quality.
Zimbabwe´s ingenuity is well known and surprising!
Following the episode I narrated in the earlier post, after losing the second impala to the crocodiles, the painted dogs went back to the hill behind our camp and we did not see them again. This did not really matter to us as the action, as we expected, had now moved to the dam!
I had described earlier in a series of posts what happened at Masuma when the crocodiles catch one of the animals that come here to drink [1]. We did not need to wait for too long for the battle between crocs and hippos to begin.
As soon as the roughly twenty hippos at the dam detected the crocs with their prey, two groups were formed by those interested in fresh meat. They seemed to have decided to tackle a dead impala each. The crocs that held them had been seen earlier doing the classical spinning maneuver, which is known as the “death roll’ a violent rotation on the longitudinal axis of the body to break their prey into pieces that they can then swallow.
The crocodiles faced a massive challenge when the hippos got into contact with them and tugs of war followed that were partly responsible for tearing the impala carcasses to be shared between reptiles and mammals.
Lot of agitation took place while hippos and crocs tugged at the impala carcasses. Joseph Dudley (pers. comm.) had told me that he believed that, although hippos would eat meat, they were probably unable to open the carcass themselves as their mouths are not good for this task (they do not seem to be too suited to grazing either!).
Hippos of different ages were observed eating various soft tissues and also attempting to eat the impala legs, I believe, without luck.
I end with three videos showing some of the action we witnessed.
A Bushsnob in Africa 