Black Mamba

We recently found these little* Black Mamba in our open air shower recently. We watched it from a very safe distance as a bite from this guy would pretty much be it, potentially within the hour!! They have neurotoxic venom which attacks the nervous system, potentially causing paralysis and the subsequent, aforementioned rapid death.

We watched as he struck out a wee Striped Skink that was hanging around the shower; we didn't see anything more of the skink, so I assume he became dinner!! It was incredible seeing the inside of its mouth, Jet Black, which is where they get their name. They also have a coffin-shaped head, beautifully apt considering how deadly they are.

Seeing a mamba was arguably top of my list of things to see before I came here, despite the apparent dangers involved. If you keep you distance snakes will always rather try and escape than have an aggressive confrontation, so if you're careful you don't need to worry and can just enjoy

*He was around 80-100cm. They tend to grow to around 3+ metres.

My First Drive

I think it's fair to say I'm not the best driver in the world, and I'm certainly not the best 4x4 driver in the world!! Admittedly, I could be learning in a easier setting, and if I could choose a vehicle to learn in it probably wouldn't be our dear landy!! But, I do love a challenge, and when I finally crack driving round Thabo Tholo in this particular vehicle it will certainly stand me in good stead for the future!! 

Now, as I've mentioned previously, every few weeks we do a two walks to look for spoor/scat and change cameras: one on a Friday and one on a Sunday. But events transpired that one Sunday when a walk needed to be done, I was alone in camp. There was high Leopard activity in the valley at the time, so it wasn't deemed overly safe for me to do the walk by myself, so I would have to drive it... by myself. I hadn't yet been let loose on the roads of Thabo Tholo on my own, so I was quite excited by this prospect. As far as I was concerned, getting the chance to do my own research/game drive so early into my time here was a great opportunity!!  

And so at about 05:30 when the sun was up enough that I should be able to see tracks in the dirt I set off, with just Tucker for company. I must admit apart from getting more practice driving there weren't many other benefits to driving the route. It made looking for spoor pretty tricky because I kept having to stop and walk ahead of the vehicle to check any sandy patches I came across anyway, which meant it was taking forever!! But I progressed without any problems, checking the cameras but not finding any spoor. And through the first half of the drive not seeing any game either. 

I still hadn't got my camera back, so was stuck with the old iPhone to record any sightings or spoor I found (I am being overly-critical of the iPhone; it has rescued me while my camera was out-of-action and has delivered some nice snaps). Eventually I came across some Impala, and was at one point held up by a Waterbuck roadblock. It was nice to be able to take my time going past them, but came on a really tricky part of the drive; a road called Gold Mine. It's up-and-down up-and-down up-and-down all the way, full of tight twisting corners, very rocky and lots of low-hanging branches. I was slowly making my way along, and coming down and round a particularly tight bend I suddenly found myself coming up to our resident giraffe!! 2 adult males, 2 adult females and 2 babies. So I pulled to a stop and switched off the engine. When I'd seen them previously they had been quite skittish, but I'd managed to stop far enough away that they just maintained that beautiful curiosity that giraffes have and just stared at me from about 40m, but without actually moving away. In fact a couple of them crept closer to get a clearer view. 

Curious.

This lasted for about 5 minutes before they eventually returned to feeding, occasionally stopping to get an update on my position. I decided I didn't care how long it took, I wasn't going to try and go past them, I just wanted to enjoy this moment. It was the first time I'd ever been in the presence of such a stunning, iconic animal like this by myself and it was a truly amazing situation to find myself in. I noticed the younger of the two adult males kept appearing to cry; 3 or 4 times water gushed out of his eyes. Speaking to some of the guides on the reserve, it could potentially be because of an infection, but no-one is entirely sure of a cause. So I decided to film them (of course he didn't do it after I started filming), but it was nice getting some footage of the sighting, irrespective of the quality. Hopefully this video will work properly!!

Eventually after about half an hour they had moved far enough away from the road that I was comfortable I could go past without disturbing them too much. So slowly I trundled past. And amazingly, instead of moving away, most of them just stood there and watched me go past, while the two youngsters actually moved forward to get a better view!! 

The rest of the drive went pretty quietly. I did manage to find some leopard spoor towards the end. There had previously been a small puddle of water at this spot, so the prints will have been made as he was having a drink.

I was pretty chuffed to have gotten through the drive unscathed, but to have an incredible sighting with the giraffe and then find some beautiful leopard prints really topped it off!!

My Leave: Part 2

After a pretty chilled out week I was then booked to come go to the Limpopo region, near where I was in 2011. So I got a shuttle from Lydenburg to Hoedspruit eager to see if it the area was as I remembered it to be. Is it ever!? It is amazing driving down roads splitting the private game reserves which litter this area; it’s like a free game drive, but at 70km/h instead of 10!! In less than 10 minutes I counted 24 different species. The landscape is incredible, with seemingly endless savannah bush land opened out under the Drakensberg Mountains, which form a breath-taking backdrop. I’ve missed this place, and as much as I love Thabo Tholo, I love this area even more.

The first three nights of this past week I stayed in a place called the Cheetah Inn, near the town of Hoedspruit. The first thing I noticed while walking through the reception area was a huge bat colony roosting in the ceiling. At one point they got spooked, so suddenly hundreds of bats took off above my head and made a giant move of about 20m to a different part of the same ceiling...despite the pathetic distance they traveled it was very cool experience to see/hear so many animals move at the same time.

Cheetah Inn

Just hanging around

It's a nice little place in the bush, surrounded by amazing private game reserves and lots of places you can go on excursions. Unfortunately while I was there there were huge thunderstorms every single day/night, so unfortunately all excursions were off!! Bugger!! Saying that, it was a nice place to chill out and study, and we could go and walk around the small plot, which did contain some nice wildlife, although unfortunately nothing dangerous!!

Southern Red-billed Hornbill

Tiny lizard that I spotted in the grass.

European Roller

At dinner on my first night there I was busy buttering half of my bread roll when I felt something clawing at my leg. They had quite a few cats so I just assumed it was one of them so ignored it. It then quick as a flash climbed up my leg and leapt onto my plate and began to lick butter of the other half of my bread roll. It did take me a few seconds to realise it wasn't actually a cat, but a Genet that the family who owned the place had rescued!! Since I spend so much time looking at pictures of Genet on camera traps it was awesome to see one at such close quarters. He even joined me for a beer after dinner :) 

My uninvited dinner guest.

Pushing his luck!!

He's only a baby, so still needs bottle feeding. 

     The next morning I went for breakfast not expecting any more exotic pets, only to see a Caracal they had rescued a few years previously waiting to welcome me for breakfast. These are beautiful, beautiful cats and was a lot of fun to play with:

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE-3WCvGbII

                          

     One of the big attractions of the Cheetah Inn are a sing/dance group called Big Sound who have been hired to work there about 7 weeks ago. All the groups members are from local townships, so this is a great opportunity for them to actually earn a decent living. They are planning on releasing a CD, so I was invited by the owners to go and watch them perform some songs. They were absolutely fantastic!! They put so much energy into their singing, and there were some truly fantastic voices in there and it made it a very special evening. 
  
     After leaving the Cheetah Inn I stayed at a small B&B in the middle of Hoedspruit, which was in a very nice, secluded spot and allowed me to do some shopping and chill out a bit more before getting back to work this week. While I was in Hoedspruit I was able to revisit one of my absolute favourite restaurants, Sleepers. I'd been there a few times the last time I was in South Africa and I took great pleasure in treating myself to one of their awesome Ostrich Burgers. 

     Overall it was great to go on leave, but I'm now raring to get back into work because we've an exciting period coming up which I'll write about soon!!

     Until the next time, have a good week. There will be another blog posted on the 13th.

My Leave: Part 1

After a quite incredible last evening in camp (see previous blog), I was now a little gutted to be leaving camp for the best part of two weeks considering we still had a leopard knocking around. But, I thought, sightings like that are so rare that there could surely be no-way he’d pop his head up again while I was away…HA! It turns out he did, more than once!! And it turns out he may even have made himself comfortable in a spot very close to our “loo-with-a-view”…which has no door…

But on leave I was still to go. For the first week I was staying at the house Will and Carol, who started the leopard research 10 years ago, are renting on the other side of the reserve. It is in a stunning spot, with breath-taking views of Thabo Tholo.

All along the front of the house is a huge veranda which provides the setting for the aforementioned views. For the week I was there I spent most of my time sitting there trying to study, but often finding myself easily distracted by the wildlife around the house. Swallows were a constant source of entertainment while sitting out on the veranda. They were constantly dive-bombing around trying to catch little flying insects, and I spent far too long trying to get a decent video of them in action. I’m not yet a brilliant wildlife cameraman, but I will get there one day J 

In the garden immediately in front of the veranda were some small flowering bushes which also attracted a lot of interest from birds and insects, including Sunbirds. Unfortunately I only saw a pretty drab looking female White-bellied Sunbird the whole time I was there, which was a huge shame because the male Sunbirds tend to have incredible colourations. Although they don’t have the amazing colours of the males, female sunbirds do have to characteristic long, thin, curved beak and flickering tongue which they use to get nectar from flowers.

There were also a huge variety of insects and butterflies attracted to the bushes.

You could also often see animals, such as these zebra, silhouetted on the ridge lines surrounding the house.

Not far from the house was a recently excavated aardvark hole, in front of which Will had placed a camera in the hope of seeing this incredibly elusive creature. Unfortunately there was an issue with the camera, so we sorted that out and I wandered out to replace it in front of the hole. The next morning as I was sitting on the veranda of the house having my breakfast I heard some incessant snorting from Walter, who was standing staring intently into the tree line just in front of the house. Walter is a Wildebeest that holds a territory around the house.

So I started filming him just in case he’d seen anything interesting, and suddenly he broke into a run and off he went. Not long afterwards Will came back from his early morning bike ride, claiming to have found very fresh leopard tracks heading in the direction of that very tree line, right in front of the camera placed opposite the aardvark burrow. So there was the reason for Walter’s skittish behaviour!! When I finished my breakfast I went down to collect the camera so we could see which Leopard had been wondering around…only to find the sodding thing hadn’t been caught on camera!! Unfortunately the cameras do miss things, and frustratingly this was just one of those times. However, it did manage to catch some Warthog checking out the freshly dug burrow; they are one of many species that utilise aardvark burrows when they have been abandoned, so this could become their new home!!

A warthog investigating its potential new home? 

There is a drinking pan a few hundred metres away from the house which also provided a steady stream of wildlife to watch, mainly in the form of Impala, Kudu, Waterbuck and Wildebeest who regularly visited it to quench their thirst.

Kudu at the drinking pan

On my final morning at the house I was treated to finally seeing Vervet Monkeys on Thabo Tholo. I’ve seen them on both my previous trips to Africa, but I’d only seen glimpses of them on camera trap pictures since I’d been here. It’s always a treat watching them interacting and flying through the trees.

Vervet Monkey "Flying"

The first half of my leave had just flown by!! And just as it was ending, that was pretty much when the heavens opened across a lot of this area of South Africa by the sounds of it!! And they haven’t really shut since, so I’m very interested to see the state of the roads when I get back to Thabo Tholo on Monday!!