Expect the unexpected in the bush

Posted on 29 July 2011

One thing that never fails to baffle me in the bush is how things can change overnight; you can go from seeing everything one day, to seeing ‘nothing’ the next. And these last four weeks in the bush of the Timbavati Private Game Reserve have made me realise that even more.

I am one of those people who just enjoy being in the bush, and while I absolutely love to see the big and hairy animals, if I don’t, it doesn’t phase me as I know that there is always tomorrow to see them. The problem comes in when one has guests that are here to see those same big and hairy animals, and they decide not to play along, making my job unbelievably stressful! It is almost as if the animals know this, and will intentionally wait for one particular set of guests to leave before showing themselves.

For instance, this month I had guests who really wanted to see leopards, but for the three days that they visited us, we really struggled on the leopard front, and in fact, we only saw two different leopard sightings in their six drives. It didn’t help me telling them that the guests prior to them had seen seven different leopard, or the ones after them had four sightings of three leopards in their four drives.
The same happened with the lions too! We are struggling with these iconic animals at the moment, due to the dynamics of being in an open system, and I had some guests that I really wanted to show at least one lion! Despite hours of tracking, we were just unable to locate our new, but skittish pride. The southern pride had moved off our traversing area, and the lions in the north have been on vacation for the last five months it seems.

Murphy’s, stupid-and-frustrating, Law, but my guests had no sooner left ‘lionless’, than our southern pride returned, our skittish pride killed a waterbuck and even the northern lions were found mating with one another.

This however is the beauty of working in a reserve that is part of an open system; you just never know what to expect! The animals are free to roam from one reserve to the next as they please. Yes, it is exceedingly frustrating to not have lions to show your paying guests for days at a time, but at the same time, every morning we wake up believing that during the night, something special may have happened, and one of any number of prides (known or unknown) might have moved across our unfenced boundary to grace us with their presence. It is this excitement of the unknown that keeps me going out there every morning, and it is this excitement that I have to try and pass onto the guests when we drive around for hours seeing nothing; and let them believe that you just never know what is waiting for them around the next corner (besides more mopane trees).

While this might make my last four weeks sound like hard work, it is not the full story! I think part of the problem was that I had been so spoiled with some amazing sightings, so that when things returned to the ‘normal’ standard, it felt like I wasn’t seeing as much.

I had many highlights this month that included seeing 17 different leopards, four different prides of lions (including a surprise visit from the white lions on my birthday!), cheetah, good rhino and several new bird species for me in the reserve. But what I enjoyed most was when on numerous occasions, I learned some valuable lessons about the ways of the bush; particularly that, if one stops to admire the smaller things in the bush, the big things will automatically show up. On more than one occasion I sat watching and photographing the gorgeous-albeit-ubiquitous impalas in some wonderful light when they suddenly burst into a chorus of alarm calls to reveal a leopard skulking in the grass.

I also learned that it is not foolish to drive the same road again with no reason, as on one occasion I found a leopard lying on a termite mound where it had not been 15 minutes earlier, and on another, a colleague driving just 10-minutes behind me on the same road found a cheetah crossing in front on him. All of these lessons stem from one idea, and that is to expect the unexpected!

And this month, there are two occasions that stick out to bring this point home that I would like to share.

The first one happened on my last evening before going on leave, and is probably one of the highlights of my career so far. Nothing spectacular, but just a rather effective reminder as to why I love my job so much! After dinner, lying in bed reading a book, I was delighted to hear the roars of three male lions near the camp – the first time I had heard this for many weeks! I went outside to get a gauge of where they were, and then returned to my book.

A short while later, I was standing outside again, this time listening to some impalas alarm calling in front of the camp. I knew there was a leopard there, but after briefly contemplating walking to verandah to look for it, I deduced that it would no doubt have sunk into the darkness and I would be wasting my time. I returned to my book.

At the risk of sounding like a broken down record, a short while later, I was standing outside again! This time, it wasn’t so much about listening, as I knew exactly what had happened, and I knew exactly where the sound was coming from! Seconds earlier, my heavy eyes had had their load instantly lightened with the unmistakable scream of an animal being killed, and the fact that the sound was coming from right outside my front door didn’t take a brain surgeon to determine where I had to go and look.

Perhaps a brain surgeon might have had a bit more common sense than to just barge out the door armed only with a torch, but I was so excited that there wasn’t really time for thinking! I had no sooner stepped out of the door and shone my light around when I found the cause of disturbance – a female leopard busy suffocating a duiker no more than 10 m from my front door (tracks in the morning indicated that she had chased in literally two metres past my door!)! For once I felt a bit sorry for the poor antelope, as I knew this one as it regularly frequented the camp. Fortunately though, that sadness was short lived, as I knew the leopard better, having watched her grow up, and as I hadn’t seen her for almost six weeks, I was just delighted that she had returned, and what a return she had made.

She dragged the duiker off into the night, but lay down about 40 m away to finish the job. I decided to leave her in peace and being so wide awake now, returned to my book. It was a futile attempt as minutes later I was outside watching as two hyenas came running past my house in the leopard’s direction, but fortunately for her, she was quick enough to safely drag the kill up a mopane tree, right in the middle of camp.

For the fifth time, I returned to bed, and this time, I managed to finish my book.

While that sighting was full of excitement, my most memorable drive this cycle was probably also my quietest and least diverse. The afternoon was being dedicated to finding the aforementioned leopard for some guests of mine that were doing a book of the leopards of the area. As this leopard had been seen in the middle of the day resting in a marula tree a few kilometres from camp, we began following up. Driving circles looking for signs of her produced little in the way of game, and after one mopane tree, you sort of get tired of the sight of them.

Eventually I left my tracker on the last set of tracks, and continued towards the remote eastern boundary that the reserve shares with the Kruger National Park. I was literally just trying to kill time, hoping that my tracker would give me the radio call announcing his findings. None came. But I wasn’t too upset, as another guide excited reported that he had one Xiwombane. This was all well and good, except I had no idea what in the world a Xiwombane was, and without my tracker to help me translate, I gingerly asked the guide what exactly had he found?

By the time the second syllable had been aired over the radio, I was already in fifth gear. There are not many animals that will get me to race across the reserve to see them. Wild dogs and perhaps cheetah are the two that will. As these are known as Mahlwolwa and Xkankana locally, I’ll give you a clue, it wasn’t one of them!

Rather, as I moved south along the Kruger cutline, all the while being informed as to the animals every move (‘it’s drinking’, ‘it’s eating mud’, ‘faga jumbo (put foot) Chad, it’s moving … okay, it’s eating mud again’ etc etc), my mind went back to my first and last sighting of this animal, all of 18 years ago when I was but an infant … okay, I was 10, but still, it was a long time ago! Wow, was I really going to see this animal again? Then a moment of sadness moved over me. It wasn’t because the updates had stopped; no no, I knew it was still drinking and eating mud, but it was because I realised that I really wanted Petros, my tracker, to have been sitting on the bonnet with me to experience what I was about to experience. Petros has worked at the lodge for nine years and never seen a Xiwombane.
In record time, I arrived at the most remote south-eastern corner of our traversing area – an area that nobody drives, but for some reason, Colbert had driven there twice today, and he was duly rewarded. I pulled up to join him, and there in front of me, at the water’s edge, was a xiwombane – an aardvark.

It was surreal. And for once, not just for me, but also for my two guests that had done many safaris, and could totally understand why I had suddenly turned into Colin McRae the rally driver to get there! Sylvie, one of my guests, was so excited that her emotions got in the way of her being able to physically film the first five minutes of the sighting! After it left the waterhole, I decided to try and follow it, and I was just flabbergasted that it allowed us to do so, without running away. It was like following behind any one of our ‘relaxed’ animals – amazing.

We eventually lost the Xiwombane in thick bush after a hyena ran in and chased it off – possibly also as excited as we were to see such an odd animal as we were, and we left the area glowing – smiles from ear to ear.

We headed back to pick up Petros, who had been unsuccessful in his search, and saw nothing else that drive, literally. But we didn’t care, we had just seen an aardvark in the day! Needless to say my photos of this unusual animal made a lot of people extremely jealous. It was again in that sighting that I realised how quickly one’s bush experience can change; and it gives substance to the far-too-often used saying in the bush, expect the unexpected…as clichéd as it is, it is very, very true.

If you enjoyed this blog and like a good wildlife image or two, check out more wildlife stories from the Timbavati or follow my daily wildlife blog that is updated with wonderful stories and some fantastic photographs of sightings in the Timbavati at www.motswariblog.blogspot.com






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