Africa Study Tour pt2: Good Morning Revival

 Africa Study Tour

2: Good Morning Revival 

Day 5: Team Ratel

 

Team Ratel

This morning was a huge change of pace, we were up and about by 4am to head to Kruger National Park. There was a simple reason for leaving this early, so we could spend 3 full days in the park game viewing instead of 2 and a half (this turned out to be a very wise decision). Unfortunately we got nothing from the camera trap we planted with the warthog carcass last night though, which was a shame, considering we placed it in a spot where the reserves hyena usually hang around. 

The journey to kruger was freezing, another reminder that winter in Africa does actually mean winter… I will need more layers tomorrow. We arrived at Timbavati Safari lodge early, after an hour’s drive from Moholoholo. Once we transferred to our safari vehicles we got underway to the national park almost immediately. It was equally as cold in these trucks. We formed a group of us 3^rd years and our lecturer for the days in Kruger, to band together for one last hoorah. Unfortunately the drive there didn't really go swimmingly as when we were driving (rather fast) down the cold dark road the side canvas of our truck came off, leaving us all open to the blasting wind chill, which was fun… if your called Jack or Victor.

Once that ordeal had been resolved and we had gotten through the security gates for the park, we stopped off at a small tourist station to get some well needed tea. I was very excited by this point, the canvases were up on the trick leaving us all with an open clear 360 degree view, perfection. It may have seemed to anyone looking into the trip like we were there for just 3 days of game viewing, which is true to an extant but the days here at Kruger carried a more important aim. Documenting all of the species that we see (in particular birds and mammals) and handing it into park officials helps give them an idea of which species are present in which area during the times of our visit, something which can prove highly beneficial to park rangers for game management purposes. So something that is tremendous fun can also be important, who would have guessed.

What a welcome!

We entered at Orpen gate and directly in front of us before we’d even driven into the reserve a group of elephant crossed the road, these were completely wild elephant. Absolutely incredible sight at 7am on the first day. If there was anything that would set the tone for our time at Kruger that was it. It wasn’t long before we were back in our trucks and heading into the park. The morning was packed with so many new sightings, lots of animals that before today I had only seen in Attenborough documentaries, talk about an enriching visual treat. We were told about an interesting spotting technique to use whilst on the move around the reserve as well, although our natural instinct is to visually scan left to right (as if reading a book) if you scan right to left you will gain a much better and deeper visual reception from where you are looking as we are driving forward, past things. It works as well, even back home now when travelling I very rarely scan left to right. 

Yellow-billed hornbill - flying banana

Red-billed hornbill - flying chili

I was trying my best to identify birds that were around but was failing pretty miserably, here I was far removed from my red kite, buzzard and blackbird that I had grown up with, in Kruger especially yellow and red billed hornbill (nicknamed the flying banana and chili respectively) were as frequent as wood pigeon. However, through the morning although we had gotten lots of glimpses of herbivorous species in the park there was little in the way of carnivore activity, save having seen a couple of black-backed jackal. That was until the radio went off, one of the groups had spotted a leopard, this was action station for our truck, and we geared up and raced towards the location as fast as possible. When we arrived the area was packed with vehicles, we manoeuvred through the crowds to try and get the elusive glimpse. As far as we knew from the reports it was a female with a cub nearby, at this stage we were all scouring the thickets and bushes, trying to get the visual, but it was difficult, very difficult in fact. We had been in the area for a good 20 minutes when all of a sudden through the bushes some of us spotted some movement on the right hand side of the road in the bushes, I quickly scanned and managed to get the briefest of glimpses of the unmistakable hindquarters and tail of a leopard, I saw it for only about 2 seconds before the figure vanished once more into the bushes. My excitement was at maximum, it wasn’t the view I wanted but little did I know that this was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of our leopard endeavours in Kruger over the next few days. In all we must have been around the spot of the leopard sighting for a good hour. As we began to move off we learned another little ranger and guide trick whilst in the parks taking people out on safaris. Over the radios when an animal of specific interest or rarity is spotted it is reported to others in the native Afrikaans dialect of the area, this is so the ‘visitors’ will most likely not know what has been said, thus will not be disappointed if the animal is not seen when the truck arrives at the location and secondly so that the element of surprise is kept if alternatively the animal is still in the location upon arrival.

Deliberately out of focus, like a pro...

The Sentinel - Lilac breasted roller

Still beautiful with tarmac

The game viewing continued all morning before stopping off for lunch at Satara and then the viewing continued soon after for the afternoon. We were still gaining a lot of sightings and I was still taken aback just by the sheer beauty of the scenery all around me. It was incredible, although one thing that did get to me (more of an observation) was that I didn’t realise just how much of the park was covered with tarmac, making it seem a bit more commercialised than I thought it would be… but it allows more visitors to come, spend money and view the incredible wildlife, so it can’t be entirely a bad thing. However, late in the afternoon, a sighting which gave us our esteemed name occurred. We spotted a Ratel, which in English is the fabled honey badger. After seeing these at Moholoholo it was very welcome to see one scuttling around in the wild. This particular one had something in his sights, we sat watching it for a good amount of time as it was continuously digging in an area, displaying the species legendary tenacity and failure to give up on anything. Although not a particularly rare species it is one that is rather elusive so we were all pretty chuffed. It was because of this sighting we decided to call our group along with our guide Chase “Team Ratel” for the remainder of our time in Kruger.

Although the sun was beginning to drop Kruger had a few more surprises in store for us on our first day, we got a glimpse of a young spotted hyena sitting outside of its daytime burrow and of the largest owl in Africa, the milky eagle owl (although that name is unknown in South Africa where it is referred to as the Verraux eagle owl or giant eagle owl). We even got another sighting of a leopard, right on the edge of the road stalking some impala, unfortunately it saw us before we saw it and it darted away into the bushes, leaving us with yet another quick sighting, but hey 2 leopards in one day… bonus! I swore to myself afterwards as we continued to drive down the road that before my time in Kruger was out, I would get a proper sighting of a leopard and that 1 photograph required to chronicle the memory.

Our last obstacle on day 1 was a bull elephant, in musk, standing in the middle of the road… This was an obstacle that actually made us late leaving the reserve. There was already a queue of cars in front of this leviathan but our guide, having dealt with the situation before slowly drove to the front to safely take the lead. It was not until we were at the front, probably a couple of hundred meters away from the elephant that my mind clicked into what was happening. I was nervous and a little worried at the time. Male elephants when they enter musk become much more territorial, thus can be more aggressive and unpredictable, especially when they think something like a big game truck is ‘challenging’ them and it quickly became evident that the elephant could do some damage if he wanted to. Check out the video below for some of the footage I took. The elephant displayed plenty of subtle warning signs to us as we drove very slowly behind it. If you watch the video, look for the ear flashes, stomping of the foot and the display of throwing things with his trunk to ward us off. At one point we got too close and he swung round all of a sudden to face us before carrying on his way. I felt safer than I did during the giraffe incident but still, if he wanted to charge at us there was very little we could have done. Looking back, it was one of the  best experiences of my life, as with the giraffe, it just brings something a bit more primal to the surface, it’s a rush you don’t get from anything else.

It was between 7 and 8 in the evening by the time we returned to the safari lodge after escaping the elephant and leaving the park. We settled into our lovely 4-star accommodation for the evening. We had really hit the jackpot. Comfy bed, shower and bath, fresh towels and even welcome chocolate mints! I could get use to staying in accommodation like this, thank you Timbavati. We were even allowed alcohol tonight in order to celebrate a friend’s birthday. The lodge was awesome though, it wasn’t fenced so we saw plenty of wildebeest just wandering around the area at night, in between all of the huts. Although all good things have to come to an end right, we were told, just as we were about to go to sleep, that someone had earlier spotted a long, thin green snake with large eyes in the hut… cue a rushed search of everything everyone owned in the hut and a potential sleepless night ahead of us as a description like that immediately pointed us to the boomslang or vine snake (both of which are highly venomous). Eventually I had to give into sleep whether I wanted to or not, I had another 4am start in the morning, so goodnight… I guess. 

Our 4-star accomodation!

Day 6: The Barbets Song

 

Good news! I didn’t get bitten & suffer from cardiac arrest or necrosis whilst sleeping from a snake bite. As far as anything goes, this is a good start to the day & after an amazingly warm shower I was ready to roll to Kruger at 5am once more. There was actually good news with regards to the snake actually, it turns out that after speaking to some of the rangers at the lodge it turned out to be a spotted bush snake, which is perfectly harmless. Some may have called our worrying senseless but based on the description we were given, you can’t blame us for being a bit cautious. We also turned up to the truck prepared today, we bought along the blankets that were draped at the end of our beds with us onto the truck as an extra layer whilst driving making the drive a much more pleasant experience today, especially with no hull breaches. We’ve got this sussed, we aren’t graduate students for nothing…

Team Ratel opened up our second day in Kruger in style with a second honey badger sighting at about 9am. This one was in a different area and looked as if it was just passing though, it definitely had some pace that’s for sure. On top of this, later that same day we got a third honey badger sighting, all but solidifying our name. Along with the usual impala, and larger antelope species and another Jackal it seemed as if today was going to be a very different one from yesterday. The morning went rather slow, with little animals to see, at one point even the impala seemed like and endangered species! However, this was the luck of the draw, after all the overall expanse of the park is huge, at 19,633 square kilometres it is virtually the size of Wales so considering the small area we were actually exploring it is entirely plausible that you can go some days with very little in terms of sightings. A large part of game viewing is just being in the right place at the right time, the luck of the draw as they say. However, we did see a couple of white rhino with magpie shrike carefully following them, flying down on any patches of ground the rhino had walked on to pick up any bugs that had been caught out or displaced by the lumbering giant mammals, a nifty tactic by the shrikes I must admit.

The most notable sighting of the quiet morning came in at about 9am though. To finally finish off the set of The Big 5 we were radioed to a location where low and behold a lion and lioness were relaxing under some bushes. I was relieved to have finally seen lion, especially after seeing the 2 leopard yesterday. I have seen plenty of lion in captivity but as with so many of the other animals like rhino, elephant and giraffe to see them in the wild it something totally different and fulfilling. They were as majestic as expected although by chilling out they were doing what lions do best for about 18 hours of the day. I’m also sure everyone has heard about the ‘lazy’ male lion and the fact that it’s the lioness that does all the work… well, the males actually do more than their fair share within the pride in reality. They appear to let the females do the majority of the hunting for the simple fact of protecting the pride, the male need to retain his strength and physical condition in order to protect the pride from other males, so they tend not to risk harming themselves by hunting all the time, although by keeping this prime physical fitness they can help in tackling the larger prey the pride attempts to bring down. Without this vain nature it would be impossible for genetics to be passed one in a representative fashion as displacement and infanticide would be occurring far too often within prides.

Crested Barbet

Glossy Starling

When the morning drew to a close and the midday sun blasted down at us from high in the sky we went to an open picnic area within the park to stop off for a break before heading to lunch. The area looked beautiful and was near to a watering hole, which being in the dry season meant it could attract a lot of wildlife but unfortunately we were in the right place but at the wrong time. Although, there was plenty of bird life around to keep me occupied. Hornbills, glossy & Burchell’s starling and another, very interesting little bird. It was a bird that we could all hear but never spotted until our guide, Chase, found it singing right next to our truck in a tree. It was a crested barbet. Not only was it a gorgeous avian specimen, a bright yellow body with black & white wings with what looked like a red smudge on its breast, but its song was just wonderful; what made the bird interesting though was the fact that it had the ability to close one of its airways off as it sung, so it essentially used all the oxygen out of its air sacs on one side to produce song, then when empty closed that side off and could use the oxygen out of the other set of air sacs to continue vocalising whilst the empty half could then refill with oxygen. This allows the barbet to switch between its lungs indefinitely so it can vocalise for anywhere between 1 to 2 hours continuously. Nature, truly at its best!

The afternoon bought more delight as the day and the wildlife sightings began to increase. We decided to drive along the Timbavati river route, north of where we had previously travelled. The route was filled with some lovely waterbuck (which look as if they have sat on a freshly painted toilet bowl rim due to a circular patch of white fur along their rump), zebra and wildebeest. It was not until we were close to rivers edge that we spotted a chacma baboon troop. I was surprised by them, they are a lot bigger in real life then they appear in the documentaries. These were powerful creatures, but they were not bothered by our presence at all, continuing with their daily activities, some were allo-grooming whilst others were just at feeding or resting in a nearby tree. There were quite a few young baboon around as well, which is always pleasant to see. It was quite charming to watch them actually. We then moved around so down to one of the streams that branched off from the main river and was I in for a surprise. Standing tall on some rocks by the water’s edge was a Goliath heron. This bird was huge, as their name suggests they dwarf the grey heron we have in the UK, this bird would have been a fearsome presence to many fish, reptiles and small mammals in the area. Across from the heron was another little bird, one which itself has a nice adaptation, an African jacana was walking along lily pads using its feet, with long widespread toes to create the surface area needed to walk on these surface water plants without causing them to sink. Very cool little birds. The last big sighting of the day came late in the afternoon, we stumbled across a tree that was littered with brown- headed & grey-headed parrot, the only psittacine species to be found in Kruger. We had heard them yesterday but couldn’t get a visual so to see them today was a nice bonus & there was something oddly comical at the fact they were all in a single tree, with very little other than open Savannah surrounding them.

In the evening, after consuming what was the single, best piece of steak I have ever had the pleasure of eating some of us went to sit by the fire to relax and get some tranquillity in preparation for our last day in Kruger. I still needed that that leopard sighting, and there were a number of birds still to cross off my list. One in particular was taunting me, it was a bird that I would only see here in Kruger. Tomorrow was it, for me the hunt was on for this one bird. I was going after the largest eagle in Africa.

 Day 7: The Martial

MARTIAL EAGLE!

 

I can’t believe this was the last day at Kruger. I could easily spend a solid 2 weeks here properly exploring the entire park. I am use to the 4am starts and the cold mornings and for me, the sooner we could be back in the park the better. Kruger had definitely been the revival I needed, I felt refreshed & I had finally found my footing from some of the unknown forces that forced me to want to be alone back at Moholoholo. The weather was different today, compared to the rest of our trip so far, the majority of the day was slightly cooler and more overcast, which would actually be more advantageous as the conditions were more favourable for a lot of raptor species, which proved to be true by the end of the day. After more jackal sightings (much to Ryan’s delight) we stumbled across a gold mine whilst travelling down another new route. 

It was around 9:30am when we spotted 2 verraux eagle owl sitting in a tree, one had recently caught a prey item and was eating away, whilst the other was sat along the same branch perching. I was glad that we managed to finds these owls again, after the view we got 2 days ago was a rushed one. We were watching them for a while and were joined by Marc’s safari truck. All of a sudden I heard Marc say the one word I’d been waiting to hear for the last few days “Martial!” he was looking in the opposite direction to the owls and I immediately swung around, my heart was in my throat at this point, I looked into the distance to see perched atop of a lonely branch far higher than the other vegetation a lone, huge female martial eagle in all her majesty and beauty surveying the surrounding land. For all we knew she could have been attracted by the activity from the eagle owls earlier but regardless to have the largest owls in Africa one side of you and the largest eagle in Africa on the other side was mind blowing. The martial eagle was a bird I’ve wanted to see since I was a young lad, I was on cloud nine and could not stop smiling, and this was THE sighting. I mean this is a bird that has been seen taking fully grown impala, even from our distance through binoculars you could see the sheer size of its feet and talons; if that wasn't enough there was even a moment where it looked directly at us. The eagle soon flew off into the distance and we were finally ready to move on, I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t even 10am yet & the day had already surpassed so many expectations for me!

Verraux eagle owl sleeping, notice the pink eyelids

Bull elephant

Once on the move we saw a groups of elephants, a female with 2 young in tow. We completely stopped in the truck and just waited and observed them. It was a really special moment, the youngsters were playing around with each other, the youngest trying to figure out how its trunk worked. It was charming to be allowed to view such intimate moments with them, the female didn’t seem bothered by our presence, but she kept her eye on us and performed an interesting behaviour pattern. She would touch the flap of her right ear with her trunk then touch the left ear, then she would proceed to rest her trunk over her left tusk. It was a behavioural pattern that was repeated every 3 minutes or so. The best guess anyone I spoke to on the trip was that she was sucking on the secretion from the glands on the side of the head (which can be seen on one of the pictures below, the secretion being just behind the eye) then resting her trunk but she was touching the flap of her ear more than the area of the gland. Since being back in England I have posed the question to animal keepers on a facebook group that I am part of. Their answers are equally as interesting, the glands were bought up in one answer again and some mentioned the resting also appeared; another even suggested that it may have just been a personal habit which wild elephants develop. Either way I am finding it fascinating, as with regards to behaviour I admittedly do not know that much about elephants. It’s being able to share moments like that with wildlife that make it so fulfilling and so worthwhile, it was beautiful and o be shown such behaviours in a natural environment is something that does spur my interest to no end. Soon after we even came across another male bull elephant in musk, except this one didn’t seem as imbalanced as the last bull we encountered, we still drove slowly by it but managed to pass it with only about a meter in between the elephant and the truck, incredible.

Family Portrait

However, even then it would appear that Kruger was not done with us yet. At 11:30am something utterly random but perfect occurred. We drove down a dirt trail on our way back to Satara to get lunch when out of nowhere a leopard darted across the road & if that wasn’t enough she was followed by a cub! The cards were well and truly in our favour, today we had gotten a royal flush, we came parallel to her on the road then switched the engine off, to our surprise she wasn’t that bothered about us being there, she walked and sat down allowing us to observe her all we wanted, the cub was adorable but soon disappeared into the thickets, leaving us to believe that the female was hanging around to ensure that nothing happened to the cub. I even got the photo I told myself I would get. It’s probably not the best leopard shot in the world but it’s my leopard shot. Later in the day I also got one last view of a leopard, much like on the first day, a second long glimpse of one dragging an impala through the bushes. I love this place.

She noticed the truck

The cub

Lunch at Satara gave us our next course of action. The other bird of prey I was desperate to see was the Secretary bird. I knew they were around in Kruger, but so far they had evaded me, so when a report came in whilst having lunch that one group had seen one I asked Chase if Team Ratel could go check out the area when we regrouped and it turned out that’s exactly what we did, unfortunately there was no secretary bird there when we explored the area which was a little disheartening but I was really appreciative of Chase for taking the route to check it out because he didn’t have to divert from the original afternoons route at all. The rest of the afternoon was filled with mostly more bird sightings, I finally laid eyes on Kori bustard, black-shouldered kite, brown snake-eagle and a group of southern ground hornbill. Was good to see a group of them wandering the Savannah as they are becoming increasingly rare due to habitat destruction caused by the huge increase of elephants rather than humans. We checked to see if any of the birds were ringed as due to their decreasing populations a monitoring programme has begun. Later in the afternoon we received a report of the last big cat left to see, cheetah. We hurried over to the location and managed to spot them, sitting in the far distance, at that distance I can confirm that their camouflage works really well, it certainly took me a good few minutes to spot them despite people telling me where to look. The scary thing about this cheetah sighting though was the stark reminder of the trouble they are in as a species, we saw 2 cheetah at the location and just those 2 individuals equates to 1% of Kruger’s entire cheetah population.

A grand send off

As we began to leave it became circumstantial that kruger did not want us to leave, as darkness descended when leaving we spotted 3 lioness sitting at the side of the road in front of us and once past them we had to stop again as we were blocked by a large herd of buffalo attempting to cross the road. Once past the buffalo though, that was it. Kruger had come to an end, we had one more night in our glorious 4 star accommodation before we head to our last destination tomorrow, Somkhonda Game Reserve. However, we leave the national park having smashed Kruger’s statistics, overall we saw 6 leopard and 5 lion. The number of leopard was particularly odd, over the 3 days we saw more leopard than some natives and frequent travellers may see in their life, which is something that makes me feel so lucky that I got those opportunities. Over the 3 days we were also told that we covered approximately 632 miles which is the equivalent distance of travelling from London to Thurso, at the most northern point of Scotland.

I am going to miss Kruger, without a doubt but with the revival comes the final chapter, after all everything has to end, all that matters is how we end it.