Idube 2: Vultures, Hyenas and Dogs, Oh My!

Some of us were wide awake for our 5:15 am wake up call on Tuesday – others, not so much. Everyone managed to stumble to the reception area where coffee, tea, juice and muffins lured everyone into awake-ness. The five of us were joined today by Rob and Kay, a couple from Australia.  Rob grew up on a farm in South Africa and was very knowledgeable – he served as a great back-seat guide. We all loaded up in the Land Rover at 6am and headed into the bush.

We spent a good part of the first hour parked on the dam nearest the lodge, enjoying the early morning action in and around the waterhole. (It’s one of three dams on the reserve.)

I didn’t get good pictures of other birds at the pond: White-faced Whistling Ducks, an Emerald Spotted Wood Dove and Red and Yellow-billed Hornbills (like our friends from the dining room).

I was up front in the passenger seat, behind the tracker and beside the guide. It’s an interesting perch because you can eavesdrop on the radio chatter among the rangers/guides. All guides are  required to spend the first hour on the property of their own lodge, which ensures that rangers keep good eyes on all parts of the overall reserve. After the 1st hour, guides can go onto other properties, traversing all across the consolidated reserve. When a guide spots an interesting animal (hippos and birds in the waterhole don’t count), they broadcast the animal(s) and location on a shared channel, then set up a queue so there are no more than 3 vehicles (usually two) on a viewing.  The guide in the #3 position waits close to the site (out of earshot) and they take over as controller, radioing news to other guides in order to keep the noise level down. When #3 is cleared to advance, the guide on stand-by moves towards the site and takes over as controller.

I was very impressed by the camaraderie and collaboration among the guides, their dedication to ensuring every visitor gets a chance to see whatever cool thing is happening, and their care for the welfare of the animals.  They are very careful about positioning vehicles and acclimating the animals to them.  No more than 2 vehicles are allowed at a site with young’uns, and no vehicles are allowed to approach youngsters under 4 months old to avoid creating negative associations when they are very young.

The guides and trackers communicate (on the radio and in person) in a mixture of English and a local African language, using native terms for animals so tourists can’t understand what animal they are seeing and get disappointed when the critter moves off before they get a chance to see it. FJ and Mike spent about 45 minutes talking with others about “mdosch” and a “bomba,” and all of them were clearly very excited.  Our turn finally arrived and we got to see what all that excitement was about.

“Mdosch” (no idea how it is really spelled) are wild dogs – and a pack with seven adults and nine puppies were cavorting all over the road.

Wild (aka “Painted”) dogs are highly endangered, one of only 5 species for whom the reserves will intervene with veterinary care if one is injured. They are very fast predators, but they are also small, and other African predators regularly take them down and/or steal their kills. So we were very lucky to see a pack of this size and enjoy the antics of the 9 pups and their 2 adult nannies.

But there was more. A “bomba,” we learned, is a kill.  An old giraffe had died near one of the lodges on the day before, and lodge staff dragged it off into the bush to keep carnivores away from the tender flesh of tourists. Giraffes are big animals (males typically weigh in at 2.5-3 tons) so that’s a lot of meat on the table – and feasting was underway just down the road from the puppy playground.

The dogs clearly wanted in on the action, but the hyenas weren’t interested in sharing.  To our astonishment, the dogs started taunting the hyenas – a very dangerous move since hyenas are bigger and stronger than dogs, with jaws that can easily crunch through bone,

Yowza!  After about 30 minutes watching Wild Kingdom in person, we surrendered our ring-side seat to the next vehicle in the queue and headed out to find other adventures.  

We stopped for morning coffee at another waterhole, with hippos to entertain us.

A bull elephant came tromping down to the shoreline to get a drink. This bull was in muskh, a condition that floods the male’s system with testosterone to enable breeding. Like high-testosterone males everywhere (ahem), bull elephants in muskh are aggressive and unpredictable.   FJ kept a wary eye this chap’s passage and was poised to whisk us away at an instant’s notice.

Once Sir Elephant had passed on his way, FJ took us down the sandy bottom of a dry streambed.

This hyena was scenting what FJ & Mike quickly spotted: a leopard stretched out along the branch of jackalberry tree.

Heading back to lodge, we passed some Helmeted Guinea Fowl (who always make me laugh) and a small herd of giraffe.

Breakfast – and the nyala – awaited us on our return (about 10am) to the lodge. After breakfast, we had about five hours off  before our next call to eat – high tea – before the afternoon game drive. A maternal herd of elephants passed through the camp on their way from the nearby waterhole.

Fortified by our third (but not final) meal of the day, we headed out into the bush in mid-afternoon. A  dwarf mongoose shot by too fast for me to photograph as we approached the dam. A trio of Cape Buffalo bulls had moved in since our morning visit, along with their ever-present Oxpecker hitchhikers.

Leaving the dam denizens to their afternoon pursuits, we followed several twisty dirt tracks, encountering a variety of species along the way.

A colonial ritual that survives on safari game drives is “the sundowner.” Tracker and guide find a scenic spot to park, then haul out a table and load it up with glasses, beverages and snacks. (Because we haven’t had enough to eat yet today.)  This evening’s sundowner was next to the Sand River.

And so, with the setting sun, we headed back through the sudden darkness of an African night to the lodge for – you guessed it – another meal before bedtime.