Advertisement
Published: June 17th 2017
Edit Blog Post
01 Drinking
A few zebra drinking water at the dam. Geo: -24.7435, 26.2573
Today I took half a day off work to join Paul and some other guides in the park for a birding competition that started this afternoon. We were meeting the other teams at the airstrip at 2pm to go through the rules. There was one other team at the airstrip, each team of mixed staff from various lodges, there were also two other teams from the other side of the park that could not make it to the meeting.
In our team there were five of us. We chatted for a few minutes and then drove off in different directions. I was honestly more interested in seeing animals than counting the different bird species. We didn't drive very far at all before Paul stopped the car and everyone else got excited about the birds. They all had their binoculars and bird books. There were many discussions and debates about various birds.
While they watched and identified the birds, I enjoyed the dazzle of zebras that came to the dam to drink. We spent about 20 minutes at the dam and then decided to move on towards another one of the dams.
As we drove along a track I
02 Rhinos
Two white rhinos - a mother and calf, sitting in the middle of the track. noticed two white rhinos. Then as we got closer another one came out of the bushes, they looked at us for a few moments and then trotted off into the bush. We continued on as everyone was very serious about wanting to win this competition. They were not interested in watching animals.
By the airstrip we saw three White Backed Jackals together. For me this was an unusual site, as I have only seen jackals on their own and not in packs.
Back on the main road, we drove very slowly, as the rest of the team were spotting many birds in the sickle bushes. In front of us there was a Lilac Breasted Roller with something in its mouth - through our binoculars we saw that it was a scorpion. It was trying to kill it by hitting it on the ground. Finally it killed it and ate it.
We then arrived at one of the larger dams. There weren't many birds or animals here, except for a bull elephant on the other side of the dam. We didn't spend long here. Back on the road again, we drove towards our lodge, hoping to see many
03 Rhinos
Then there were three rhinos. birds in our wetlands. Just before the wetlands, in the middle of the road there were two male giraffes. They were fighting by hitting each other with their necks. They didn't seem to be very serious with their fight, as they were softly hit each other.
At the wetlands we were lucky enough to see the end of a wild dog kill. There were only a few of the pack left. They had killed a bushbuck and the fur around their mouths was covered in blood. The sun was to set soon, so we called it a day and made arrangements to meet tomorrow morning and continue counting birds. Our total bird count for the day was 81- which was really good for a 4 hour period.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0314s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb