Lion kill

Zimbabwe has been suffering shortages of diesel and petrol since November last year. For some time we were able to keep operating simply by being very careful with our fuel use and not going to far-away places like Inyantue unless we absolutely had to. We managed to get occasional supplies of diesel but by January we were so short that we had to ‘ground’ one of our three vehicles. Through  February we kept two vehicles going when necessary but our fuel stocks dwindled and early in March we decided that only the vehicle for the Rhino monitoring Unit would be in action, the others (with those of us that drive them) would be grounded. That has meant that since some time in January, I have hardly left Camp, indeed, Sue and I have only been away from the Park for one day since Christmas, and very frustrating it has been too. I hate having nothing to do so I’ve tried to keep busy, though some jobs are too horrible even to think about, however bored I might be – tidying the office is one that springs to mind. I just can’t face those tottering piles of paper that have been kept for long-forgotten reasons and then left to gather dust.

   I have to say that if you are going to do nothing, Sinamatella is not a bad place to do it. Sue wakes early every day to go for her morning walk so we usually see the sun rise……….

   Through the day the local birds and animals provide a lot of entertainment. December and January are months when many of the birds are hungry and have learnt to come and beg from us or just to join us on the veranda to get out of the rain……….

    Now that the grass has seeded there is plenty of food for the birds so we don’t see them as much but still the various mammals such as the Dwarf Mongoose, squirrels and Dassies are around…..

       

And the view down to the flood plain is endlessly changing, especially on the rare occasions this year that we have had rain…….

   I have not (by any means) been doing nothing for all these weeks. Our extensive range of Land Rovers always provides work – and here I should say the following photo is strictly copyrighted to avoid it turning up on some Land Cruiser-chauvinist website!

    Not having been out into the Park, I haven’t had much to write about but yesterday Sue was going through photos on the computer and deleting the unwanted ones when she found the series that goes with this story from last year……

    It was October, water in short supply, herbivores struggling for decent food and carnivores and scavengers fat and smiling. We were approaching the Sinamatella River Bridge when  we saw a group of giraffe gathered in the shade of a big tree. One of our on-going projects is a survey of the giraffe population so we stopped to get the necessary photographs. As we sat looking at the giraffe we saw two lionesses who stood up from the vegetation in the river bed . One headed off to our right and the other headed towards the water in a pool by the bridge……

   We were slightly higher up than she was so we could see that a group of Impala had the same idea and were also heading for the pool from the opposite direction………

   When she saw them, the lioness started a fast stalk……….

    The Impala seemed not to have noticed her and continued to come down to the river……..

Until she began her charge………..

   The action now took place, somewhat obscured by dust and at great speed so we couldn’t easily follow what happened but Sue kept her finger on the camera’s shutter button and later we could see from the photos that the lioness very nearly caught one of the Impala that had been closest to her……..

   But then she veered off to the left ……….

    And we lost our view of her for a few moments until I had moved the car forward slightly. Then we saw that she had successfully made her kill…….

   Which she dragged out of the river bed and into the shade of a Croton bush to eat……..

   We had only seen two lionesses but there were very likely some young lions around as well so the Impala won’t have made much of a meal for them but at that time of the year, the hunting is relatively good and I have no doubt the lions hunted successfully again not long afterwards. At this time of year, with leaves on the trees and water available in many, widely-spread places, the tables are turned and the herbivores are at an advantage.  Life’s always tough for someone or something though  – as, of course, those of us that live in Zimbabwe are only too aware!

January water-bird counts

     A couple of days ago we finally felt that we had enough spare diesel to be able to do the January African Waterfowl Census water bird counts at Shumba, Masuma and Mandavu. We do these counts every January and July and submit the data to Birdlife Zimbabwe who send it on to Wetlands International, the co-ordinators of International Waterbird Counts since 1967.

   Sue and I have been involved in various bird data projects over many years and birds are part of our daily lives at Sinamatella. There are several species and individuals of birds that have become very tame and treat us as part of the scenery  - albeit an unusual part of the scenery  that can be relied upon to supply breadcrumbs and other food, more or less on demand. We have Red-headed weavers nesting on the veranda above our dining table which van be messy - but interesting. In the dry season I share my breakfast most mornings with Barbie the Crested Barbet and her companion who we have inevitably named Ken. Throughout the year the local group of White-browed sparrow-weavers who nest close to our house in a big Mopane tree, forage on and around our veranda (especially at meal times) and recently a pair of Red-billed Hornbills has developed the same habit. They first started getting tame during the hungry time around end of last dry season and were here looking for food when the first rain fell - giving Sue an opportunity for a memorable photograph.......

    We have an artificial nest box in the Mopane tree which has been used in the past by Grey-headed sparrows and by squirrels but this year the hornbills decided they would use it. Either they breed in very cramped nest-holes or they have misjudged the size of the box; either way, we thought they should  be offered a bigger alternative so one day Sue and I made a new, larger box. The hornbills watched from just a few metres away as I climbed a ladder and fixed the new box in the tree. I was sure they would be afraid of it but by the time I had removed the ladder and sat down to watch, they were already investigating and carrying dummy pieces of nest material which they passed from beak to beak then dropped on the ground. 

 

     Two weeks later that is what they still do every morning and evening and there is no sign that they intend to go any further. We'll see what happens.

   Meanwhile, back to the waterfowl census.....

   We travelled first to Shumba where we count at Elephant Pan, Dwarf Goose Pan, Reedbuck Vlei, Big Shumba, Shumba Pan and Camp Hwange Pan. Rainfall has been below average and very patchy so far this season but even so we were surprised to find that of those seven sites, only the two pumped pans, Shumba and Camp Hwange, had any water. Consequently the count was low and we saw more interesting birds in the grasslands than we did at the pans. There were a few Grey crowned cranes stripping seeds from the grass flowers.....

And Carmine and Blue-cheeked bee-eaters in the more open patches, though the Blue-cheeked were camera shy so Sue only managed to photograph the Carmine........

As well as birds, the Shumba grasslands usually have something else interesting to offer. We met up with a Black-backed jackal which trotted along in front of us for a while but wouldn't stay still for a photo. These two Steenbok were more accommodating......

   But we eventually left Shumba and headed to Masuma, with a rather disappointing bird count up to that point. Masuma though, was unusually good. The dam itself had quite a few water birds such as these two Egyptian geese....

In view of the crocodile that you can see sliding towards them, the one running away on the left looks the more sensible to me!

Away from the actual dam we had some of the best birding of the day at a number of small, flooded pans. A Wood sandpiper absolutely refused to be intimidated by the Land Rover parked right next to it so even I was able to get a photo......

  And my favourite sighting of the day was this Dwarf bittern.....

 At the other end of the size scale, one of the little pans was occupied by a thirsty elephant......

The difference in amount of water between the Shumba and Masuma areas was quite startling considering they are only about 14km apart but it shows the patchiness of this year's rainfall. Mandavu, our next stop, has had relatively good rain and holds plenty of water as well as plenty of birds. We counted 437 water birds of 32 species. Mandavu is big and it takes a couple of hours to scan the whole shoreline (from seven or eight separate points) so by the end of it we were more than ready to head for home and put the kettle on. By this stage, anyone reading this blog post probably feels much the same so I'll leave any write-up of Mandavu's birds for another day!

Veld reclamation

     These are worrying times for Zimbabwe. Last week, Bulawayo,  Harare and elsewhere were in turmoil with protests over the economic situation in the Country, but at Sinamatella we were cut off from the rest of the world by the government's shutdown of the internet combined with a two-day power failure. This is not meant to be a political or current affairs blog so I won't comment further on the events of the week away from Sinamatella except to hope that there will be a happy ending to this very long-running story. What that happy ending might be is anybody's guess but let's hope that it is better than the one we thought we had reached in November 2017 - which turns out to have been neither happy, nor the end.

   So, the week at Sinamatella. Over the years that we have lived here we have noticed (we think) a steady increase in the amount of bare, eroded ground we can see as we look out over the park from the top of the hill.  Rainwater rushing over the surface has caused sheet erosion which continues every rainy season........

And the depth of the soil loss is shown by the exposed roots on this old Mopane stump.....

    We have no measurements to show that the bare areas are increasing but even if they are not, they are still a worry. We put a lot of effort into providing water for the animals but that is of no value if they don't also have food. This isn't a new idea - the Parks Authority staff worked on veld reclamation right into the 90's but nothing has been done since then so we decided that this should be the year that we start again, trying to do something about the situation.

   Towards the end of last year, the Hwange Conservation Society (UK) very kindly agreed to fund an experimental piece of veld reclamation that we can replicate on a larger scale if it is a success. We chose a piece of land close to Sinamatella that has been heavily affected by sheet erosion but is easily accessible for the necessary work and for monitoring afterwards. Most of it looks like this.....

But our aim is to get it looking like this piece of land, only a couple of hundred meters away.........

   I know, from speaking to some of the people involved in reclamation in the past, that they relied mainly on laying down brush lines (that's lines of cut bush that provide shade and protection from grazers for delicate grass seedlings). Professor Google and good old-fashioned books I've looked at suggest that breaking up the soil crust is also important and we know that works from having seen the effect of laying pipelines under bare ground for game water - the disturbed soil quickly becomes well covered with vegetation. So, we decided to try out a variety of methods....1. brush lines alone, 2. breaking up the soil in lines with a ripper then covering with brush and 3. breaking the soil but not laying brush lines. And so, to work.

    First, cutting brush. It would be a bit counter-productive to destroy useful vegetation in an experiment on encouraging vegetation so we cut the brush where it isn't wanted - along the edges of the Sinamatella airstrip. The airstrip isn't much used. The last time a plane landed was in September 2017 so the strip......

And the airport buildings (departure lounge, customs and immigration, duty-free shop - that sort of thing )........

....... are a bit neglected.

 We loaded the cut brush into our old Land Cruiser (affectionately known as 'Granny')........

While the tractor was doing the heavy work, ripping the soil at the experimental plot......

Then we laid out the brush lines....

.....and thought we had finished.

   It all looked very neat and we were rather proud of it. I suppose that was the mistake because a couple of hours later a heavy storm with very strong winds swept across the whole thing and scattered our neat brush lines as if they were made of paper. That's what experimenting is about of course - you learn by testing out ideas and clearly, unsupported brush lines are an idea that doesn't work. Faced with either having to add a lot more brush to make it all much heavier or pegging the lines down with rough stakes, we decided on the stakes and that has now been done.  From here we have to monitor the success or otherwise of the various plans and then decide if we want to scale the programme up before next rainy season. No doubt I'll have more to say on this in the next few months.