MAKULU MAKETE BUSH DIARY
MAY 2005
SEASONS
With most of the
bushes and trees losing their leaves, or already bare, the veld looks drab at
this time of the year, but pleasantly warm days encourage activity amongst our
guests and the wildlife. The male impalas are spending their days chasing one
another and making noises like steam engines letting off steam. Some nights are
cold enough for heaters and electric blankets in the tents at the main lodge,
and it is too dark by six o’clock in the evening to see the kudus and waterbuck
at the waterhole below the cocktail deck. Instead, we sit around a big,
crackling fire inside the lodge, while delicious aromas emanating from the
kitchen sharpen our appetites for Lucas’s winter menus of soups, venison and
dastardly desserts. Cloudless, winter night skies, studded with stars, give
Peter the opportunity, with the help of the Southern Cross, to explain to our
visitors from the northern hemisphere how to find south.
CHEETAH PROJECT
Dottie, the first
cheetah in our cheetah rehabilitation project, in conjunction with the De Wildt
Cheetah Foundation, has been out in the reserve for a month. For the first
couple of weeks she continued to rely on us for sustenance, having been kept in
enclosures for several months after her capture on a farm in the Kalahari
region, and being fed regularly. After a few teething troubles with our
tracking equipment, our ecologist, Rox, has been finding Dottie on a daily
basis. From the look of the cheetah’s belly, it is possible to ascertain whether
or not she has made a kill. When empty, the cheetah’s outline is like that of a
greyhound, with its stomach pulled right up under its backbone, and it is rated
1, on a scale of 1 to 5. When it has eaten all it can, and the stomach is very
full and hanging down, it is rated 5. Just after her release, when she had not
made a kill for herself, Dottie was so hungry that she grabbed the receiver
tracking equipment from Rox’s feet and dashed off into the bush, with the
antenna trailing along behind. Dottie had been used to being fed by Rox and
mistook the receiver box for a leg of impala. Rox kept giving Dottie small
amounts of meat, trying to encourage the cheetah to kill for herself. The good
news is that Dottie is now making her own kills, but the bad news is that she
seems to be targeting bushbuck, rather than impala. Impalas are herd animals,
and with up to 50 pairs of eyes on the look-out for predators, it is not easy
for a cheetah to ambush an impala. Bushbuck, on the other
hand, are solitary and tend to forage in thick bush – perfect for a
surprise attack by a hungry cheetah.
Since her release,
Dottie has explored much of the reserve. The tracking equipment has a range of
up to 2 kilometres in open country, so it sometimes takes a little while to locate
the cheetah if she has travelled a long distance since her last sighting.
Accompanied by Rox, our guests are allowed to use the tracking equipment
themselves to home in on Dottie. Their unanimous reaction is that coming face
to face with a wild cheetah is one of the most exciting experiences of their
lives. Because she is unafraid of humans, Dottie has the unnerving habit of
walking determinedly towards the tracker, with her head down, shoulders hunched
and her unwavering gaze fixed on the tracker’s eyes. However, she always stops
a few metres short and ignores the intruders, giving us ample opportunity for
photographs. Ian and Retha Gaiger, from Lajuma Mountain Retreat, brought a
group of Dutch and German students to track the cheetah and Dottie remained
unfazed, even in the presence of 11 admiring visitors.
We are hoping that
our next cheetah, this time a male, will be with us in a couple of months. Like
Dottie, he will be kept in the boma (enclosure) for three months to accustom
him to his new surroundings, before being released into the reserve.
PREDATOR PROJECT
We have made four
attempts during the month to dart and collar brown hyaena, as part of the
predator project. The darting team – Marthinus, our marksman, with the dart
gun, Peter on spotlight, and Rox armed with follow up medication – has kept
silent watch at night by our baiting site for several hours at a time, on an
open Land Rover, rugged up against the cold, while Shawn and Jane wait on
standby to be called when the action starts, and all hands are needed. Although
the hyaenas have been appearing regularly at night at the baiting site, so far
they have not co-operated when the team is ready. On only one of the four
nights did hyaena appear, and they were more interested in each other than the
bait. A few minutes after a very big, probably male, hyaena came out of the
bush in the twilight, a smaller hyaena also appeared. It crawled on its belly
up to the big hyaena, and rolled on its back like a puppy in submission.
Ignoring the bait, they played together before disappearing into thick bush in
the dark. Meanwhile, hyaenas have been seen at the baiting site in the middle
of the day, pulling off pieces of the baits and sitting under a bush in the
shade eating them, before skulking off with a bone in their mouths. According
to our ranger, Shawn, this uncharacteristic behaviour is due to the fact that
these particular hyaena have not read the manual which
tells them that they are nocturnal animals. Nevertheless, our darting team will
persevere.
The most elusive
members of our predator guild are the cats, but this month there have been
several examples of leopard activity. A dead impala was found wedged in the
branches of a corkwood tree - classic evidence of a leopard kill, because the
leopard caches its kill up a tree, out of the reach of other predators such as
lions and hyaenas. Clear leopard spoor and leopard droppings have been found
near the mountain, and an impala was killed and
dragged for half a kilometre before being hidden under dry leaves – another
classic leopard-kill scenario. There have been several sightings of caracal
over the past few weeks, another cat which we would like to study as part of
our predator project.
GAME VIEWING
One of the most
exciting finds of the month was a 3.5 metre-long python, which crossed the
track in front of Peter’s vehicle, stretching from one side of the track to the
other, with a noticeable bulge in the middle, probably a small antelope. We got
a good view of the snake as it rested, coiled under a bush, before taking off
again through the scrub and leaving a wide, straight trail behind it in the
sand. It is always a thrill to see a big python, with its black and dark green
diamond pattern, and try to imagine how many years it
has been around, to have grown so big.
There are many
baby kudus about at the moment, as well as young gemsbok (oryx) and waterbuck,
but the cutest of all is a baby klipspringer, which was seen with its parents
on one of the rocky koppies which are dotted across the reserve. Klipspringers
are attractive, chubby little antelopes, specially adapted to living on rocky
hills, with non-slip hooves which enable them to leap from boulder to boulder
in places inaccessible to most antelope.
Our camera trap
has given us some good photos of hyaena at night, as well as a close-up shot of
the quills of a porcupine which happened to wander past under the camera.
Porcupines were on the list of animals which our Swedish visitor, Ulla, wanted
to see. True to form, Shawn was able to show her two porcupines on a night
drive and some tiny bushbabies, another species on Ulla’s wishlist.
BIRDING
It looks as if our
pair of Verreaux’s (black) Eagles are once again
sitting on eggs in their nest high up on a ledge on Kremetartkop. This is the
third time in four years that they have nested, twice already rearing chicks,
making them slightly more successful than the average for Verreaux’s Eagles,
which is two out of three years.
A mother
Doublebanded Sandgrouse with three tiny chicks was spotted on the track in
front of the Land Cruiser. When the vehicle stopped, the mother bird took off
in flight and instantly all three tiny chicks dropped down, with their heads on
the ground, mimicking stones. Their cryptic brown, fluffy down and pale
markings were perfect camouflage amongst the stones on the track. What a thrill
it was to gently pick them up and place them out of harm’s way.
An unusual
sighting this month was a melanistic Gabar Goshawk. A pair of the standard
Gabars nested at the lodge last season, and the very striking, melanistic form
has been seen several times on the reserve.
The noisy Grey
Lourie, now called the Grey Go-away Bird, is very common at Makulu Makete. A
tree full of Go-away Birds, perhaps 40 in number, made such a noise and fuss
that they finally managed to flush out an adult and a juvenile Verreaux’s Eagle
Owl from their daytime roost near the river. The big owls flapped sleepily to a
neighbouring tree, but the Go-away Birds followed them and forced them to move
on again. Their screeching cries after their success sounded like a crowd
cheering at a football match when their team had scored a goal.
LODGE AND CAMPS
Ulla, from
Camping at Lulu’s
Camp, Thea and Hans from Potgietersrus enjoyed walking our baobab trail and
Hans was thrilled to spend an hour or so in the bush with Dottie. Marian and
Graham are permanent campers, having sold their house in
Professor Rick
Bernard, of