20 Dec 2011 |
The Rangers’ voices – Camp Savuti |
The marsh:
The marsh has been full of life and more is yet to come. On one of the drives under a cool cloudy morning just after the rain had gently drizzled, zebras were spotted giving birth. The impalas are also all over with their young. Predators were also in the area but the zebras were so much on the western side of the marsh which meant that the canines had to to cross the marsh to reach the stripped fellows. It was such a spectacular and a total of about four zebras giving birth were witnessed by the guests and their field guide couldn’t believe their eyes.
The afternoon was very quite with general game on the eastern side of the Savuti marsh.The wild dogs we saw the previous day had gone. As we continued to the southern side of the marsh, by luck we came across the the Savuti boys.
The big cats were relaxed and looking very healthy.
Up in the east the skies were filled up with a very good colourful flight of the yellow-billed Pelicans. There bird calls everywhere and all the guests were feeling that there was surely something more than the birds somewhere. A few minutes later we came across the red-billed fracolin orchestra which was very hard to ignore. Their alarm calls were very much deafening. There was something life threatening to the birds and we still didn’t know what it was, and there around a sharp curve of a fever berry bush was an infantry of the common wild hunting dogs. It was the best sighting of the day, first pack of wild dogs in a very long time.
On our way back to camp we were driving across the marsh when this giraffe was walking infront of the dry spot where we were enjoying the amarula and listening to the lion’s roar that was coming from far beyond the horizon. Everyone was feeling the heart-beat of Africa under the soles of their boots.
Before getting into camp along the Savuti channel we came across the super cat. We admired her spots and she was a good size male leopard that had just finished her impala lamp kill and was resting watching the sun going down slowly, as if to say, this is one of the greatest days indeed.
Towards the end of the month there were various sightings around Savuti. The pack of wild dogs was seen at Harvey’s pan and Qwari hills. Leopard sighting at Rock paintings and the two male lions were seen very close to camp, less than one hundred metres.
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