So far the Hwange blog has been mainly about rain. This post is partly on the same theme but anyone who saw the Park in October / November would understand why that is. What a pleasure it is to see everything bursting into life and the bush becoming green.

        A Red-headed Weaver is building a nest on our veranda. He showed it to his female when it was part-built (as in the picture below) and seems to have got her approval because he has carried on building and is now almost finished. Today the female came to inspect again. She spent quite a bit of time in the nest but hasn’t laid any eggs yet. We will of course be watching their progress closely.

I was out looking for rhino on Sunday and Monday. Sunday was a very long walk for no reward. We didn’t see a rhino but we did come across some marvellous pieces of fossilised tree which I couldn’t help photographing.

 

Dadoxylon sp, tree fossils. Around 200 million years old

   The rhino we were following obviously got a scent of us early on but it took us some time to work that out and meanwhile we had followed him a very long way from the car. It was a tiring walk back.

   On Monday we had more success, seeing one of the females that is under intensive protection. “Her” rangers were with her. They had been with her every day for most of their ten day patrol but a couple of times she wasn’t found because she seemed to have gone far from her normal range. I suspect she will do that more often as the bush becomes greener and food is widely available. If she does wander, other anti-poaching teams are now in place to pick up the signal from her transmitter and try to protect her.

    Sue and I spent Wednesday and Thursday helping with ranger deployments

 And Sue took some photos to illustrate the green theme.

The road to Surichenji

 New trees sprouting next to the stump of a Mopane burnt in this year's bush fires

After the rains I was worried about using the dreaded “Tractor Hill”. Here’s the reason it has that name (picture taken in 2009)

 

Rather than have an accident on a muddy surface and have to rename the hill “Tractor and Land Cruiser Hill” we took a different route which the rangers described to us.

I wasn’t too sure of the way as it took us right out of the Park towards Hwange town but the directions were good, the road was pleasant and we didn’t get lost.

We even saw some good birds.

Ground Hornbills in flight

After two days of deployments, we went back out looking for rhino. This time we went to an outlying area just to see if there were any rhino around. On our way we crossed the Lukosi River. Not much water yet.

 

   We camped close to the edge of the Park and I walked in with Rangers Mbewe and Sibanda to the area we wanted to search. For the first couple of kilometres I was constantly aware of a strong scent of flowers but couldn’t see any. Eventually I realised it was the Crocodile-bark Diospyros which has tiny yellow flowers. They smell strongly of limes.

   In the Pongoro Hills the rangers tried the telemetry in case any implanted rhino were close by. There was no signal.

The scenery was wonderful – reminding me of the Matobo Hills.

A waterfall in the hills - but sadly there hadn’t been enough rain for water to be running.

  We walked around 17km but didn’t see a lot of animals during the day, just a few elephants, some kudu, zebra, klipspringers and an assortment of small things…..

A leguaan (Rock monitor lizard)

Meanwhile, back at camp……

On another day we drove to Chibungo springs. There was a lot of water, plenty of browse but absolutely no sign of rhino.

Ilala Palms at Chibungo springs

The springs are on land that was once known as De Rust Farm but was incorporated into Parks land in the 1950s. It must have been a fantastic place to live.

Ruins of De Rust farmhouse

We had a lot of rain on our last night in camp and found the little river near our tent flowing in the morning.

On our way back to Sinamatella we found hippo spoor along the road for several kilometres. Some of the hippo wander when the weather is suitable to get away from the crowding and competition from others at Mandavu and Masuma.

 So, in three days of searching we saw a lot of things but no signs of any rhino. It wasn’t as easy as working with the telemetry for implanted rhino but still very enjoyable of course. Back to the telemetry this week though I think.