Winter is coming

Suddenly, it seems, winter is coming. This morning it was almost too cold to sit outside on the veranda for breakfast but, in typical winter fashion, a few hours later it was hot and sunny. The first trees to lose their leaves are the Commiphoras and Kirkias. They grow best on the steep hillsides around here so we have a beautiful yellow-leaved Kirkia outside the house for a few days…..

And hillsides seen from a distance stand out yellow from the still-green Mopane around them.

 

On the main road from Hwange to Sinamatella

As the pans dry up, some of them get a covering of aquatic plants. This one, near Mbala, is unusual, covered in water lilies and very attractive to various water birds.

This is the time of the year when a lot of birds are flying north to spend a few months in the northern summer so we no longer hear the cuckoos and bee-eaters whose calls are such a feature of our rainy season. Some species of Kingfishers are well known for accidentally flying into buildings while they are on migration (I have no idea why!). A few weeks ago a Pygmy Kingfisher flew into one of the windows of our house and yesterday this Grey-hooded Kingfisher flew into the very same window, temporarily stunning itself.

Grey-hooded Kingfisher

   When it had recovered sufficiently I put it on a tree and it eventually flew away, no doubt with quite a headache.

   This is also the time of year when the Parks staff start preparing for game water pumping. The engine for the pump at Masuma was recently given a new concrete slab to replace the one that fell apart with the vibration last year. Gary Cantle has been working on the wind pumps at Shumba and Tshompani and has got both of them working.  Our solar pump at Bumboosie South has been running nicely for some weeks since we re-started it for the dry season but last week the outlet pipe developed a leak directly above a join in the electric cable, causing a short circuit. Masterly inaction solved the problem – we were unable to get to the pump for over a week and in that time the join dried out and the pump re-started!

   Yesterday I went to Inyantue to collect Rangers from patrol. It was a beautiful morning with a clear blue sky and a cool breeze. I was enjoying the drive too much to be in a hurry so I stopped to look at birds at both Mandavu and Masuma Dams. The dams have plenty of water but not as much grass as you might expect for the time of year.

   Mandavu Dam

Masuma Dam

Close to the turn off for Robins Camp, I met a pack of twelve Wild Dogs sleeping under a large Mopane tree. They had obviously been feeding as many of them were heavily blood-stained. Although they were close to the road they were not easy to photograph but eventually these two moved out into the open.

 The rest of the trip to Inyantue was less exciting. We were held up six time by fallen trees and once by a very stubborn elephant who had found a patch of green grass by the side of the road. He simply would not move away. We shouted, clapped our hands, whistled, revved the car engine and banged on the car door but he wasn’t concerned. In the end one of the Rangers threw a small stone at him and he ran as if we had shot him. Elephants are strange animals sometimes.

Meanwhile, better news on our finances. Trevor has saved the day by organising a grant that will top up the support we still get from SAVE and keep us in the field for the next twelve months. He has also been working on the Victoria Falls end of the Rhino Sanctuary proposal.

This is the beautiful spot next to the Zambezi where we are considering building the Sanctuary.

 If I was a rhino I’d want to live somewhere with a view like that!

More on plans for a rhino sanctuary

      The proposal for a fenced rhino conservation area is taking shape fast. We have agreement in principal from National Parks although final approval will only come after the plans have been thoroughly investigated. To get that started we have spent a few days doing some vegetation analysis for the proposed area. Sinamatella is very lucky to have Ranger Richard Ndlovu available to help with this sort of work.

    Richard has a wide knowledge of trees and shrubs and can name most of the trees around Sinamatella in Latin, Ndebele and English. Sometimes in Tonga as well! At the end of 2011 Richard was hospitalised for nearly a month after being bitten by a spitting cobra. We’re glad to have him back in the field.

    Another expert for this sort of work is Wildlife Officer Mercy Maganga who carried out a survey of the plant species eaten by Black Rhino back in 2009. Mercy accompanied us on our first day of analysis and found, as well as lots of rhino browse, an unusually large Leopard Tortoise.

   We already knew the area we were investigating quite well but approached the job as scientifically as we could, collecting data from random quadrats chosen by computer on a map. We then walked in by GPS to each point in turn. The data collection was quite easy and quick but there was a lot of walking involved so it took three days in all.

     As expected, we found the ground varies from very open Mopane scrub…..

       To quite dense Diospyros and Combretum bush…….

    The rhino don’t like Mopane but our results so far show that most of the area is covered with good browse and we are confident we could keep up to five rhino within the fence without having to feed them.

      After finishing our vegetation data collection, Sue and I went to Victoria Falls to do some desperately needed work with Trevor on our financial situation. Sadly, after three years of fantastic support, the SAVE Foundation has decided to consolidate its rhino funding in the areas that still have reasonable numbers of rhino and will reduce its support to us significantly for the next three months - then decide whether or not to continue at all. At the same time as we got that bad news, we heard that the company that has been sponsoring our fuel supplies has been forced to close, so suddenly we find ourselves without the money or fuel we need to carry on. It seems odd to continue working on our hugely expensive fenced sanctuary scheme at a time when we are not sure that we can stay in the field even to the end of the month but we honestly believe it is a worthwhile plan and we hope to find a way out of our current difficulty. Perhaps we’ve seen too many reality TV shows. They always seem to have a moment where someone has just one last chance to do something or other and it invariably works out OK in the end. Here’s hoping real life can imitate “reality”. Just in case, I’ll be searching the area at the end of this rainbow I photographed last week. A crock of gold would be very useful right now!