Masuma Dam

    Masuma Dam, about 25km south of Sinamatella must be one of the best dry season game-viewing sites in Zimbabwe. By the time the hot weather arrives in September, anything up to one thousand elephants drink at the dam in just twenty-four hours and many other species including buffalo, impala, kudu, waterbuck, zebra and warthogs are regular visitors.

    We visited the dam recently. The surrounding area is already very dry and in a few hours we saw nine large mammal species, a lot more than we had expected for this time of year and for the time of day. When we arrived the resident hippo were out of the water sunbathing on the far side of the dam. They stayed out for a few hours but then one by one they woke up and moved back into the water.

 

    While the hippo were lying out there had been many oxpeckers searching their skin for the ectoparasites and loose pieces of tissue (especially around wounds) that are their diet. As each hippo went into the water the oxpeckers flew back to those that remained ashore until the last hippo had at least thirty birds on its back or on the ground around it.

Eventually the oxpeckers were forced to look for new animals to sit on and most of them flew off to join a herd of impala that were on their way to drink.

    At this time of year the impala are very skittish and the slightest disturbance sends them running. Near the water this usually disturbs everything else as well.

    An interesting sighting was the large number of wathogs. Game counts have been carried out at Masuma on a regular basis since at least 1987. In fourteen counts between 1987 and 1992, the average number of warthogs sighted was 15 in twenty four hours. The average for seven counts in 2009 was just 0.3. In 2010 it was 1.6 and by 2011 it had risen to 5,5. In the three hours that we were at Masuma on the 3^rd June this year we saw 16 warthogs, including this one……

  No research has been done into this large fluctuation in numbers but it has been suggested that it is mainly due to lions. A single warthog is not a big enough meal for a group of lions but it is possible that when warthog numbers are high, lions learn that they are relatively easy to catch and they kill enough of them for the population to crash. They then lose interest in catching what is, for them, just a rare snack and the warthog population recovers until they are common enough to come to the attention of the lions again and so the cycle continues.

    The star attraction at Masuma is the elephants. They prefer to drink the clean water that is pumped into the trough in front of the viewing platform so some close encounters are common.

   

   Family groups of elephants can not all get to the trough together so they usually drink from the dam itself. The water is far from clean but it is obviously better than nothing.

   Perhaps the best moment of a great afternoon was the arrival of an old male buffalo when two elephants were drinking at the top end of the dam. He plodded in, looking, as most buffalo do, utterly exhausted and at first the elephants seemed to want to dispute his right to the water and turned threateningly in his direction. The buffalo ignored them and plodded on……

   He got closer and closer and it was the elephants whose nerve cracked first. Squealing in annoyance, the nearest of them turned aside and to our surprise, the buffalo, rather than simply swaggering down to the water, actually charged him and chased him away.

   With aggression like that it’s no wonder buffalo are often regarded as one of the most dangerous animals in the bush.

First camera trap results

    We have recently been in Bulawayo to collect our 1PZ Land Cruiser and to shop, and organise materials and equipment for National Parks. The Land Cruiser has had a complete engine overhaul thanks to very generous funding from Patrick Jacquemin, a former Planete Urgence volunteer. Patrick supported us in 2010 and 2011 and actually bought the vehicle for us in the first place last year. We are very grateful for his support.

 

The 1PZ Land Cruiser

Patrick Jacquemin talking to Sinamatella Area Manager Moses Gomwe

    While we were in Bulawayo we spent nearly three days finding supplies we need and getting quotes for all sorts of equipment ranging from cutting blades for a grader to solar pumps to tents. We returned with the car loaded with tyres for the Parks vehicle at Sinamatella (bought by the African Wildlife Foundation), a solar pump donated by John Brebner from Wildlife and Environment Zimbabwe and water containers, paint, plumbing materials etc donated by ourselves.

    The solar pump was left at Main Camp with Gary Cantle, pending a decision on where to install it. I am hoping it can be used at Baobab Pan in Sinamatella sector. At Main Camp we received two pieces of bad news. A few days previously poachers had killed white rhino number 29 and her three month old calf, outside the Park on one of the Gwayi farms. As a result the SAVE Foundation has decided to stop funding its rhino monitoring programme at Main Camp so our son Nicholas, who has worked there for nearly two years, suddenly finds himself out of work for a while. SAVE are hoping to arrange a transfer for Nick to Matobo where there are more rhino. The loss of number 29 has upset everyone in the Park. The poachers even shot her tiny calf and removed his little horn stubs. What a terrible waste.

    Back here at Sinamatella we have collected the memory card for one of our camera traps. This is the camera set at a small spring which I mentioned in my last posting. We got no rhino (so far) but there were some nice photos.

    By day the commonest visitors were Impala….

Male Impala. Aepyceros melampus

Warthogs……

Warthogs. Phacochoerus aethiopicus

Elephants........

 

Some of which came very close to the camera……

And of course, Guinea Fowls…..

Helmeted Guinea Fowl. Numida meleagris

On one morning some Zebra accompanied the Impala……

And once an unusually smart-looking Spotted Hyena came for a drink…..

Spotted Hyena. Crocuta crocuta

By night, when we hope a rhino might come, there were very few animals using the pan. Most nights there were no photos, occasionally there were elephants and twice a leopard visited.

   The camera is still in place and may get a rhino eventually. The other cameras that are in action are more difficult to get to. I went out to check on them last week but ended up helping rangers look for one of the implanted rhino that had not been detected for three days. She sometimes wanders far from her core territory into an area that is difficult to search as there is not much high ground for finding the radio signal. We drove many kilometres but were not successful. At one point two rangers in the back of the car stopped us because they had smelled the tell-tale scent of a dead animal. We all got out of the car and spread out into a line, walking up-wind to find the source of the smell. With the killing of number 29 in mind I was afraid we were going to find a dead rhino and I’m sure the rangers all had the same thing in mind. On the first sweep we found nothing but then someone found a lot of hyena tracks and we followed them until, with some relief, we found the cause of the trouble – the very, very smelly remains of a warthog.

 Skull and upper tusks of a warthog.

   Good news for us – but less so for the warthog of course.