Masuma Dam, about 25km south of Sinamatella must be one of the best dry season game-viewing sites in Zimbabwe
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 3rd 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment