Wild Dogs

    In recent months we have had a number of encounters with Wild Dogs. I should explain first that these are not domestic dogs run wild. They belong to the same family, the Canidae but are not part of the genus Canis and are sometimes called Painted Dogs from their Latin name Lycaon pictus. I prefer the simple name – Wild Dog.

    Hwange is home to the very successful Painted Dog Conservation project which has a base near Main Camp. They monitor the Dogs in Hwange and elsewhere and try to raise awareness of these beautiful and endangered animals. In many parts of the Park the Dogs are struggling to survive because they often travel out of the Park and run the risk of being killed in road accidents, in snares or by diseases of domestic dogs. Here at Sinamatella we are very lucky to be in the middle of a huge area of protected land and the resident pack of Dogs rarely, if ever, runs these risks so, for the moment at least, they are doing well.

    Back in November we met up with the largest group of Dogs we’ve ever seen. There were eighteen pups and seventeen adults……

Part of the pack on the road near Gurangwenya.

The adults were not bothered by the car and simply bypassed us but the pups stayed on the road in front, watching us carefully…..

We watched them for a long time but eventually had to go and Sue got some nice close-ups as we drove slowly past….

Since that day in November we have seen the Dogs quite often. They range in colour from very light…..

 

To mostly dark……

They rarely take much notice of us and spend a lot of time relaxing……

But occasionally they are playful……

And they are surprisingly keen on bathing……

They are normally very successful hunters but on the two occasions we have seen them hunt they have failed both times when their intended prey risked being taken by crocodiles and took refuge in fairly deep water.  Although we haven’t seen them actually catch anything we have several times seen them feeding on Impala or Kudu and they can become quite gruesomely stained with blood, losing a lot of their “cute” looks …..

Currently, the Sinamatella pack seems to have split and we have a group of eleven Dogs regularly in the area. They are no doubt taking a heavy toll of the newly born Impala but of course Impala are nowhere near as endangered as the Wild Dogs and we’re pleased to see the Dogs so often so we hope they will stay in the area.

 

January floods

   Since I last posted to this blog over a month ago the Park has changed dramatically. The good rain that fell at the end of November was followed by a long dry spell. We went home to Bulawayo for Christmas and it was even worse there, with the grass hardly changed from its winter brown, and when we returned to Sinamatella, it was to the depressing sight of wilting bush and drying grass. However, all that changed a few days into the new year.

     The first sign that we were in for some heavy rain came while we were in Victoria Falls, returning a Land Cruiser axle we had borrowed (our own had a bearing and half-shaft problem). The clouds built up during the morning and a lot of rain fell on us while we were shopping (and Sue’s new Chinese-made umbrella broke on just its second outing - why do they bother to make such rubbish?!)

     Back at Sinamatella the roads were wet and we were told there had been a good, heavy shower there too. When the view from Sinamatella hill is so often like this………

Sinamatella floodplain, September 2012

  It’s great to see it, for a few months, like this…….

January 2013

And even more amazing, after it had rained all the next night,  is to see it like this……..

Overnight the Sinamatella river had burst its banks and filled most of the flood plain for the first time in the almost four years we have lived here. It slowly receded during the course of the day and this morning it is not far from normal so, over the last three days, we have watched the water levels rise, rise again and then fall - to reveal quite a lot less damage than we had expected.

At Kashawe View the high water of the first day …….

 Became something altogether more serious on the second day…….

At the bridge near the start of Sinamatella River Drive, the first day the water was high……

But the second day we couldn’t get even within sight of the bridge because the approach was flooded  ………

The road is somewhere under all that water – or at least it was, because when the water receded, the road was gone……

Luckily, that was the worst of the damage we found.  On the Sinamatella River Drive we had to clear a fallen tree off the exit from the bridge …..

I let Sue go ahead and probe with a stick to make sure there was concrete under the water before I crossed with the car. ….

  I’m not sure if that makes me a) lazy, b) sensible, c) a pig or d) all of the above. Choose for yourself!

  On the road to Mandavu Dam the vlei which was as flooded as this yesterday……

  Was back to normal today…….

   A pair of Saddlebill Storks was hunting bullfrogs in the still wet grass and this one got lucky….

   It took a long time to swallow!

   There were other beneficiaries such as this terrapin that found itself a quiet pool next to the road…

 And fungi are springing up everywhere…..

Of course the vegetation is loving it.

And amidst all that water there were some surprising survivors. Ants and termites were back at work in grassland that had been under at least a meter of water for most of yesterday….

Up in the Smith’s Mine Hills we even have some pretty little waterfalls…..

So, in spite of some minor annoyances……

We are hoping for more rain to come. After all, the washing may not dry but it is well rinsed.

Google