Your Kruger National Park Guide - With Stories. Frans Rautenbach
Five: Time will tell
Game watching is about the “when”, as much as the “where”. Actually it’s about when you watch where. Timing is everything.
THE EARLY BIRD
“As I emerge onto the dark stoep, the mild air of the hut makes way for a cool, still morning. In the west the crescent moon disappears behind the branches of the knob thorn. The hyena that has been carrying on all night is quiet.
Inside the hut my younger brother is complaining because he has to wear a jersey.
I don’t know the names of the birds I hear outside the wire fence. There’s one that goes chick-chick-chirrrrr and another one that cries bankrupt…! bankrupt…!
“We’d better get a move on – we must get to Letaba before sunset,” my dad says. Most of the huts are still dark. The boot of the car shuts with a muffled bang in the silence of the camp, boxes and bags filled with our stuff inside.
We drive to the gate. There’s a picture-perfect contrast between the black silhouette of the gateway arch and the red dawn beyond. It looks like one of those pictures in school where you paint black Indian ink over a red and orange wax crayon background and then scratch out something like a thorn tree. Black against the dawn.
The gate guard wears a grey uniform with a Stetson hat, shorts, puttees and boots. We drive through on the dot of six o’clock.”
If there is one cliché about the game reserve that’s true, then it’s this: the early bird really does catch the worm – or in this case, the lion.
The reason is simple: lions and leopards normally hunt at night. When the day dawns, they are on the move – either on their way to water having fed, or on their way to a sunny spot where they can rest for the day. For obvious reasons the same applies to scavengers following in their tracks, in the hope of feeding off their prey – hyenas and jackals.
The gates of the camp open at six o’clock in winter and 5.30 in summer. It’s virtually dark still – a very good time to see lions, leopards, hyenas and jackals. Don’t expect to see wild dogs and cheetahs though – they rely on their ability to see long distances and to run fast and far, and hunt mostly during the day.
There are at least three reasons why you should drive fairly fast at this time of the morning:
»There isn’t much point in driving slowly and searching the bush for game if it’s too dark to see. If you see anything, it will be on or near the road.
»The faster the car moves, the greater your chances of seeing a lion or some other beast “coincidentally” crossing the road. Use your lights and keep to the speed limit.
»If possible, try to get past a particular point in the road before another car has scared off predators nearby.
Because many predators go to drink early in the morning, a river road is a good choice for a morning drive.
If it isn’t too cold, drive with your window open. Lions love calling to each other by roaring – the males and the females to one another, the females to their cubs. You may also hear hyenas. Or elephants. Use your ears and, when you hear something, stop or drive slowly for a minute or so. You never know.
Bear in mind that most antelope and other herbivores sleep at night, and don’t move before the sun rises. Elephants and hippos on the other hand, are fond of moving around and grazing at night. Both species are so big you’d have a hard time missing them anyway.
The moment the sun rises and it starts getting warmer, the other animals start moving towards the water. It’s amazing how one minute you can be convinced there’s nothing on the road and the next it’s teeming with game!
Even if you don’t see a single lion, there will be many other rewards – the sudden realisation that the temperature drops when the sun’s first rays creep over the dry bushveld; driving slowly with an open window and hearing your car wheels crunch on the fine gravel of the red dust road; drinking coffee by a water hole while the mist hangs still on the water’s surface; the unique smell of the morning grass and bush, the bewildered exclamations of francolins taking flight…
MID-MORNING
The temperature in the game reserve rises with the sun, and by 10/11 o’clock it usually starts to get hot. Now is a good time to stop by a watering hole, dam or river to see what’s going on. It’s astounding how much life there is at that time of the morning. It’s very pleasant to have breakfast at one of the picnic spots – almost all of which are situated next to a drinking spot – as I explain in more detail later.
If it’s a deep water hole or river, there will almost certainly be hippos and crocodiles. Watch carefully, because both camouflage themselves remarkably well. Crocodiles look like dry logs, and hippos like the reddish brown rocks one finds in almost every river around here. Use your binoculars.
Many animals come to drink between, say, 10 o’clock and one o’clock. Elephants like to bathe, play in the mud or spray water at each other with their trunks – it’s enough to entertain you for hours.
If you’re lucky, you may also, sooner or later, see a herd of a few hundred buffalo drinking. Or giraffe, comically clumsy with their legs spread wide to reach the water, or impala, zebra and blue wildebeest that line up patiently in rows while keeping a wary eye on the edge of the bush where predators often lie in wait for just such an opportunity.
Such a watering hole is also a good place to hear animal sounds: a fish eagle’s proclamation cry, Egyptian geese, starlings, warblers, hornbills and blue waxbills, Cape white-eyes, francolins and guinea fowl. Also listen for zebras calling (a high-pitched whee-whee-whee sound), hippos snorting, baboons barking, and of course, elephants trumpeting.
In the middle of the day the bush goes quiet. Predators mostly sleep; antelope and other herbivores seek out shade and move as little as possible in the heat. This may be a good time to sit peacefully under a tree in a camp, slowly patrol the fence with binoculars, or to have a siesta. If you’re on the road, it’s not a bad idea to be on the grass savannahs between Tshokwane, Satara and Orpen, or near Malelane or Shingwedzi. Even during the heat of the day you could get lucky and see cheetahs or wild dogs hunting, or lions sleeping in the sun – and later on in the shade when it gets even hotter.
1 First evening
2 and 3 Second evening
LATE AFTERNOON
Notwithstanding my praise-singing about the wonders of the morning hours, there’s something special about the last hour-and-a-half before closing time. There’s a magic to the sun beginning to set in the bushveld and the colours of the trees starting to change – or “becoming black”, as my brother-in-law always says.
The dust of the day which, while the sun shone, made a dirty brown band above the horizon, now starts to turn red. The shadows are longer, and birds that have been quiet start making a racket – especially bushveld francolins and guinea fowl on their way to water.
Impala, kudu, giraffe and waterbuck move across the road to their sleeping places. Baboons that have until now been playing on the edges of the tarred roads, become restless.
Some of my most exciting game sightings have been in the late afternoon on the way back to camp after a long drive, especially if I’m a little late for the gate and don’t really have time to stop. It’s as if the animals fall over each other to interrupt your drive.
It’s normally at this time of day that elephants take up position in the middle of the road, or stand right next to the roadside and graze in a way that makes you uneasy to drive past them. Very often one of them will, as you approach, turn around and flap its ears with great fanfare.
Or a herd of buffalo will return from the water and, like participants in a mass road race, simply block the traffic in both directions.
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