Rangers Report January 2009
Rangers Report June/July 2008
Rangers Report Beginning 2008
05 March 2007
07 August 2006
27 July 2006
24 July 2006
03 April 2006
Ranger Diary for March 2006
Ranger Diary for beginning of 2006
September 2005
July 2005
Rangers Report
January 2009
Well the new year is already in full swing and once again the Madikwe game reserve is lush and green thanks to the lots of rain that we’ve had this last rainy season so far. The animals are all well fed and healthy and the sightings have been wonderful. Here are a few pictures taken by the rangers over the last couple of months.
This young female was very protective over a puddle of mud that she was wallowing.
Maybe this young lion is a bit too ambitious with the choice of prey?
Since the wild-dog pups have started running with the pack the sightings of these rare animals have become a lot more frequent!
This big bull looks like he means business, just look at that stare!
On the hunt, this male was on a mission to find himself something to munch!
A cool drink after a long hot day, being an elephant is thirsty work.
Time for your close up, what a perfect smile!
Old and wise, this boy has seen a thing or two in his life.
Rangers Report
June/July 2008
Hello to everyone out there! Wow it’s already
half way though the year, time really goes by
when you having fun in the bush, and the last
couple of months have really been amazing! There
is so much life out there, the animals are in
such great condition thanks to the fantastic
summer rains, witch fell up to the end of the
month of May, there has been so much good veld
conditions for all the herbivores, witch in turn
has an abundance of food for all the predators,
so it was good time to start breeding, we
followed one lioness over a few months to see
were her journey would take us!
Well
were to start, she was still quite a young
lioness under two years of age, but she was
ready to take that first step into motherhood,
with a little lion courtship, finding the
dominant male lion in the area to let him know
that she was ready to mate, of cause he was more
than will to be of assistance!
When
it comes to mating lions is all quite a big
affair, they will mate two to four times an hour
and this will carry on for more than a week, the
two of them will loose interest in almost
everything else and only concentrate on the job
at hand, not even eating is a high priority at
this time!
Over the next three months her belly got bigger
and bigger and then she started to distance
herself form the rest of the lions, she was
looking for a place to have her cubs, this was a
real exciting time for us as well as for the
first time mommy, a couple of weeks
went
by without seeing the young lioness, then we
started to see her every couple of days but she
alone, she needs to hunt and the cubs would bee
too small to travel so she would hide them away!
Early one morning Ruan and Pule managed to track
her down on one of her hunts, the hunt wasn’t
successful but what happened next was quite
magical, it was like she was leading him very
calmly there was something that she wanted to
show him! So they followed her though the bush
to a small thicket of bluethorn trees and there
they were three tiny little cubs, this is what
we had been waiting for months to see, one of
the little cubs came out as mom arrived but she
quickly picked him up and took him back to the
shelter of the thicket.
Everyone on the game drive that morning was
absolutely thrilled as they were first to lay
eyes on these new editions to the Madikwe
reserve!
Over the next month or so we had regular
encounters with the new family witch was always
a pleasure to see, she had not yet joined up
with the rest of the pride but that was all
about to change, its always a bit of a tense
moment when a lioness rejoins the pride as its
not always clear if the male will accept the
cubs, but there were no problems with that what
so ever! The cubs are now part of a pride that
is twelve strong, there story has only just
stated to be written!
Rangers Report Beginning 2008
Well the summer rains have started this year
bringing some much needed rain to the Madikwe
reserve, it’s a far cry from how it looked a couple
of months ago, one would swear you were in a
completely different reserve! Just take a look at
the difference between the two photo’s the first was
taken September 2007 and the next photo the December
2007! The vegetation is so lush and green and the
animals all well fed, its also the time for calving
and there are quite a few newborns. It’s amazing
what a little bit of rain can do, well we say a bit
of rain, we have already had 264mm, this time last
year it was only 117mm, and a total of 226mm for the
entire rainy season! All the rain is making life a
little harder for the rangers as a lot of the roads
are no go areas after a thunderstorm, the animals
now don’t visit the watering holes as often as they
used to, as there are lot of smaller pans of water
now. A lot of credit going to our trackers for
finding these animals in the harsh conditions!
The END of an Legacy
It’s time for a new rein as the once powerful
Batia Brothers, the dominant Lion males, have been
over thrown four months ago, by their own sons, the
Dithaba tsepedi (Two Mountians). They ruled the
whole north and east of the reserve for over seven
years, and now been pushed way down to a small
section in the south western corner of the park!
Amazingly the pride of lions that they formed the
Dipelo’s (the hearts) have been true to there names
and shown extreme loyalty from the bottom of there
“hearts” and followed the Batia’s! These lions have
led a full life, as the life span of a male lion is
about twelve to fifteen years, they are heading into
there fifteenth year, they have really become icon
of the Madikwe reserve, thus is the way of the
African bush!
Ruan and Pule
Ruan and Pule have been a ranger/tracker team
now for the past eight months, they pride themselves
in finding, as they call it “the hard stuff”,
leopard and cheetah (tough work but very rewarding)
, they were also the fist to find the new litter of
wild dog pups on foot! There most recent conquest
was finding two cheetah in less than 24hours, one of
them they were able to stay with good twenty minutes
before it moved off on its` own way.
In December they conducted a specialized “Snake
Safari”, this required a lot of walking and knowing
just were to look as these slithery friends of ours
are not the easiest to find, Ruan said that he
really enjoyed this as he is quite fond of the
creepy crawlies this safari turned out to be a great
success!
Mark and Lazarus
Mark is a new ranger that has joined the Etali
family here at the Madikwe reserve, he teams up with
tracker Lazarus, who is a wiz with the birds (the
feathered kind), and a fondness for finding the
buffalo, on one occasion after about a hour and a
half of being hot on the hooves of the buffalo they
were reward with a sighting of close on two hundred
individuals! In December they came across an African
Rock Python, that was roughly four meters in length,
the python had killed a impala but the snake
couldn’t enjoy the meal as two hyenas picked up the
sent of death in the air and were trying to steal
the meal for themselves, the python aggressively
defended its kill striking at the invaders as they
crept closer, they managed to rip off the front
right leg but this wasn’t enough for them thy kept
on with there relentless attack, this went on for
hours and eventually the snake gave up and the
hyenas got a easy dinner. I’m pretty sure that great
things are to come from this dynamic team!
John D and Doctor
John D is also a new guide to join the ever
growing Etali family he is a experienced guide that
has been working in the Madikwe reserve for the past
seven years, so he knows it like the back of his
hand, he joins Doctor who has been with Etali since
the beginning so the combination of the two is a
world of experience. Early January they came across
a very small herd of elephants, only about ten
individuals, we come across this small parade of
elephants quite often, they are most of the time
very relaxed and it’s always fantastic to find them
near a little water pan as more then often they will
put on a bit of a “show” as they go about getting
down and dirty really getting stuck into the
splashing and rolling around in the water and mud!
05 March 2007
Hi there all we hope that you all had a wonderful
Christmas and a festive New Year. Well here at Etali,
the lodges in the area would have thought that Santa
Claus was doing the game drives for Etali as we (the
Guides) all had our Christmas outfits on our heads.
Well things are starting to look a lot greener as
the rains have started, but very slowly. We have had
about 100mm since the middle of December 2006. There
is quite abit of green grass around and some of the
smaller pans in the area have water in, which has
meant hat there are a lot of new born around. Things
like the blue wildebeest; impala and some zebra have
all got babies. It is quite something to see as they
are all so young and to watch them chasing each
other around, as all young do, they do this to build
their own strength and fitness up to survive the
wilds of the African bush and hopefully if they
survive this initial stage they should get through a
good couple of years avoiding getting taken out by
the predators.
We have had a number of different species of
mammals hanging around the lodge in the past few
weeks, and here are just a few good sightings to
mention. The African wild dogs have being scarce
lately but 2 days ago we had 8 of them moving around
on our access road, which was great. Elephants have
being in great numbers at the Etali waterhole as in
excess of 20 have being sighted drinking there and
entertaining us as they drank and wallowed in the
mud. On one of the evenings we had our lusaka (Boma
dinner) we had about 50 come through in different
herds. This was fantastic as the Lusaka area is a
small raised area and about 30-40 meters away from
the waterhole. Everyone seemed to be on the edge of
their seats, as we ate and listened to the rumbles
and trumpeting every so often coming from the
different herds.
About 10 days ago we had 2 big male lions come to
the waterhole early in the morning and it was clear
that they had eaten something the night before. Well
this led to them staying the whole day at the
waterhole, sleeping and every now and then getting
up to chase some poor warthog who just wanted to
have a drink as well. The amazing thing was in the
evening when they started to get active, and that
they did. Etali is situated with a small mountain
behind and in front of it, just to give you an idea.
Back to the male lions, well they then started to
roar and roar they did. They gave us an entertaining
half hour of full-throated roaring before they
wondered of into the darkness of night. We heard
them every so often but soon it all faded away. Well
that’s it for now and hope to see you here at Etali
for some of this bush experience, enjoy you day.
Field guide
Andrew Linton
07 August 2006
Hi there all you bush enthusiasts. Well things have
been happening here at Etali with the weather
conditions been quite dry, lots of good game viewing
and also the starting of two new guides to the
ranger department. Let me start with the new guides
to the ranger department.
Willem has joined
us and he has arrived from the Pilansberg National
Park so has being out on the roads trying to get up
to date with were he is as in the bush we have no
road signs!!!!! Nadia has being in Madikwe Game
Reserve for some time now so knows the park quite
well. Both started on the 1st of July 2006.
As we are still in
the middle of winter we are still only leaving on
morning game drives at about 7:15am and the
afternoon game drive only leaves around 3:30pm. This
is all due to the fact that the morning temperatures
at times has plummeted to about 0 degrees Celsius,
which is quite chilly for us here. The other thing
that has being abit odd is that there has being an
enormous amount of frost around. The weather hasn’t
really affected the game viewing as we have had some
superb sightings.
Just the other
day we witnessed another of the bushes awesome
sights; it was lions on the move (two young
females (Bulayo Females about 2 years old). They
were moving swiftly through the bush and were
after some warthog, which we could not see at
the time. The next thing there was a rush from
both females into the bush and then a family of
warthogs came blundering out of the bush. Most
got away except for an unlucky youngster who got
trapped and pinned down and then killed, with a
bite to the back of the neck. With it being so
small the young lioness was able to pick it up
in her jaws and drag it off to the nearest
thickets where she dropped it and then rested
for a while as she regained her breath.
Another interesting sight, which we had, was
again lion but this time it was the two dominant
males (Batia Brothers) in the area. These guys
are about twelve to thirteen years old and have
a well established territory in the eastern
section of the park and this is where Etali is
situated. Getting back to the story, before we
had set out on the morning drive we had audio of
lions quite close to the lodge and Pule my
tracker had also spotted some fresh male lion
tacks moving passed the reception sign, so put
two and two together and it tells you that they
are in close proximity of the lodge. So we left
the lodge and started our pursuit for these two
males. I had spoken to one of the other lodge
rangers in the area and discussed the morning’s
happenings and from there took different routes.
So after about ten minutes of following the
roars of the lions the other ranger found them
and called us into the sighting as we had both
being working on these two animals for the
morning.
These guys were upset with something, as they
were roaring continuously as well as scent
marking with urine as often as possible, these
are two types of communication namely audio
(roaring) and olfactory communication (urine). A
good reason for this is that challengers could
have been in the area (other male lions). So we
followed them for half an hour at least, till
they decided that enough was enough and that the
threat had moved on and they thought that a rest
would be in order. To hear two male lions in
full roar is something to beat. The hair on the
back of your neck stands up, when you hear it
and you end up getting the shivers down your
spine.
Anyway till next time greetings from us all and
enjoy your day further!
Field Guide
Andrew Linton
27 July 2006
This morning we had five lions at the lodge where
they were drinking water at our waterhole at 06H30.
At 07h00 they moved off into the surrounding bush,
then four zebra came down to drink unaware of the
lions, one young lioness started stalking the
foursome, but unfortunately she was seen by the ever
wary zebra stallion who then alerted all the other
zebra. Ranger David, who was out on game drive, then
came back to the lodge and saw the five lions just
before they moved away to look for some less
suspecting prey. I was standing on the deck of room
6 and managed to get some pictures, not good but
will post them in the gallery. On that note we have
recently seen four very young lion cubs with their
mother and fathers (possible) at a carcass they were
probably not older than two months.
That’s all for now.
Willem Ward
Field guide
24 July 2006
Out on game drive in the western side of the
park, looking for cheetah we saw something that
I have not yet seen in seven years of guiding.
Sitting on a giraffe sighting talking to the
guests when out of the corner of my eye I saw my
first ever yellow billed oxpecker and this in
madikwe game reserve, not really their area. (Or
so we thought, until now) There are only two
species of oxpekers in Africa; the relatively
common red-billed-and the very rare
yellow-billed oxpecker, so seeing one is very
special. Oxpeckers are the little birds that
will often be sitting on larger game species.
They are specialist feeders that clean ticks of
these animals with their laterally compressed
bills, which they use like scissors. Oxpeckers
make a cup shaped nest from mammalian hair in a
tree trunk cavity and will lay 2-5 eggs, after
they little birds fledge they will fly to a host
where they may feed for up to two months. They
are easily alarmed and can act as an early
warning to both animals and people on safari.
Taking photographs of oxpeckers is usually
difficult because, if their host doesn’t
move away they do. One needs to be fast on
the trigger if you want a decent photo. I
was very lucky to get one fairly decent
photo. Have a look in the gallery.
That’s all for now.
Willem Ward
Field guide
Etali safari lodge
Madikwe game reserve
03 April 2006
What a summer it has been! It has been very wet over
the last few months, and only now are we starting to
dry up and actually see how beautiful a blue sky can
look! The rains seem to have stopped, with no rain
over the last 10 days or so, and the reserve is
bright green! It is an inspirational way to move
into winter. Winter is slowly creeping up on us,
with the sun only rising now at about 6:20am. And
the morning temperatures are dropping too.
The sightings
have been great just recently. Especially for
ranger/tracker team Andrew and Pule who seem to have
the luck when it comes to our leopard sightings.
They have managed to find a young female who is
incredibly relaxed and curious about vehicles. She
has a tendency to disappear into the grass and just
when the guide has decided to start the engine and
move on; she jumps up and gives us another look.
There is
another youngster who hangs around Twane Hill and we
have been lucky enough to spot and view him a few
times.
As for the
elephants, they have started to drink at the water
hole again which is great as they have been scarce
for the whole of summer! They are back in our side
of the reserve and sightings have been regular. I
was on drive just the other day with Koos and Susan,
having sundowners, when Koos spotted a big bull
about 100m away. We casually climbed back in the
vehicle, packed away the drinks and went closer. It
is always exciting to have unexpected visitors
interrupting a drinks break!
The lions are
all over the plains at the moment and the resident
pride males, The Batia brothers, seem to be running
scared! Two other brothers, the Kgala’s are now
moving into their territory and wanting to take
over. Since the Kgala’s move into the East, the
Batia’s have hardly been seen. This is a regular
occurrence with lions, as one set of males gets
older, the youngsters move in and take over. It will
be exciting to see a clash between these two sets of
lions!
I look forward
to the upcoming winter, which promises to be a cold
one. It is always a wonderful sight to watch the
bush change color. It almost seems to be impossible
when we look at it now and to know that in just a
few months, it will be dull and beige, the regular
colors expected of the African bush.
So until next
time, keep a look out for an update on those lions
and keep warm!
Vanessa Hartin
Field Guide
Etali Safari Lodge
Ranger Diary for March 2006
What a summer it has been! It has
been very wet over the last few months, and only now
are we starting to dry up and actually see how
beautiful a blue sky can look! The rains seem to
have stopped, with no rain over the last 10 days or
so, and the reserve is bright green! It is an
inspirational way to move into winter. Winter is
slowly creeping up on us, with the sun only rising
now at about 6:20am. And the morning temperatures
are dropping too.
The sightings have been great just recently.
Especially for ranger/tracker team Andrew and Pule
who seem to have the luck when it comes to our
leopard sightings. They have managed to find a young
female who is incredibly relaxed and curious about
vehicles. She has a tendency to disappear into the
grass and just when the guide has decided to start
the engine and move on; she jumps up and gives us
another look.
There is another youngster who hangs around Twane
Hill and we have been lucky enough to spot and view
him a few times.
As for the elephants, they have started to drink at
the water hole again which is great as they have
been scarce for the whole of summer! They are back
in our side of the reserve and sightings have been
regular. I was on drive just the other day with Koos
and Susan, having sundowners, when Koos spotted a
big bull about 100m away. We casually climbed back
in the vehicle, packed away the drinks and went
closer. It is always exciting to have unexpected
visitors interrupting a drinks break!
The lions are all over the plains at the moment and
the resident pride males, The Batia brothers, seem
to be running scared! Two other brothers, the
Kgala’s are now moving into their territory and
wanting to take over. Since the Kgala’s move into
the East, the Batia’s have hardly been seen. This is
a regular occurrence with lions, as one set of males
gets older, the youngsters move in and take over. It
will be exciting to see a clash between these two
sets of lions!
I look forward to the upcoming winter, which
promises to be a cold one. It is always a wonderful
sight to watch the bush change color. It almost
seems to be impossible when we look at it now and to
know that in just a few months, it will be dull and
beige, the regular colors expected of the African
bush.
So until next time, keep a look out for an update on
those lions and keep warm!
Vanessa Hartin
Field Guide
Etali Safari Lodge
Ranger Diary for beginning of 2006
Hello to you all!!!
The start of the 2006 has been quite a success with
regards to rain. As of 31 December we have had an
unbelievable amount of rain. To date we have had
between 400-450 mm of rain and our annual rainfall
is generally about 500mm a year.
Well with lots of rain this means that there are a
lot of pans of water around which in turn it means
that the game is also spread out all over the park.
At times we have had over 100mm of rain in less than
a twelve-hour period, which has then destroyed some
of our roads.
Game sightings have been quite good. Daily we have
been viewing elephants, especially bulls. Lions have
been around but can get a bit difficult due to the
very long grass and also some of the roads are
inaccessible.
We have had a number of sightings of African Wild
Dog around the lodge area, and on one specific
occasion they chased a female kudu (antelope) into
the fence. This fence keeps the elephants from
drinking out of the plunge pools and it’s the only
fencing we have around the area.
The wild dogs have managed to specialize in using
any fence to their advantage. They basically chase
animals into the fence and then kill them there.
Well what happened on this occasion they chased the
female kudu into the fence in front of room six, so
that was a sighting on its own. The wild dogs were
then too scared to start feeding because there were
a lot of people watching. Eventually some of the
rangers and trackers went down and dragged the
carcass away from the lodge and the wild dogs then
started to feed again.
If any of you are bird watchers this is a good time
for bird watching, and this is not the two-legged
human birds, but feathered ones. We have many
Southern-masked weavers building their nests in the
trees around the main deck area and it’s amazing to
watch them build. It’s the males, which will do all
the hard building work, and after he has finished he
will try and attract a female to his nest. If it’s
not to standard either the nest is abandoned or them
male destroys it and builds another one. Other
interesting bird species which have either been seen
or heard just around the lodge area are, Diedricks
cuckoo, Klaas cuckoo, Grey-headed bushshrike,
Black-headed oriole, Violet-backed starling,
Paradise flycatchers, Grey-backed camaroptera,
Familiar chat, Mocking cliff-chat, Southern black
tit. These are just a few of the many more bird
species around the lodge, so if you are interested
in birds then this is a good place to come and see
them in their natural habitat.
Field Guide
Andrew
SEPTEMBER 2005
27 September
It’s now the end of September 2005 and the heat in
the Madikwe Game Reserve has got quite unbearable
during the middle of the day. Temperatures have
already reached 35 degrees centigrade in the shade.
Walking in the bush is done as early as possible in
the morning so as to get out of the mid-morning
heat. Thank goodness for the Stink Shepard’s tree (Boscia
foetida), as this time of the year it is flowering,
so there is a bit of a foul smell to it but at least
it does offer us enthusiastic walkers a bit of
welcoming shade.
With it being very hot and windy with no rain since
April 2005 it has being a dangerous time for
wildfires, as we encountered two within two days of
each other in he second week of September 2005. It
was a fantastic effort by all involved, including
lodge rangers and trackers as well as the parks
board officials, to get it under control and
eventually putting it out.
Sightings in the last few weeks have being quite
amazing. Things that we don’t often see have being
popping up at the best of times. At the end of
August on our way back to the lodge from the evening
game drive we came across a serval in the long
grasses close to the airstrip. He was unbelievably
relaxed with the vehicle and allowed us to view him
from about 20meters away with him going about his
evening activities. Hopefully we will see this guy a
lot more. Another fantastic sighting was in the
middle of September 2005 we were following two young
lions through the bush when all of a sudden the
female became very interested with something ahead
of them in some thick bush, which we couldn’t see.
We stopped and waited awhile and then heard a lot of
rattling coming from the thick bush, I then realised
that it was a porcupine warning the lions that they
probably shouldn’t come any closer and they did
exactly that and lost interest and wondered of into
he distance. Once the lions where a distance from us
I got the guests off the vehicle and walked them
around the bush as from the vehicle we couldn’t see
the porcupine. There in front of us about 15meters
from was this big porcupine standing dead still
staring at us and us staring at him. Guests took a
few photos and then we left him in peace.
Etali’s waterhole has being quite active lately with
one of the evenings (when we had no guests in camp)
we had a herd of about 150 buffalo come and drink.
The two resident lions (brother and sister) still
come and drink on a regular basis at the waterhole
be it at dinner time (guest) or midday.
Leopard have being abit scarce lately but in the
koppies (rocky outcrops) around Etali there is a
female with two or three cubs moving about which
have being seen by some of the rangers in the area
so with abit of luck we should see her soon.
Till next time cheers
Andrew ( field guides manger)
JULY 2005
8th JULY 2005
1
June 2005
We picked up the tracks of a rhino on a walk through
the bush. Patience spotted the rhino 80m away and
the team started to circle. We found that the rhino
had a calf and it started to run towards us so we
moved into the safety of the trees. What a moment!
Raphael Segal
20 June 2005
Herd after herd of elephant at Etali watering hole
around midday.
21 June 2005
Saw two young lions stalk and chase and then kill a
young warthog at about 8:15am. – Watering hole Etali
25 June 2005
On his drive from the airstrip to Etali, Andrew
stopped to see what the drag marks on the road were
and found an Impala killed by a leopard. He was out
of the vehicle investigating when the leopard saw
him and ran away. The guests were in awe as they
also saw lions on the airstrip, a real welcome to
Africa!
Written by Vanessa
