Well, hello there from a very toasty Luangwa. This week the temperatures have certainly reminded us that we are now definitely into October with regular high 30’s and even a few low 40’s hitting our thermometers. But with it comes some incredible sightings as the game becomes more and more focused around the dwindling lagoons and the river and from the shade of the bar with a cold drink in hand, we watch a constant stream of animals coming down to drink, it’s just wonderful. However, this week we are scuttling over to Zimbabwe to hear from the team at John’s Camp.
“It’s hard to believe our safari season is nearly an end at Mana Pools, with just over a month to go, but what a fantastic one it’s been. I have had countless memorable moments and would need more than just one Its Monday to share them with you all, so I have picked out a few of my favourites so far.
There was an air borne assassin and its partner in crime causing havoc recently when each morning they would start hunting guineafowl, thankfully for the guineafowl the pair of African Hawk eagles went away empty handed. But you can imagine the ruckus it created, there was simply no way anyone could miss the event!
On the subject of birds, we had 6 white Pelican visit chine pool here in Mana earlier this year, this is an unusual sighting for us as they do not stop over often. Given that we had some keen birders in camp we all got to enjoy the sighting together.
The predators have also been showing off recently and we had an interesting walk behind long pool where we found a very smelly buffalo carcass. It had been killed by lions and was at least 2 days old but still the lion would not give it up and the hyena had to wait patiently in the wings for their chance. We have had multiple leopard sightings this year all as spectacular as the next but one that stood out was on an early morning game drive when we found a young female leopard hunting impala.
The painted dog is a lot more active on the flood plain at moment… we caught up with them at the Mucheni’s where they had killed an impala and while the adults feasted it seemed that the pups were massively distracted by a hooded vulture and simply could not leave it alone. Secretly I think the vulture was enjoying the interaction as much as the pups. It seemed that everyone was in a good mood and even the adult dogs celebrated the kill by ” dancing together “.
One of our favourite sundowner spots is Acacia Point and for good reason as we regularly have lovely sightings of elephant and on one occasion this group of elephant cows and calves photo bombed our sunset shot. Not that we were complaining mind you! Mana has been really hot so during the midday temperatures the elephant cows and young seek shelter in the shade and there is nothing worse if their shady spot it on a road as it’s a question of who is going to give in and move!
Moving away from the bigger game, our camp manager Tawanda spotted this interesting event… in a hole in an acacia a very large, centipede had caught and was devouring alive a bush snake. Needless to say, I have not seen this very often and took the following images.
As we head into October, and temperatures soar, I am certain there will be even more memorable moments which I look forward to sharing with you at some point soon!”
Wow, thanks so much John’s Camp team. It certainly sounds like it has been nonstop, and we look forward to more stories. After such a wonderful collection of sightings there is not much for me to follow on with, so I shall keep all the Luangwa sightings quiet for this week and shall share next week. So, for now I bid you a very fond farewell. Have a wonderful week ahead with plenty of smiles and laughter and look forward to updating you next Monday.
