At this time of year in the Timbavati, the transition from daylight to darkness happens quite quickly. Once the sun has dipped below the horizon, you only have about 45–50 minutes until it is genuinely dark. And it is really only the first half of that period that offers useful natural light. That would be the last opportunity to stretch the legs and answer nature’s call, before wrapping up for the after-dark portion of the game drive, when the spotlight is king.
The Bateleur guide kept a watchful eye as the guests stretched their legs. There was still enough useful natural light for him to easily identify anything that would be of interest, and he had carefully chosen the location with the safety of his guests in mind.
To everyone’s delight, an elephant bull came into view, striding along a narrow game path towards the Bateleur group. After a quick word from the guide, everyone boarded the open game-viewing vehicle while the elephant was still a comfortable distance away. An elephant bull “walk-by” promised a truly wonderful photo opportunity! When the elephant was about 10 meters from the vehicle, he stopped and faced the delighted group. And that’s when the guide realized that this situation was a lot trickier than he’d originally thought. The elephant was in musth.
Musth is a periodic state of intense hormonal surge in adult male elephant bulls, characterized by massive testosterone spikes and sometimes extreme unpredictability. Hormone levels can surge up to 60 to 140 times higher than normal baseline values. Bulls become highly irritable, anxious, and unpredictable.
While any safari guide will tell you that it’s wise to keep a safe, respectful distance from any elephant bull showing signs of musth, it’s a different story when the elephant chooses to come to you and compromise your personal space. But that’s where the guide’s extensive training and experience came to the fore.
For the next 15 minutes or so, the giant pachyderm repeatedly squared off with the stationery game-viewing vehicle, shaking his massive head. African elephants have two “fingers” at the tip of their trunks that they use to grasp items tightly, and, from time to time, this bull elephant used his fingers to pick up soil and fling it at the offending humans, covering them all in a cloud of dust. The guests all held their breath and waited while the guide continued to keep a watchful eye on the elephant’s behaviour.
As dusk turned to darkness, the guide took the opportunity to educate the awestruck guests regarding the correct way to handle the situation. He quietly reminded them that the elephant had approached the humans and chose to occupy their personal space, and not the other way around. He explained that raising voices, clapping hands, or making any attempt to scare the elephant away would not be the best idea. Instead, he instructed them to sit in silence with the vehicle’s engine switched off and collectively stand their ground until the elephant lost interest in the group. Without warning, the elephant suddenly turned and wandered off into the darkness, leaving the guests with a classic safari moment that they will remember for a lifetime!
Recent Sightings
The sightings during the first two weeks of September were magnificent. Plains game was in glorious abundance, including giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, impala, and ostriches. Our guests were also treated to many and varied sightings of buffalo, rhino, and elephant, including that mesmerizing encounter with the bull elephant in musth. The afternoon-evening drives also produced some rarer gems, with guests enjoying excellent sightings of honey badgers, chameleons, a bush baby, and a scrub hare being chased by two black-backed jackals.
Hyenas featured prominently in the sightings, both adults and cubs, at the den site and several times out on the prowl. One group of guests encountered hyenas and jackals enjoying impala leftovers after the initial predator had eaten its fill, while another group had the eye-catching experience of watching two hyenas and a lone wild dog chasing an impala. That was one of four wild dog sightings during the first two official weeks of spring; the other three sightings all included a small pack of 4 wild dogs with one or more ever-hopeful hyena trailing not far behind.
The Big 6 birds of South Africa are a collection of the region’s most massive, rare, and striking avian species. Bateleur guests were treated to sightings of 3 of these beautiful species: Southern Ground Hornbills, Saddle-billed Storks, and a Kori Bustard, widely regarded as the world’s heaviest flying bird. Our guests also enjoyed watching two white-headed vultures as well as the sight of smaller birds mobbing two Verreaux’s eagle-owls, the largest African owl, also commonly known as the milky eagle owl or giant eagle owl.
As the first week of September drew to a close, the wind picked up, and it was clear that there was some cold and wet weather on the way. By the Sunday morning, it was properly cold with light rain, and this persisted for the better part of 3 days. Normally, such adverse weather conditions have an overall dampening effect on wildlife movements, but the rhythm of the bush was largely unbroken, and the wonderful sightings continued.
The Bateleur guests were blessed with excellent Big Cat sightings during the first two weeks of September. It started with the discovery of fresh cheetah tracks, followed by a lovely sighting of two of the elegant spotted cats later that morning. The guests were ecstatic!
Our guides and trackers spent a lot of time and effort putting all their skills and experience into tracking lions, and our appreciative guests were rewarded with several incredible sightings of the Sark, Mayambula, and River prides, as well as several other lions. Amongst the lion highlights was watching a pride of 6 finishing off a kill on Giraffe Plains and then following them to Machaton Dam; seeing the Sark pride with their cubs on a zebra kill; and having a front row seat as the 2 Mkhombo males used contact calling to reunite after a night apart before greeting each other by rubbing their big, shaggy heads against each other and then lying down next to one other in a dry riverbed like contented kings.
Leopard sightings were very decent until the cold and wet weather arrived, and some of our guests were treated to memorable encounters. One group followed a female leopard as she navigated a drainage line, while two other groups each observed lone leopards reclining lazily in a tree. Just before the wind checked in, a group of guests chose to skip their morning coffee break in the hope of finding a leopard on their last game drive before their departure. Their guide followed up on a leopard that had reportedly taken down a young female kudu; unfortunately, the guests were as disappointed as the leopard, which had been chased away by a pack of cackling hyena before he could get his dinner into the branches of a tree. Another group of guests had better fortune on their last game drive, rounding off their unforgettable Bateleur experience with a beautiful sighting of a female leopard on the prowl.
Breathe Africa – Bateleur Safari Camp.