March has been the most amazing month! Visitors have been guaranteed the chance to see the wildebeest migration in its entire, magnificent splendour. The calves are still in their tan coloured coats and will be for the next month before they gain the normal dark grey of the adults. And it was wildebeest that gave us a great treat the other night. We were sitting by the camp-fire, enjoying a great lightning display far off to the north, which lit up the entire sky at intermittent intervals. Suddenly we heard a rumble, which grew louder, as hundreds of wildebeest thundered towards us. At first we didn’t know whether to retreat into the lodge or stay and risk being trampled. We stayed and were treated with a fantastic spectacle, as they cantered past, just a few feet away leaving the smell of trampled grass and dust as they disappeared into the darkness. If the isolated showers continue, and they look as though they will, the wildebeest will continue to stay around Ndutu, and we are bound to have many more special encounters.
Lions have also been very much in evidence over the past month. Guests witnessed part of one interesting but tragic encounter. A strange lioness strayed into the Masek Prides territory with three small cubs. Unfortunately she bumped into one of the Masek males. Pride males will never tolerate other male’s cubs and will try to kill them. Things didn’t look good for the lioness but she was bravely defending her cubs from the very large and impressive male, which had cornered them in the Lake Masek. The cubs were in the water on a small sand bar, while the lioness was on the lakeshore in a stand off with the male. The male seemed reluctant to enter the water and all seemed hopeful, when everyone left as darkness approached. But sadly, some time later she was seen on her own with no cubs at all.
Elephants dominated Ndutu Lodge the first week in March, as they came to drink and bathe daily in the lodge water hole. Sadly this was just too much for the hippo that had taken up temporary residence last month. I think that he finally cracked on the day when fifty elephants piled into the pool because he left that evening and hasn’t come back.
On a sad note, one of our biggest and certainly most handsome bull elephants died this month. He was a familiar and very welcome sight every wet season when he appeared from the mystery place in which he spent the dry months. We only ever saw him in his musth period, when he spent most of his time criss/crossing the area looking for estrus females. Two years ago in May, I saw him in consort with a very young female we call Daffodil (names were never my strong point) and after twenty-one months and 8 days she gave birth to a bull calf. I’m sure this calf and many others to come will be his legacy. Since I know he mated with another female two weeks before he died, in approximately twenty-two months time, we shall hopefully see his last calf and testimony of his success as a fine breeding bull. I’ve no idea why he died. He was standing in front of the lodge looking magnificent only 6 days before his body was found. He looked in perfect health and was in full musth, streaming from his temporal gland and dribbling urine. The smell of a musth bull can knock you sideways. To female elephants it must be quite an exciting smell, maybe something like very expensive aftershave, but to me it just smells of old socks. Apparently the word musth is a corruption of the urdu word for intoxicated, as bulls can act rather aggressively when their testosterone levels rise. But even in musth, this bull was always particularly tolerant and approachable; he’ll be sadly missed.
Three new birds have been added to the Bird List this month. They are Jack snipe, Eurasian stone curlew and short-eared owl. The birding of late has been stunning. Of special note is the huge number of European rollers being seen at the moment, along with red-backed shrikes. Large flocks of common, lesser and white-eyed kestrels are passing over in big numbers, all on their way back to Europe.
Other highlights this month include many cheetahs, especially all the tiny cubs born this year. In addition bat-eared foxes have done really well this year. There are many young pups and one pair close to the lodge has six pups, which I have to say look quite a handful.
Anyone who has ever driven through the African bush will know the hazard of hitting a aardvark hole. The consequences can be disastrous with broken springs and bent steering rods. We have all cursed when we’ve had to spend an uncomfortable hour digging ourselves out of a particularly vicious hole hidden in the long grass. Well, a piece of heart-warming news is that aardvarks fall down their own holes. As was recently witnessed, by some friends who are filming a new BBC documentary about cats, when they spotted an aardvark one night. He shuffled past when he suddenly tipped over and crashed, snout over tail down into his own hole!
So much has happened over the past few weeks here that you could write a book. The large numbers of giraffe which are in the woodlands at the moment, the herds of eland on the plains, flamingoes on the lake, and the vast flocks of guinea fowl which are just about everywhere, all combine to have made March a very special month indeed.
Ndutu Safari Lodge
04/04/02
