It’s that time of year again when I’ve been roped into writing the newsletter. Since May we have had little rain but due to an above average rain fall in the wet season we still have a large lake in front of the lodge attracting flocks of flamingos to feed on the algae giving some great photographic opportunities.
One afternoon our outside crew had taken the biodegradable waste to the cage, as they were preparing to offload, one of the guys noticed a leopard lying on top of the cage.
As you can imagine there was a dash to get back into the car! They very kindly returned to the lodge and informed us and the other driver guides giving many people a chance to catch a glimpse of the leopard, it turned out to be a young female who was unusually unfazed by all the attention. No doubt her mother was close by?
A few days later as I drove out of the lodge there was a larger leopard in a tree not far from the entrance. I returned to alert other driver guides of her presence and this allowed for some further good photo opportunities. The following morning some lucky clients were able to view this mother and cub before she slunk off into the bushes.
Our cheetahs have not been easy to spot recently as the “cordifolia” (the tall shrub) has been exceptionally successful this year following the rain, which makes it hard to sight and follow cheetah. There has been however two mothers with cubs in the marsh who have been given a reprieve when the marsh lion pride left and moved towards twin hills.
Laura “cheetah project” has confirmed that both these cheetahs are first time mothers, one of whom is the female cub of the legendary Eleanor and known to the cheetah project now as Aretha. Aretha was first sighted with four cubs out in the open in July. Fingers crossed she will be just as successful at raising them as her mother was. The other is Rosalind who has one cub.
On an afternoon game drive a couple of weeks ago, I was lucky to come across “Saffron” and her year old male cub, whom I seem to have a knack of finding around Ndutu. I last sighted them at twin hills back in March, they hadn’t been sighted by the cheetah project for almost two years, but they have very definitely moved into Ndutu. They were walking on the lake shore at sunset. One of the advantages of this time of year is that you can be the only vehicle at a sighting and on this occasion I was.
At this time of year, having fewer guests around, we try to move out the bees that have made homes in the attic of the rooms. This year we had a large hive in room number 2 which gave enough honey for all of the staff.
We have amongst our crew some very seasoned bee handlers who can get up into the attic after dark in a pair of shorts and remove 20kg of honey without even batting an eye lid. So some fine Ndutu acacia honey on the breakfast tables.
The lions around Ndutu have caused much speculation as to whether they are one pride or multiple prides. This week we had an incident where the lionesses from the marsh who are three plus their nine-eighteen month old cubs were sighted within 100 meters of the Masek lionesses with the two males (half tail and his brother) present. I am no biologist but I believe this almost confirms that they are of one pride.
The marsh lionesses have managed to bring up nine cubs through the whole of last years drought and are now a lovely pride of lions to watch as they lounge under the trees during the day. The Masek lionesses have another six cubs of about 6 months old, and the three 9 month old cubs are doing well.
So, as you can see we have plenty of lion viewing at Ndutu.
Our elephant families are around again and the marsh area being the best place to sight them as they come down in the middle of the day for a drink. Our favourite troublesome tembo “DT” has unfortunately not been sighted for nearly a year, as it was a year ago since he terrorized the lodge’s water supply.
I hope all the attempts to keep him away from the water tanks has not put him off Ndutu totally. I miss his antics.
On an environmental angle the lodge has now added additional bulk gas storage which means we will not need to rely on the gas lorry trying to get to Ndutu during the rains and will also minimize the amount of fire wood we use in the Kitchens. We have also just ordered our last three solar water heating units to install which will make all our hot water 100% solar (as long as the sun shines), we still have our old fire wood boilers as a back up, so rest assured, hot showers on rainy days too!
Last but not least our genets continue to be the centre of attention with many photographers queuing up to get a snap of them up on their beam. Recently we had a presumably new mother with three kittens who all fell off the roof. She quickly picked one up, and scampered back up the wall into the roof to place her kitten in safety. By the time she had collected her second kitten to be brought back to the roof the first one had jumped back out to join its sibling on the floor. Mum looked a little miffed when she returned for what she thought was her last trip only to find two of them. As she collected one of the two, and headed off, the kitten in the roof appeared ready to jump. We had to stand, waving our arms to try and prevent them from jumping until mum had collected the last kitten, and calmness resumed.
Hope to see you soon
Colin
August 2010
