The markings on the buttocks and tails of impalas, resembling the logo of a well-known fast food chain, serve both to keep the herd together when they’re fleeing, and to confuse the pursuing predators, preventing them from singling out a specific individual.
“Symmetry” is the theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge
As its name suggests, the reedbuck is an antelope with very special habitat requirements; occurring in reedbeds and areas of long, often flooded, grasslands, always within easy reach of a permanent water source.
Rams are slightly larger than the ewes, standing approximately 90cm high and weighing as much as 80kg. Only the males carry horns, that normally reach lengths of around 38cm.
Reedbuck live alone, in pairs or in small family groups within a territory defended by a mature ram, while the ewes dictate where and when the group moves. They graze mostly from dusk to dawn, preferring to hide in shady reedbeds and patches of long grass during daylight hours. They are not very fast nor agile, and rely heavily on camouflage to evade predators (all of Africa’s large meat-eaters prey on reedbuck). Ewes give birth to single lambs, mostly in the rainy season, and hide them away for two to four months before joining up with the family group again.
In South Africa, the reedbuck occurs mostly in the wetter eastern part of the country. While there’s a small population of reedbuck in the Kruger National Park (sightings there are special treats), the country’s (and probably the continent’s) biggest concentrations can be found along the shores of Lake Saint Lucia, in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park in Kwazulu-Natal Province. We’ll share some photos from our December visit to the Western Shores of Lake St. Lucia with you in our regular Friday post this week.
uMkhuze Game Reserve, in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park and World Heritage Site, was the third destination of our epic summer 2014 bush holidays. We arrived at uMkhuze’s western gate, Emshopi, on the 18th of December, after an easy 164km drive from Ithala Game Reserve. Our reservation was for three nights in an extremely spacious cottage at Mantuma Rest Camp. When we say “extremely spacious”, we are not lying; you could have held a dance in the lounge!
Mantuma, uMkhuze, December 2014
We’ve already shared with you our experiences at two of uMkhuze’s biggest attractions, the Nsumo Pan and Kumasinga Hide, and in this post we’ll focus on some of the things we saw in the rest of this unique reserve.
Nsumo magic
Zebra reflections at Kumasinga
Of the bat, it has to be said that uMkhuze is one of South Africa’s best known birding destinations. The variety of birds is absolutely staggering, thanks to the diversity of habitats the reserve protects, and we were lucky to add a couple of new “lifers” to our birding tick list.
uMkhuze protects a sizable piece of sand forest, a very rare plant community in South Africa. An equally rare little antelope, the suni, lives only within this habitat. We had several sightings of them, but getting even a half-decent photograph of these shy creatures proved very difficult!
A pair of suni in the sand forest
We also had our first sightings of large predators (on this trip) at uMkhuze. Lions were reintroduced to the reserve a year ago, and we were thrilled to find two females during a guided night drive. On our last afternoon at uMkhuze, we found a very shy spotted hyena lurking in the bush.
uMkhuze protects large populations of other well-known African mammals and they certainly were not shy to show themselves!
uMkhuze has its fair share of creepy-crawlies too!
I’ve already mentioned what a diverse reserve uMkhuze is, and there’s no better place to see this than from the top of the observation tower just a few kilometers south of Mantuma Rest Camp.
uMkhuze really is a gem in the crown of South Africa’s wild places, and we always enjoy visiting here. Leaving through the Ophansi Gate on uMkhuze’s eastern boundary we felt like we should have stayed a bit longer still, thankfully we could console ourselves by thinking about the great destinations that were still waiting for us on our summer trip to the bush!
Driving into the riverine forest at Ophansi Gate
The Elephant Hall in Letaba Rest Camp, in the Kruger National Park, allows a deeper appreciation of just how big the African elephant really is…
“Scale” is the theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge
The fantastic Kumasinga Hide is one of the uMkhuze Game Reserve‘s major attractions. The hide is built in the middle of a natural-looking waterhole and offers uninterrupted views and excellent photographic opportunities right around. During our visit to uMkhuze in December 2014 we spent several hours every day at the hide, enthralled by the spectacle of literally hundreds of animals and birds making their way to the water to slake their thirst in the oppressive summer heat.
We have lots more to share from our uMkhuze visit, so please join us again next week!
uMkhuze Game Reserve, in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, has a lot to offer any nature lover, no matter where their interests lie. One of the reserve’s biggest drawcards is the Nsumo Pan, a large body of water fed by the Mkuzi River. Nsumo is home to breeding pink-backed and great white pelicans, hippos and crocodiles, among the huge variety of birds and animals that live along its reed and fever-tree lined shores. The reserve authorities have made it really easy to enjoy Nsumo’s magic: a tar road skirts a part of its northern banks, there are two bird-viewing platforms at the water’s edge and a beautiful picnic site with clean ablutions and braai (barbeque) facilities.
We have lots more to share in upcoming posts about our December visit to uMkhuze Game Reserve 😀
There’s just something so very special about Ithala Game Reserve that causes us to return year after year. Maybe it is the spectacular scenery or the amazingly diverse wildlife. Maybe it’s the friendly, hospitable staff members that makes us feel so welcome. Whatever the reason (and we suppose it has to be the entire package), there was no way we couldn’t include Ithala in the itinerary of our “summer in the bush” December holidays.
Ithala’s only 197km from Chelmsford Nature Reserve, and we arrived in the morning of the 15th of December under heavily laden skies. In fact, we’d see very little sunshine during our three night stay in comfortable Ntshondwe, Ithala’s award-winning resort.
Ntshondwe, Ithala, December 2014
The reserve has a good network of all-weather gravel roads, and the rain did not interfere with our game-viewing to any large degree, although we weren’t able to enjoy quite as many picnics as we had hoped to. While we didn’t have any sightings of the predators that roam Ithala’s diverse habitats (mostly at night) on this trip, the numerous herds of large herbivores were a sight to behold.
The elephants at Ithala are shy and seldomly seen, so we count ourselves very lucky to have had two sightings of them on this trip. One sighting was of a big herd near Ngubhu Picnic Site, moving along a drainage line some distance away. The second sighting however was a thrilling affair as we happened upon two young bulls right in the road, near gate closing time, around a bend between the Ngulumbeni Loop and camp. One of the bulls hightailed it deep into the bush as soon as we appeared around the corner, but his companion decided to give us a good show for quite a while, not prepared to relinquish his spot on the road to let us pass.
Whenever there was a break in the rain, we’d undertake short walks around Ntshondwe, enjoying the opportunity to get closer to some of Ithala’s smaller and more delicate inhabitants.
Ithala in summer is a bird-watcher’s delight, and even us, relatively novice “twitchers”, managed to seek out and identify a wide variety of the reserve’s feathered denizens, despite the mostly inclement weather.
Before leaving Ithala for uMkhuze Game Reserve, we took a short, final early morning drive towards the gate and Onverwacht Loop, and were rewarded for our effort by a herd of giraffe moving serenely along the horizon, dark clouds and the sun struggling to break through providing a dramatic background to the scene.
Reason enough to return to Ithala? Absolutely! Not that we need an excuse, this place has had us under its spell for so long we won’t be able to stay away.
What is this white rhino trying to tell us?
“Express yourself” is the theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge
We were fortunate to witness these two plains zebras settling a dispute at Ithala Game Reserve, during our recent summer visit there. They were so close to our vehicle we almost felt every bite and kick they dealt one another…
More from Ithala soon!
The long-legged oribi (oorbietjie in Afrikaans) is a small antelope, and one of the most special wildlife sightings you could hope for in South Africa.
They stand only between 50 and 65cm high at the shoulder, and weigh around 14kg. Only the males carry the sharp little horns that average between 10 and 13cm long.
These dainty antelope have very specific habitat requirements, preferring grasslands and floodplains with just the correct mix of short (for grazing) and long (for hiding) patches of grass. They also have very specific preferences as to the type of short grasses they feed on and, while they often occur near water, do not appear to drink very regularly, if at all.
Oribis are the most social of the smaller antelope species; the most commonly encountered grouping being a single territorial ram with up to four adult ewes and their lambs.
Oribi grazing next to the Kamberg Road
Oribi rams are territorial, and the family groups are extremely reluctant to leave their home ranges, even when being pursued (they prefer sprinting short distances to hide in long grass). For this reason, they suffer more than most dwarf antelope from predation and poaching. In South Africa, most lambs are born in the summer months of November and December and remain hidden for up to 4 months before they join their mother’s family group. They have a natural lifespan of 8 to 13 years.
Today, the oribi is one of South Africa’s most endangered mammals, although in many other parts of Africa they are still quite numerous. Their favoured grassland habitat is prime for farming and thus getting ever scarcer and more fragmented, while illegal hunting with dogs is a further risk to their continued survival. Nevertheless, a substantial portion of the population still occurs on private land, and the Oribi Working Group’s annual census is an important tool to establish population sizes and trends.
South Africa’s biggest single population of oribi occurs in the Chelmsford Nature Reserve in Kwazulu-Natal Province. Chelmsford was the first destination on our recent summer holidays in the bush, and we’ll soon share more about our latest visit there with you.
DeWetsWild 