These enormous beasts have a prehistoric appearance with their thick hides folding over their legs and shoulders to look almost as if they are wearing a suit of armour.  They sport two horns on their long faces – a small one at the back and a large one in the front.  Their name is derived from the Latin meaning nose and horn.  The horns are made of keratin, the same composition as our hair and nails.  Unfortunately for the rhinoceros, their horns are believed to have medicinal properties and for this reason they are being poached into extinction as they fetch extremely high prices on the black market.  See my blog  “Where have all the rhinos gone” about this serious problem.

The two African species are easy to identify by the different shapes of their mouths.  Black rhinos have prehensile upper lips because they are browsers, whilst White rhinos have wide square lips that are suitable for grazing.  They both have barrel-shaped bodies, but differ in size, with the Black rhino being much smaller than the White rhino.  The browsers prefer a diet of branches, thorns and leaves so their habitat is treed or bushy, and the grazers mainly eat short grass which is found in more open bushveld.  Both require plenty of drinking water and enjoy wallowing in mud to cool themselves down.  Black rhinos are solitary and moody as opposed to the more sociable White rhinos which live in small groups with a territorial male.

Females have a single calf, born throughout the year after a gestation period of about 16 months.  Calves remain with their mothers for up to four years and when they are seen together, the calf is usually walking in front of its mother.

If they are left alone by poachers, rhinos have a life expectancy of between 40 and 45 years.  Their main predator is man and they are sometimes taken by lions.

 

The sexes are similar in size, but quite different in their plumage and the plumage of the males also varies in different parts of the bird’s range. Generally the males have an overall yellow appearance, with the birds in the south being more of an olive green. All males, though, have yellow under parts.  The females have dull mottled grey upper parts, paler under parts and a bright yellow rump. In both sexes their bills are horn-coloured, with a pink base; legs and feet are dark pinkish-brown and eyes are brown.

Yellow canaries usually feed on the ground or in the canopy of shrubs, feeding on seeds, nectar and small insects. Along the coast they may also feed within the inter-tidal zone.

Like most of the canaries, the Yellow canary is an accomplished singer, and often does so from a prominent perch atop a bush, sometimes incorporating mimicry of other bird’s calls into its song.

Yellow canaries are monogamous and they build a cup-shaped nest of dry twigs which they line with softer vegetable material. The nests are usually built in small shrubs rather than in trees. The female lays a clutch of between two and five white eggs marked with brown or black, which hatch after an incubation period of approximately 16 days.

The scientific binomial for the Yellow canary Crithagra flaviventris; Crithagra from the Greek for a “barley hunter”; and flaviventris from the Latin for a “yellow belly”. Thus the name describes a bird with a yellow belly that eats barley, which is accurate if somewhat lacking in imagination.

Lions are sociable animals, living in prides of ten or more lions.  The male is the great protector of his pride and he usually has a number of lionesses in his harem, all related, that take care of the hunting and the provision of food.  The females work in unison once they decide on which animal they are stalking and they plan their attack from all fronts.  Once the animal is downed, the male then comes in to eat first, followed by the females and lastly the cubs.

   

You can read all about a lion kill that we came across in the Central Kalahari by clicking here.  It was so exciting to be able to park the car meters away from the feeding lions and spend many hours watching the drama of hierarchy unfold as they all got stuck into their meal.  Lions can eat up to 18 kgs of meat at a time, which is probably why, once sated, they sleep for the next twenty hours or so.  They mainly kill at night and then sleep off their excesses during the heat of the day.  Look at the size of the full belly of this lioness after she had gorged herself on an Oryx – she lay on her back with her legs in the air for hours afterwards.

   

Females usually have between two and four cubs that are born after a gestation period of one hundred and ten days.  They mate all year around and once the cubs are born they are protected and fed by all the lionesses in the pride.  They love to romp and play and are very affectionate towards one another, although male lions have been known to kill their own cubs under certain circumstances.

   

Lionesses take up to four years to reach their adult size, whilst male lions mature after six years.  Males develop a beautiful mane around their necks which makes the sexes easily identifiable.  In the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park one can see the red-maned lions which are very impressive.  Even more so when you see them on red sand dunes! They can live up to fifteen years in the wild, although this is not really common as they fight continually with competitors in both the lion and predator arena.

   

Lions are also known as Panthera leo from the family Felidae.

   

 

We had wonderful sightings of buffalo in the Kruger National Park in South Africa where they can be seen in large herds and on their own.  They often have birds on them, pecking off ticks, as can be seen in two of our photos below.  Another way they get rid of ticks is to wallow in mud.  By coating themselves in this way they smother these pesky parasites.  Nature is very clever in this way.

These strapping animals are very sturdy.  They weigh in at between 500 – 900 kgs and can stand up to 1.7 m in height at the shoulders.  Their crescent-shaped horns, which are fused at the base to form a boney saddle known as a “boss”, have a span of over a metre and are used with great effect as powerful weapons.  Combined with the ability to charge at great speeds, the overall killing capability of the fearless buffalo is formidable.

If hunters don’t shoot them properly, buffalo will continue to charge even whilst being hit by a barrage of bullets.  They are also very dangerous when injured and being tracked.  Many a hunter has lost his life by under-estimating this four-legged opponent in the battle of the bushveld!

 Males and females differ in both size and colour, with the males being larger, more black or dark brown and the females having slightly reddish-coloured coats, as do young buffalo.  Males also have bigger horns than females.  Females breed only after they reach the age of five years old and the gestation period is eleven months.  In herds buffalo are very protective of one another, and especially of their young, and will rush to the rescue if one of their own has been downed by a predator like a lion or a crocodile.

Due to their large numbers, buffalo are fortunately not endangered, but they are highly prized by hunters who feel the need to decorate their walls with enormous buffalo heads.  Personally, I like to see them alive on open plains or in mopane forests, and always feel incredibly sad when I am confronted by a mounted buffalo head on a wall.  I always send them a silent apology for man’s arrogance.  I wonder sometimes if there’s a planet out in the universe somewhere where animals have the upperhand and men’s heads are mounted on walls.  That would be a turn around for the books.

I though it would be fun to blog about the Big Five over the next few weeks, as we are always excited to see these animals.  I’ll start with the leopard, as this beautiful cat is one of the most difficult of the Big Five to see.  This is because it’s nocturnal, which means that it hunts at night and generally sleeps during the day.  There are exceptions to this rule, of course, and leopards are sometimes seen early in the morning or late in the day.  People will wait for hours in a particular spot if they’ve heard that a leopard has been seen there earlier on (we’ve done this ourselves), as leopard sightings are considered to be very special indeed.

Leopards like to sleep in trees, so if the tree is close enough to the road there is sure to be a good audience – a safari version of the paparazzi!  Leopards are not as nervous as other animals and their relaxed behaviour enables folks to get some really good photographs of them in the wild – if you can spot them in the first place that is.  They are amazingly camouflaged in the African bush and you really have to look carefully for them.

They are solitary animals that only get together for mating purposes.  They mark their territory by spraying urine and scratching on trees.  Leopards are not like lions that live in prides, so when more than one is seen, it is usually a mother with her cubs.  She suckles cubs for three months, but introduces solid food to them after six weeks.  They stay with her, learning the ropes about survival and hunting, for just under two years.  Litters comprise of between one and three cubs born after a gestation period of one hundred days.

Leopards are powerfully built and hunt a wide variety of warm-blooded prey.  Unlike lions, they seldom eat their prey on the ground, but drag it up into a tree to eat at their leisure and to protect it from other predators like lions and hyenas.  Their strength is such that they can haul a carcass of their own weight up into a tree.

Unfortunately, here in Namibia, leopards are a problem to farmers, often killing their livestock or expensive imported game animals.  It is sad that these losses lead to the extermination of these beautiful animals by the farmers, and we hope that they won’t become extinct because man has taken over their natural habitat and hunting grounds.

 

It is a medium sized kingfisher, with a length of about 24 cm.; a pretty bird, with a black back and wings, with a bright blue rump and greyish-blue tail; its forehead and crown are brown, its throat white and the remainder of the under parts light brown. The long bill is red with a darker tip; eyes are dark brown; legs and feet are red or orange. Sexes are similar in colouration and the females are slightly larger than the females.

The call of the Brown-hooded kingfisher is a weakly trilled “ki-ti-ti-ti”. It is a solitary bird and is usually found singly or in pairs.

The Brown-hooded kingfisher usually hunts from a perch and  feeds mainly on insects, chameleons, small snakes and rodents as well as fish.

The Brown-hooded kingfisher is monogamous and nests in a horizontal tunnel, up to 1.2 metres in length, which it excavates in a vertical sand bank. The female lays a clutch of between two and five white eggs that hatch after an incubation period of approximately 14 days.

The scientific binomial for the Brown-hooded kingfisher is Halcyon albiventris; Halcyon from the Greek name for a mythical bird, now associated with the kingfisher, that was able to calm the sea, particularly around the December solstice (thus the English term “halcyon days”), and albiventris from the Latin for “white below”. Thus the name describes a bird that calms the sea and has white under parts. Well, the white under parts is correct, but that’s it!

With an abundance of water comes the celebration of life.  Etosha was no exception and we saw many herds of antelope with babies – the strikingly beautiful Gemsbok are our favourites and are always exciting to spot.  Their young ones are easy to identify as they still have their brown baby coats.

   

This mother and baby Black-faced impala hadn’t quite made up their minds about which way they were headed.

   

A Black-shoudered kite really stood out quite dramatically with the backdrop of dark rain clouds.  Rob will shortly be doing a blog about a fantastic sighting of a B.S. Kite eating a lizard.   His photos of this meal are magnificent.

It’s a good idea to check the ground occasionally or you could run over little creatures like this jaunty Namaqua chameleon that was also enjoying the water.

   

Not all the birds are pretty.  In stark contrast to the beautiful European bee-eater above, we also saw a not-so-pretty Maribou stork wading in some water next to the road.  Doesn’t he look like he’s wearing a waistcoast?

   

A visit to Etosha always offers up good sightings of the Northern black korhaan.  These little fellows are everywhere and are very vocal, especially when disturbed.

   

Even though we didn’t see any of the more exciting animals like lions, elephants and leopards this trip, we so enjoyed spending time out in nature, just enjoying the birds and the thrill of seeing new life and lush vegetation.  What a magnificent way to spend a weekend!

 

Pretty little birds, yes, but the most distinctive feature of Sociable weavers is not the birds themselves, but rather their enormous communal nests. The nests, which may house up to 500 birds, can be seen on trees, telephone poles, windmills or virtually any structure within the arid savannah which is their preferred habitat. The nests, made entirely from grass and some thought to be decades old, can become so heavy that the branches to which they are attached snap under the load and it is not unusual to see these nests on the ground.

These enormous nests, probably amongst the largest structures made by any birds, are often subject to predation, particularly by Cape cobras that feed on the eggs and young nestlings, an event that we were excited to witness at a large nest in eastern Namibia. Some of the chambers within the nests are sometimes taken over by Pygmy falcons (Polihierax semitorquatus), Rosy-faced lovebirds (Agapornis roseicollis) and other species for roosting or breeding. The nests may catch fire during the summer months and the nests that are built on electricity pylons may cause short circuits when they become wet during periods of rain.

Each pair of birds builds its own chamber within these communal nests, in which the female lays a clutch of between two and six eggs that hatch after an incubation of about 14 days.

Sociable weavers are endemic to the southern African region, their distribution being limited to the arid north-western parts of South Africa and a large part of southern and central Namibia. Sociable weavers are mainly insectivorous, although they eat some seeds, and they do most of their foraging on the ground.

Their call is a series of metallic chipping sounds.

The scientific binomial for the Sociable weaver is Philetairus socius; Philetairus from the Latin for “loving friends and companions”, and socius from the Latin for “sociable”. Thus we have an extremely sociable bird, twice over!

Talking of adventures with elephants, we had an adventure of our own in the BwaBwata National Park in the western Caprivi area of Namibia some time ago.  We’d heard somewhere that this park had the highest concentration of elephants in Africa so took a day trip into the park to see them.  We drove virtually the whole day and saw only one elephant.  There was plenty of dung around to indicate their presence, but it got to the ludicrous point where we were joking that the dung must have been shipped in to make it appear as if they had any elephants at all.  Disappointed after many hours of seeing none, we headed out of the park only to be stopped at a bend in the river by elephants walking down to the water to drink.

  

When I say elephants, I mean hundreds of them.  Within minutes we were surrounded and one young bull didn’t like the look of us at all.  He did a mock charge, flapped his ears, bellowed loudly and hopped from foot to foot.  We couldn’t retreat for two reasons.  We were in very thick sand and we were surrounded by lots of other elephants.  It was very frightenng.  We sat quite still with hearts pounding and palms sweating as we waited for a chance to leave.  The irony was that we were witnessing more elephants than we could ever imagine and we didn’t dare lift a finger to photograph them so we came away with no photos at all of this experience.  The pictures in this blog are from other areas.

  

The herd took over an hour to pass us on their way down to the water.  If it hadn’t been so dangerous, I would have enjoyed the spectacle more.  We’ve seen horrendous pictures of vehicles being flattened by elephants, so are always very wary of getting too close to them.  We consider ourselves very lucky to have escaped unharmed and I’m not ashamed to admit that it took about six brandies to steady our nerves when we got back to our campsite (and I don’t even drink brandy!!)  We sure had an adventure to chat about over our campfire that night.

  

If you’d like to read more about African elephants, WWF has an excellent website.

  

Bearded woodpeckers have an overall yellowish appearance, the back and wings scalloped in buff. Under parts are grey, finely barred with white; cheeks and throat are white and they have a broad black malar stripe and black ear coverts. The sexes differ in their head markings, with the males having a red crown and the females a black crown, and males are slightly larger than the females. Their long bills are greyish-black; eyes are brownish-red; legs and feet are greyish-black.

They forage mainly by tapping and probing branches in their search for insects, using their long barbed tongue to extract them when they have been located.  They eat spiders, lizards, the larvae of moths and beetles and termites.

Bearded woodpeckers are not very sociable birds and they are usually found singly or in pairs. Their call is a loud “wik-wik-wik” which increases in tempo as the call progresses. They also drum loudly, probably as a means of maintaining contact with their partners, and this is often the first indication of their presence.

Bearded woodpeckers are monogamous and they excavate a nest-hole up to 500 mm deep in a large tree in which the female lays a clutch of between one and three glossy-white eggs, which hatch after an incubation period of about 13 days.

The scientific binomial for the Bearded woodpecker is Dendropicos namaquus; Dendropicos from the Greek for “a tree pecker”, and namaquus from the Latin for “from Namaqualand”. Thus a tree pecker from Namaqualand, which is quite accurate save for the fact that its range extends well beyond Namaqualand.