In and around Hoedspruit: a surfeit of fauna

Yesterday morning, with anxiety-provoking storms threatening, I managed to get an early flight from Capetown up to Hoedspruit, a small (pop. 3,157) town in NE South Africa that is the gateway to many natural wonders, not least among them Kruger National Park, one of the world’s finest game reserves, and the Blyde River Canyon. I’ll be visiting both of them.

My e-friend Rosemary, who kindly helped me make these arrangements independently, lives in Hoedspruit, where she helps run a conservation organization called Global March for Elephants and Rhinos.

Here’s Hoedspruit on a Wikipedia map:

Below: the location of Kruger National Park. Kruger is also surrounded by private game reserves that have no fences, so the wildlife roam free throughout the region. I’ll be staying a few days at one of the private reserves, which is spiffy and takes you for two long game drives per day.  (This is what’s known to visitors as a “safari camp.”) After that I visit Blyde, and after that I’ll be visiting Kruger with a driver and Rosemary, traipsing around the park for four days looking for wildlife.

Kruger is in red:

But there’s plenty of wildlife to see in the fenced community in Hoedspruit where I’m staying for two nights before heading to the private reserve. Foremost among them is OZY, my beloved common warthog (Phacochoerus africanus)—there’s nothing common about him!—whom I’ve been assisting from afar.  And here he is. He’s big, dominant, and loves to roll around in the dirt and mud. There are many other warthogs of both sexes and all sizes here, but Ozy is the King of them All:

Another pig grooming a juvenile:

Two ways of looking at a southern red-billed hornbill (Tockus rufirostris):

After a quick look at the pigs, it was time for lunch. There’s a good Indian restaurant in town, and of course I got a mutton bunny chow (spelled “chao” there). This was a spiffy one, very spicy and delicious. If I lived in this country, I’d seek out the best bunny chow, just as I seek out the best BBQ in the US. I wonder if there’s a Guide to the Bunny Chows of South Africa  (I doubt it).

This is the perfect street food, though messy. It originated in the largely Indian city of Durban, South Africa, as a way for workers to have a quick, filling lunch that could be carried to the job (the top was usually plugged with the inside of the bread that had been scooped out). From Wikipedia:

Bunny chows are popular amongst Indians and other ethnic groups in the Durban area. Bunny chows are commonly filled with curries made using traditional recipes from Durban: mutton or lamb curry, chicken curry, trotters and beans curry, and beans curry. Other varieties found across the country using less traditional Durban-Indian food include chips with curry gravy, fried sausage, cheese, eggs and polony. These are all popular fillings; the original bunny chow was vegetarian.

This was an excellent specimen (note the scooped-out bread to the left.) You can barely make out the quarter loaf of white bread which holds the curry.

Rosemary had a fish curry with naan.

On the way back to my room, I came across one of the most beautiful and friendly antelopes I’ve seen: a nyala (Tragelaphus angasii). This is a young male; females don’t have horns. They’re herbivores and live in social groups, though older males (see below) tend to be solitary.  I love the white patches on thee face. This one came right up to me:

Somehow it came across a piece of bread, which it’s chewing below:

A close-up of its beautiful face. Look at those eyes!

A female with nice stripes:

A Crested Francolin (Ortygornis sephaena). It’s a ground-dwelling bird that’s considered a delicacy.

A group of helmeted guineafowl, (Numida meleagris), widespread in sub-Saharan Africa. They have lovely crested turquoise-and-red heads and spotted feathers:

Here’s a better photo from Wikipedia:

A gorgeous female nyala that came right up to me. I fell in love with these antelopes. Look at her eyelashes!

And a big old male, clearly dominant to the others.  They are very sexually dimorphic, not only with horns, but a blackish coat:

The antlers are wicked sharp, and the male threatens by lowering his head and pointing the horns at another bothersome individual. This one had a standoff with Ozy, who did a threat display, but Ozy fled when this male lowered his head.

Me communing with my distant relative, the nyala bull above (photo by Rosemary):

We also saw a pair of shy duiker and, on a night drive through the area, and two groups of majestic impala. And these are just within a fenced residential area that serves itself as a wilelife reserve. It’s not part of Kruger, just a small patch of forest in which people live.

More from today: a drive around the wildlife estate and stuff we saw while communing with Ozy.

Two baby warthogs, brothers, sleep together in the yard:

Ozy, King of All Hogs. We found him by himself this afternoon and thus were able to feed him a large amount of grass pellets without interference from other hogs. Note that he, like all warthogs, dines while resting on his front knees:

Ozy sleeping (two photos). He enjoys his naps in the shade:

My first impala (Aepyceros melampus):  a young male at one of the waterholes (the estate keeps several of these ponds in good condition):

. . . and my first zebra, a Burchell’s zebra (Equus quagga burchellii):

Another antelope new to me: a female waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus). She was also drinking at the water hole.

Rear view. Waterbucks are identifiable by the white ring around their butt, reminiscent of a toilet seat (thus making the name easy to remember):

A giraffe zebra footprint near the waterhole (see comments.)

The estate puts out large amounts of hay and other greenery for the animals, as it has been a dry year and forage is scarce. Here some warthogs chowing down:

And finally, resting while observing Ozy an hour ago, we heard a crunching in the bushes and Rosemary excitedly pointed out that there was a giraffe in the back yard, about twenty meters away.  It was HUGE, towering above the treetops.  I crept out to photograph it but it was easily spooked, so here’s a photo. I’ll get more in the game parks:

There is much more wildlife to come. . .when I go to the Manyalete Game Reserve tomorrow.