Kruger: Day 1

I think I’ve already mentioned some things about the giant and fantastic Kruger National Park in NE South Africa, but let’s start with the basics, which means some information and a map from Wikipedia:

Kruger National Park (Tsonga: [ˈkrúːɡà]; Afrikaans: [ˈkry.(j)ər]) is a South African National Park and one of the largest game reserves in Africa. It covers an area of 19,623 km² (7,576 sq mi) in the provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga in northeastern South Africa, and extends 360 km (220 mi) from north to south and 65 km (40 mi) from east to west. The administrative headquarters are in Skukuza. Areas of the park were first protected by the government of the South African Republic in 1898, and it became South Africa’s first national park in 1926.

Here it is below, in red. It’s HUGE! It’s bordered on the east mostly by Mozambique, but we also visited a spot in the north called “Crook’s Corner,” where three countries (South Africa, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe) meet. You can see that spot at the top of the reddish park map below, and it’s where poachers and other criminals used to flee one country to avoid the law by simply stepping across the border (this involves crossing a river) to to one of the other two countries, where they were from from pursuit. Nowadays immigrants from Mozambique cross the river into Kruger seeking a better life in South Africa.

For those who know the park, we entered at the Phalaborwa gate, did a zig-zag heading generally north, often taking dirt roads and taking diversions based on what Isaac heard from his fellow guides and from his own instincts.

We exited the park at the Orpen gate after having stayed four nights in comfortable and inexpensive bungalows: two at Shingwedzi and two at Pafuri. We had about 4.5 days of wildlife watching, at least eight hours a day. I’ll try to reconstruct a map of our travels in the next few days.

Go here to see a good map of the park that includes these locations. If you look at the map, you’ll see that to its west Kruger is surrounded by private game parks and nature reserves. Almost none of these have fences, allowing the animals to transit as they please over a huge area.

But a last meal before I left. A quarter bunny chow in Hoedspruit with beef (the mutton was better but this is still good). It’s filling, cheap, and tasty: a hollowed- out bread bowl (a quarter of a loaf) filled with curry. Note the perfucnctory “salad” to the side.

And the Hoedspruit version of a chocolate milkshake, which was very good:

On to the park. I recommend clicking on the photos to enlarge them.

This is the Phalaborwa gate where you formally enter the park in the north (there are nine entrance gates). You pay by the day on a sliding scale, with South African residents paying about a quarter of what foreigners do, which is fair given the difference in income. The money is for badly needed conservation fees.

Gates are strictly monitored, and open and close at roughly 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. respectively. This is also true of the 12 main “bush camps” where you can stay in well-equipped huts (there are also a couple of fancy private lodges, and “bushveld camps” with fewer facilities). If you are late and the camp is closed, you can still get in (with a reservation), but you have to pay a substantial “fine.”

At the entrance, and throughout the park, there are “sightings boards” showing which charismatic animals have been seen where and when (yesterday or today).  Note that they do NOT post sightings of rhinos because the poachers are, above all, after rhino horns, used in traditional Chinese medicine.

As I mentioned in previous posts. The rangers try to anesthetize all the park’s rhinos and cut off their two horns to prevent the animals from being killed by poachers, but the horns grow back and the process has to be repeated every four years or so.

Our first sighting of animals, apparently a pair of storks. I can’t remember the species.

Our guide Isaac told us that this is a group of social spiders who live in a sac attached to a large, insect-catching web. I believe this is a group of Stegodyphus mimosarum, the African social velvet spider. Individuals in a colony share food and care of the young spiders:

This zoomed-in shot of a raptor with a white chest may be an African hawk-eagle (Aquila spilogaster), but I can’t be sure. Later on we saw and identified a similar-looking species, the booted eagle (Hieraaetus pennatus).

Our first sighting of a mammal that became quite familiar to us, the African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana). (There’s also an African forest elephant in the same genus.) According to a recent census, there are roughly 13,0o0 elephants in Kruger, and the numbers are rising (there were only 725 in 2006).

There is continual debate about whether the increasing population poses a danger to the park, as they knock down trees and displace other species, and for a while they “culled” (i.e., shot) elephants to control the population. Of course big-game hunters in other places shoot them as trophies (an execrable practice), but it’s hard to think about mass killings of these beautiful and highly intelligent creatures when you’ve spent some time watching them.

Here are some small Lala Palms (Hyphaene coriacea). These are small ones, but, as Wikipedia notes,

The spongy pulp of the hard, brown fruit is edible and the fruit is eaten and sold in Madagascar and in eastern Africa; its Swahili name is Mkoma. The flavour has been compared to raisins and raisin bran.

Hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) are hard to see out of the water, as they prefer spending their days submerged except for their eyes and nose, and generally come out of the water to graze only at night.  (Their skins are very sensitive to sunlight, something you’d think natural selection should remedy.) But on cool days you can see them grazing, always near water.

Here are two. They are considered among the world’s most dangerous animals because they are aggressive, unpredictable, and can run surprisingly fast.  500 people per year are killed by hippos, compared to only 22 for lions, but people are far more scared of lions.

This is a photo that I included because it’s part of my “animals crossing roads series”.  These are very common antelope that get no respect because they’re so common in the park: the impala (Aepyceros melampus). They’re everywhere and one tends to overlook them, but they’re very beautiful. Males have horns and females don’t, so these are females.

(Photo contrast adjusted by Christopher Moss to better show the countershading.)

A larger antelope, the greater kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) with the characteristically spiral horns found only in males. They’re easily identified because both sexes are striped.

Remember, since you’re not allowed to leave your car, all these animals were photographed through open windows in our vehicle. Ergo, most were pretty close to the roadside. Most mammals, save zebras and some antelopes like impala, pretty much ignore cars, although a big bull elephant in the road threatened to charge us after spitting a rare piece of paper at us. Isaac, knowing the signs of elephant aggression (tilting the head sideways is a telling one), backed up the car slowly, and the elephant strode away.

Elephant crossing the road:

A Burchell’s zebra (Equus quagga burchellii) crossing the road. You will see several of these photos in the coming days because it is a ZEBRA CROSSING (in the UK that’s the name for a pedestrian crosswalk).

A rare spot despite its name, here are a few common tsessebe (Damaliscus lunatus lunatus) crossing the road.

A better shot of the tsessebe. In this species both sexes have horns. Horns in males only are a sign of sexual selection, but in some species males have larger horns than females, also indicating sexual selection but likely natural selection as well, giving some reproductive advantage to horned females.

Fun tsessebe facts from Wikipedia:

Several of their behaviors strike scientists as peculiar. One such behavior is the habit of sleeping tsessebe to rest their mouths on the ground with their horns sticking straight up into the air. Male tsessebe has [sic] also been observed standing in parallel ranks with their eyes closed, bobbing their heads back and forth. These habits are peculiar because scientists have yet to find a proper explanation for their purposes or functions

A herd of one of Africa’s most dangerous animals, the African buffalo (Syncerus caffer), a member of the “big five” referred to below; these are animals that are regarded as the most dangerous to hunt and kill with either spear or gun (the other four are lions, rhinos, leopards, and elephants):

One of the “big five” African game, it is known as “the Black Death” or “the widowmaker”, and is widely regarded as a very dangerous animal. African buffaloes are sometimes reported to kill more people in Africa than any other animal, although the same claim is also made of hippopotamuses and crocodiles. These numbers may be somewhat overestimated; for example, in the country of Mozambique, attacks, especially fatal ones, were much less frequent on humans than those by hippos, and especially, Nile crocodiles. In Uganda, on the other hand, large herbivores were found to attack more people on average than lions or leopards and have a higher rate of inflicting fatalities during attacks than the predators (the African buffalo, in particular, killing humans in 49.5% of attacks on them), but hippos and even elephants may still kill more people per annum than buffaloes. African buffaloes are notorious among big-game hunters as very dangerous animals, with wounded animals reported to ambush and attack pursuers.

In male buffalo, the horns grow together, fusing in the middle of the head in a structure known as a “boss.” This one doesn’t have a boss:

Here’s a “boss” male with the fused horns, as well as an oxpecker nibbling at his nose.

Below: the most iconic tree in Africa, the Baobab (Adansonia digitata). I didn’t see it leafed out (that’s during the African summer), but it’s unmistakable because of its large, bulbous trunk (It’s actually classified not as a tree but a succulent.) There are 8 species, but only this one is endemic to mainland Africa (6 others are native to Madagascar and one to Australia.

They can get very old (carbon dating puts an age limit of about 2,000 years). The tree has many uses for man, beast, and bird. Young leaves can be stewed as a vegetable, the roots and fruits are edible, and the seeds can be made into a flour. The bark can be made into fiber and clothes, and, in times of drought, elephants eat the water-rich underbark. And as for birds, see the second photo below.

There are often signs under baobabs in the park, and here’s one of them. What kind of miscreant would throw stones at owl holes?

The lovely impala lily (Adenium multiflorum), native to eastern and southern Africa. It’s a small succulent tree and was blooming everywhere in the dry winter season of our visit. The flowers are gorgeous and trees are planted widely around the camps.

Another baobab. I’d love to see these in the wet summer.

Isaac, the crack spotter, suddenly asked me out of nowhere, “Would you like to see a giraffe lying down?” I said, “Sure,” and asked him if this was an unusual event. He said “yes”.  Sure enough, Isaac had spotted two of them far before I could see them:

You may have wondered if giraffes sleep. The answer is, “Yes, but not much,” probably because they have to keep alert for predators (they can be taken down by lions, leopards, hyenas, and wild dogs, all of whom first go for the legs). Here’s some info about giraffe sleep from one website:

To start, let’s clarify that giraffes only sleep a few hours a day.

Some giraffes don’t even sleep that much. In captivity, adult giraffes have been observed sleeping as much as four and a half hours a day. In the wild, giraffes might only sleep about 40 minutes a day—and only about three to five minutes at a time.

Researches have observed three types of sleep in giraffes: standing, recumbent, and paradoxical. The latter sleep type is similar to REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Standing sleep is characterized by a giraffe standing up, yet motionless, with its head tilted slightly more forward than it is when awake. This is thought to be essentially a light nap for giraffes and makes up a majority of their sleep.

During recumbent and paradoxical sleep, a giraffe can be observed lying down with their legs folded under them, their neck turned and arched backward and their heads resting on their rumps or the ground—similar to a swan.

When they drink at a waterhole, giraffe splay their legs widely to lower their body, allowing that long neck to reach the water.

A non-napping giraffe:

Zebra crossing!

We crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, where it’s allowed to leave the vehicle. I love official lines like the Equator (which I’ve also straddled) and borders between countries.

The Tropic of Capricorn is explained in the second photo below: it’s the furthest latitude south where the Sun appears directly overhead. That event occurs around December 21, the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere. Wikipedia notes that this is “the dividing line between the Southern Temperate Zone to the south and the Tropics to the north.”

Of course I had to straddle it: the line of rocks running between my legs.  Now I can say that I’ve stood astride this line, as well as the Equator. (I can’t remember standing on the Tropic of Cancer; the closest place to Chicago would be in Mexico.)

The explanation:

Two more giraffes. I couldn’t get enough of these majestic and beautiful animals. They’ve evolved, of course, to access leaves high up on trees that other animals can’t reach: an adaptation that comes with several costs.  They give birth standing up and the babies have a long tumble to the ground, which animates them to start their lives.

Here’s a giraffe giving birth in the wild. The baby takes its first wobbly steps within only a few minutes:

I believe I’ve discussed before the phenomenon of “dagga boys”: African buffalo who have been expelled from their herd because they’re old and can’t hold a position in the hierarchy (ca. ten years). They must thus wander, solitary or with a couple of other dagga boys, until they die or are taken down by predators like lions. They often roll in the mud because they have skin conditions, and are especially dangerous because, lacking the defense of their herd, they’re prone to attack.

In a later installment we’ll see the remains of a dagga boy killed by lions. These solitary animals, I think, must be lonely, and I find them ineffably sad. But such is nature.

A lovely male of the Greater Kudu.

And a giraffe sticking out its tongue:

One of the most amazing things we saw on day 1 (and remember, this is only the first of five days) was a huge herd of elephant digging for water in a dry river bed. Apparently elephants have a way of detecting water close to the surface, and when they find it, and are thirsty, they use their legs, tusks, and trunk to excavate a well that can be more than a meter deep. Here’s one female digging for water, and she found it:

This is only a small number of the more than fifty elephants I counted in the vicinity, and they’re all either digging for water or trying to get water from holes dug by others. Naturally the diggers wants a monopoly on their water and try to drive interlopers away, except for mothers who allow their babies to drink with them.  An elephant can take in 100 liters at a time, and about 240 liters per day.

Two photos of a mom allowing her baby to drink:

A bit more than half the group (I couldn’t get them all in one photo):

Finally, a male giving us the stink eye. Notice also that there are impala, kudu, and a single Marabou Stork  (Leptoptilos crumenifer) to the right of the elephant.

That was just Day One. There’s lots to come, but we made camp before closing time and had dinner (there are small and inexpensive restaurants in the camps).

More when I get time, probably tomorrow.