Kruger: Day 4

Two more installments, and we’re out of the bush. We’d spent the previous night at the Satara Rest Camp, with superb rooms in small thatched huts (photos tomorrow).  And we took off especially early because there were rumors of lions nearby: the cats who apparently killed the African buffalo whose remains I showed yesterday.

The first sign of lions were spotted hyenas in the road (their minds were squirming like a toad). I hadn’t seen a hyena crossing before, but it was a harbinger of felids to come:

Clearly they were after the carcass of the buffalo that had been killed by lions, and now was topped with a hungry vulture. But why were the hyenas staying away from the carcass? They should be all over it, nomming the rotting buffalo meat.

The reason was that the predators who killed it (and there may have been more) were very close nearby, resting and waiting to finish picking at the carcass. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, and comrades, meet the first African lions (Panthera leo) that we saw in Kruger: two males. (Note that there is a small endangered population of the same species inhabiting the Gir Forest in India.)

As we watched, one male rolled over, exposing a distended tummy. He and the other lion had clearly eaten their fill of buffalo. Look at that fat boy!

The hyenas were there because they wanted a chance at the carcass, too, having clearly smelled or seen it, but they dared not approach it because of the lions. And so they stood around hungry, their gaze riveted on the carcass:

Fixated:

But this one deigned to look at us (remember, we were in a car). I think hyenas should be in Isaac’s “ugly five” of animals, but they’re not. (I believe the Marabou stork is.)

As we drove along further, we spotted an ostrich. Is this a male or a female? (There is no third sex.). A male, of course, for male ostriches are black while females are brown:

A waterbuck  (Kobus ellipsiprymnus), recognizable from its shaggy coat, the horns (found only in males) and the white ring around its butt. Some Fun Waterbuck Facts from Wikipedia:

The waterbuck has a robust build. The shaggy coat is reddish brown to grey, and becomes progressively darker with age. Males are darker than females.  Though apparently thick, the hair is sparse on the coat. The hair on the neck is, however, long and shaggy. When sexually excited, the skin of the waterbuck secretes a greasy substance with the odour of musk, giving it the name “greasy kob”. The odor of this is so unpleasant that it repels predators. This secretion also assists in water-proofing the body when the animal dives into water. The facial features include a white muzzle and light eyebrows and lighter insides of the ears. A cream-coloured patch (called “bib”) is on the throat. Waterbuck are characterised by a long neck and short, strong, black legs. Females have two nipples. Preorbital glands, foot glands, and inguinal glands are absent.

The odiferous secretion apparently is detectable in the meat if it isn’t properly prepared, and so waterbuck aren’t eaten by humans as often as are other antelope.

Why don’t we do it in the road? Martim identified this bird as a Tawny Eagle (Aquila rapax), consuming its kill, which I couldn’t identify, in the road. Its feathery legs place it in the group of “booted eagles” (subfamily Aquilinae), but it’s not the named “booted eagle” found rarely in Kruger:

A rare spot in Kruger, a secretarybird (Sagittarius serpentarius).  It’s a ground-dwelling predator that doesn’t fly often—mostly at night when it finds a tree to roost in.

From Wikipedia:

The secretarybird is instantly recognizable as a very large bird with an eagle-like body on crane-like legs that give the bird a height of as much as 1.3 m (4 ft 3 in). The sexes are similar in appearance. Adults have a featherless red-orange face and predominantly grey plumage, with a flattened dark crest and black flight feathers and thighs.

.  . The neck is not especially long, and can only be lowered down to the intertarsal joint, so birds must stoop to reach down to the ground.

. . . Prey may consist of insects such as locusts, other grasshoppers, wasps, and beetles, but small vertebrates often form main biomass. Secretarybirds are known to hunt rodents, frogs, lizards, small tortoises, and birds such as warblers, larks, doves, small hornbills, and domestic chickens. They occasionally prey on larger mammals such as hedgehogs, mongooses, small felids such as cheetah cubs, striped polecats, young gazelles, and both young and full-grown hares.

And they kill almost entirely by stomping on their prey!:

The birds often flush prey from tall grass by stomping on the surrounding vegetation. Their crest feathers may raise during a hunt, which may serve to help scare the target and provide shade for the face. A bird will chase after prey with the wings spread and kill by striking with swift blows of the feet. Only with small prey items such as wasps will the bird use its bill to pick them directly. There are some reports that, when capturing snakes, a secretarybird will take flight with their prey and then drop them to their death, although this has not been verified. Even with larger prey, food is generally swallowed whole through the birds’ considerable gape. Occasionally, like other raptors, they will hold down a food item with their feet while tearing it apart with their bill.

You can’t see how long its legs are below because they’re hidden in the tall grass:

Here’s a photo of a secretarybird skeleton taken from Wikipedia, showing how weird its body is. No other raptor looks like this:

A grey heron (Ardea cinerea), widely distributed in Africa, Asia, and Europe:

A yellow-billed stork, found only in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar. I believe I’ve shown this bird earlier:

A beautiful Cape Starling (Lamprotornis nitens), endemic to southern Africa. It also hangs around places like rest stops and people’s houses where it might get a tidbit. Because its blue iridescence is seen only in certain lights, it often looks black, and thus its beauty isn’t noticed. (This is also true of our common starling.)

A panoramic view of the bush from an overlook. Click to enlarge the photo:

And a non-panoramic view of the bush. Remember, its barren absence of green-ness is because now in Africa it’s the dry season (winter). In summer, I’m told, the entire landscape is lush and looks completely different.

Photo below: an elephant has used its tusks to carve off pieces of this tree’s bark. Why do the pachyderms do this? For several reasons:

Where nature reserves house elephants, Africa’s largest land mammal is often singled out as the leading cause of destruction of the large trees that they share the landscape with. Elephants break trees to get easier access to the leaves, roots and nutrients. They also remove the bark to get access to the nutritious cambium layer underneath. As bark often strips off in a circular manner around the trunk, this may lead to ring barking, causing the tree to die off as the cambium layer is responsible for transporting nutrients upwards from the soil.

Here’s a video of an elephant removing bark:

The underappreciated impala:

I love their faces. Along with male nyalas, they may be the most beautiful of all antelopes I’ve seen, but I haven’t seen the tiny ones like klipspringers and dik-diks, whose photos are ineffably cute:

An older male impala whose horns have started to curve:

Two Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca) and a Nile Crocodile. The birds are endemic to sub-Saharan Africa but have been introduced widely. I first saw them in a bay beside the Amsterdam railway station!

A male elephant leaning its butt against a tree. Yes, they can kill trees this way, too.

Another waterbuck with the “toilet-seat” ring around its butt:

I always try the local food when I can. The rest camp had a restaurant featuring this kind of food, including “chicken, pap, and ‘sas’ [sauce]”, and I much wanted to try pap.  Below is my dinner, with a roasted leg and thigh. Pap, formally called “ugali“, is a type of cornmeal similar but not identical to grits, and can be served in many different ways.

In this meal pap serves the same purpose as grits: a largely flavorless but nutritious starch that serves as a substrate for sauce or other toppings.  I loved the stuff when the ‘sas’, a type of tomato sauce made with various ingredients I’ve forgotten, was poured over the pap.

I love grits, too, though many people can’t abide their tastelessness. But they’re the perfect accompaniment to a breakfast of fried eggs, country ham, and red-eyed gravy. And I scarfed this meal down, too. It turns out that Isaac had independently ordered the same thing. See below for uncooked pap:

Pap comes in these large bags, which I saw when food was being given to hungry African villagers. It looks like white flour, with a very fine texture. Nutrients and vitamins are often added to the pap to supplement the diet:

And some signs at the Satara Rest camp extolling those who protect rhinos:

A rhino ranger with his equipment, including two horns that have presumably been removed to render the rhino immune from poaching:

And praise for the “honorary rangers” who protect the rhinos (click to enlarge the photo):

Sadly, this was our last full night at Kruger. But we had most of the next day in the park, too, and got to see the white lions at last! Stay tuned for the last segment: Day 5.