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Dear Bushwhacking friends
I trust this finds you all well and enjoying the
start of the winter. Once again, thank you so much
to all of you whom have visited and supported us
since the last newsletter, we really appreciate it.
Well, as some of you might know, we experienced a
serious drought here right up until the end of
January and things were really getting quite
chronic. February and March were relief months, we
received 300mm of rain. What a relief! The
transformation of an almost desert moonscape
suddenly became a lush green paradise. The Limpopo
came down in flood, as did the Motloutse and on
quite a few occasions the Mohave as well.
Game suddenly became abundant and picked up
condition in no time at all. One morning, on my way
to Mohave, I saw a herd of fifty Zebra, forty Eland,
and about four hundred Impala all together grazing
in a sea of yellow devil thorn flowers – it was a
sight that I will never forget.
Our friends, the Elephants moved away when it was so
dry, but returned en masse with the rains in March.
They seem to be concentrating around Mohave and in
that general area, and aggregations of fifty to a
hundred are not an uncommon sight. With all these
cows around, obviously there are a number of Musth
bulls around, so one has to be quite careful,
especially when walking. Tami Parkhurst will tell
you what its like to be revved full on by a bull in
Musth in an open vehicle, Tami; I hope you’ve
recovered by now.
In general the elles have been fairly well behaved
and have not (touch wood) done any damage to Mohave
for some time. Apart from the Musth bulls, most of
the elles have been pretty docile, due to the fact
that conditions are so good and there’s no need for
stress.
Our pride of twelve Lions have fragmented due to
difficult hunting conditions but are still around
and are being seen more regularly by our guests and
staff. A group of Cheetah, a female with four six
month old cubs have been seen regularly around
Eagle’s Rock and one morning whilst on a drive with
guests, we drove around the corner and found all
five on an Impala ram that was still in its death
throws. We watched them feed on the Impala for about
thirty mites at about forty meters. They were
totally unfazed by us.
One group of our guests, on their first day here,
saw Lion, Leopard, Cheetah and Elephant on their
first drive. The following day they saw the same
Leopards (a female with two cubs) again – talk about
luck!
During the rainy period in February and March, we
had an increase in sightings of reptiles, especially
snakes, which under normal conditions are not often
seen. I saw three different Snouted (Egyptian)
Cobras within about a week. The one, we had to kill
as it was in Rutt camp at the time we were
re-erecting it. It measured 2,3 metres! According to
the snake books they don’t get much bigger than
that. All three were totally black, which is
interesting, as the only Snouted Cobras I have ever
seen, have been in the banded phase or brown.
Birding has been exceptionally good during the rainy
season. Unusual species like; Threebanded coursers,
Dusky larks, Marsh owls, Eastern red footed kestrels
and others were observed. It was not so much the
rare species that were interesting, but the vast
amounts of other species such as; Monotonous larks,
Crowned lapwings, Temminks coursers, raptors and
waterfowl that were seen, I guess all thriving on
the amount of food available from the rains. The
resident Black Eagles have been seen breeding, so we
are hoping that they will be successful in their
efforts this time.
Another interesting thing about the avian behaviour
this season was the late departure of migrants.
Carmine bee-eaters left more or less on time, but
the Woodland kingfishers are still around and it’s
already the end of April ! I guess also the good
conditions kept them here this long.
To keep up with demand we decided to put an
additional fully-contained kitchen at Musth Camp so
now we can have two groups enjoying the camp without
sharing kitchen, dining facilities.
Mohave Camp has undergone some improvements, we have
added a deck next to the bar overlooking the Mohave
river. This has proved to be a very popular
addition. The doors to the huts have been changed
and are much improved.
The very exciting news is that we have, Tuli
Wilderness Trails, Tuli Safari Lodge and Talana
Farms have gone into a joint venture with the
neighbouring communities and leased farm, Molema,
alongside Tuli Wilderness Trails, providing us with
an extra 4000 hectares of traversing and
opportunities for more exciting game sightings.
We look forward to having you visit us soon.
Kind regards
Craig
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