WILDLIFE REPORT SINGITA PAMUSHANA, ZIMBABWE For the month of June, Two Thousand and Sixteen

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1 WILDLIFE REPORT SINGITA PAMUSHANA, ZIMBABWE For the month of June, Two Thousand and Sixteen Temperature Rainfall Recorded Sunrise & Sunset Average minimum: 14,1 C (57,3 F) For the month: 14 mm Sunrise: 06:30 Minimum recorded: 10,6 C (51,0 F) For the year to date: mm Sunset: 17:24 Average maximum: 26,2 C (79,1 F) Maximum recorded: 31,1 C (87,9 F) We've passed the equinox and are enjoying lovely sunny days and very chilly nights. Now is the time when we begin each day in several layers and seem to shed them by the hour! There's still good vegetation about because of the late rains, but most of the seasonal pans are dry and the wildlife is drawn to the permanent water sources. Here's what was happening in June: Wild dogs We eagerly await sightings of pups in the next few months, but for now we are regularly seeing the pack hunt and go about their ways while the alpha female is denning on the reserve. One morning s drive included seeing the dogs hunt and kill two impala. It seems that wild dogs and hyenas just cannot resist a good spat every so

2 often. One of these occasions was when we were on a morning walk and came across 11 wild dogs fighting with hyenas. Lions The Hippo pride seems to be perfecting the skill of hunting giraffes. Again they were seen this month feeding on a giraffe kill. We've also had good sightings of our coalition of three male lions, as well as the other coalition of two. There has been a pair of lions mating this month, and in the photo below you can see a male lion testing the scent of a lioness on the air. It's a behaviour known as 'flehmen' where a lion is able to assess the chemical components of a lioness' scent and know whether she is a reproductive state. Cheetahs Excellent news is that the female cheetah with a short tail looks pregnant. She's successfully raised litters before, so lets hope there are some healthy fluffy cheetah cubs soon. Two cheetah brothers have been spotted regularly in their preferred area south of our staff village, and another cheetah seems to have been driving its prey towards the fence around our head-quarters, to help in its hunting. This is not ideal but is behaviour seen from time to time - especially by wild dogs, where they cleverly work out that a fence can be used to aid their prey capture. Leopards Male and female leopards have been seen this month on our central plain, with one highlight being a leopard seen fighting with a troop of baboons. Rhinos We've had good sightings of black rhinos and many sightings of white, including a brief glimpse of a white rhino cow and her small calf.

3 Buffalo There have been several occasions where we've seen a vast herd of buffalo - we estimate up to 900! This photo is of a lone bull, moments after he'd finished wallowing in the sticky dark mud. Plains game There have been masses of plains game on the central open area. What a memory it is to stop for a cup of morning coffee and have over 30 zebra and a journey of giraffe grazing around you.

4 Elephants Our guests didn't know where to look when a huge breeding herd of elephants surrounded the vehicle, all of the giants totally relaxed. What a joy it is to see baby elephants at play. Hyenas Hyenas are really clever. One of their strategies is to tag hunting wild dogs, and then try and snatch their kills for themselves, so we've seen them several times this month milling around where the wild dogs are. But the most memorable hyena sighting of the month was when we found 16 hyenas at a pan, early one morning. Some of them were jumping around the base of a thorn tree and, lo and behold, trapped in the tree was a young male lion. Each time the lion tried to descend the clan would pounce on him, and this went on for close to two hours. As the morning warmed up some elephants came to drink, and they chased the hyenas - but the hyenas kept coming back. It was then that we discovered a wildebeest carcass. We suspect the lion killed the wildebeest before the hyenas ganged up on it. Special sightings African wild cat Serval cat 2 honey badgers 30 sable antelope 2 Lichtenstein hartebeest Big Five+ drive: 1 male leopard 1 hyena carrying a buffalo leg 3 male lions 1 bull white rhino 1 buffalo bull 1 sable bull 2 bull elephants Birds Very interesting birding moments included a female giant kingfisher trying to eat a very large bream; ground hornbills hunting; a three-banded plover using its feet to vibrate the ground to disturb and catch worms; and a hooded vulture eating meat-rich wild dog faeces! Fishing and boat cruises The fishing has been a bit quiet due to the colder weather, but we've had many relaxing afternoon boat cruises with sightings of buffalo, waterbuck, bushbuck and mating hippos. Walks It's the perfect time of year to do bush walks, and many of these have been to the rock art sites. Others have been in pursuit of wildlife. One of these resulted in finding a lion, and later on a hyena. On another occasion guests were taken on foot to locate wild dogs and hyenas fighting over a kill. After a 10 minute walk several wild dogs were found with about six hyenas, loudly debating who should finish the kill. After leaving the dogs, and walking to locate the cause of some loud cracking sounds in the mopane woodlands, a bull elephant with large tusks was found, and our guests were able to watch him feed and use his immense power to push and snap large trees. Another walk included a rest at one of the natural pans and resulted in four black rhinos being seen coming in for a drink. Activities The highlight of a day trip to Gonarezhou National Park was a huge python in a mopane tree!

5 Leopard branching out

6 A few years ago a flash of gold leapt from a prominent tree some distance from our airstrip road. Each time I've driven past it since I glance at it in hope... Then this happened: I went out before dawn on a scouting drive. Crawling along the airstrip road I gave the tree my standard concentrated glance. There was a leopard lying on a bough. It was staring hard at me. I slowly positioned the vehicle and brought it to a stop. Thoughts raced through my head, "Don't look directly at him - it's dark and he's in shade so dial in the right ISO, f-stop and shutter speed in manual mode, and don't mess this up - turn the radio low - breathe quietly." Using my most unthreatening body language I slowly looked back at him. He looked at me a while longer with his unusually light eyes, and settled a little. I pointed my intimidating large lens his way. His body language read, "I don't like that you've seen me, but you seem okay so just stay there and no false moves." After a while he relaxed enough to sit up and pull a stashed impala carcass out of a crevice in the tree's branches. He began feeding, and over the next 20 minutes the scene etched itself into my memory even though I had the photos to fall back on. Then the day woke up, another vehicle drove past, and this proved too much for the golden cat. He picked up the carcass, ran down the trunk of the tree and proceeded to feed in the long grass at the base, and was hidden completely. Although there are many leopards in this region they are naturally elusive and wary of human activity (as they should be), so to see this sighting here was a tremendous joy. On the rocks Once you've got your eye 'in' there is so much life to see on the rocks, especially at the lodge. This gives you ample time to study how their feet/hooves/paws are adapted for agility on these steep surfaces. Rock hyraxes or dassies (Procavia capensis) bound around, often at high speed over sheer cliffs, thanks to the black rubbery pads on their feet. The pads are moistened by numerous sweat glands, and they lift up in the centre for a 'suction cup' effect. This gives them their excellent grip on rocky surfaces.

7 The common flat lizard (Platysaurus intermedius) has long toes and small sharp claws that it uses like grappling hooks to grip on to rock surfaces. This brightly coloured fellow showed a savvy sense of real estate by perching on a rock at the entrance to the lodge, where he welcomed any females interested in a site inspection, but saw off any male intruders. Male and female klipspringers (Oreotragus oreotragus) avoid the stress of sexual dynamics by forming lasting pair bonds with one another. This female was busy keeping watch for any danger while the male fed nearby. Take a look at her hooves. She balances as if on ballet points. Klipspringers stand on the very tips of their almost circular hooves, each with the diameter of about 18 mm. The strong back legs can project the klipspringer up a smooth wall, and they can jump onto a projection as small as 27 mm. Moments in time What's special about this photo is that it shows both a male and female nyala (Tragelaphus angasii) together, so that you can see how very different they look. The difference in appearance between sexes is known as sexual dimorphism, and nyalas exhibit the highest sexual dimorphism among spiral-horned antelope. Nyala are very shy and cautious when approaching open spaces, preferring to stay in thicker vegetation where their stripes and spots help to create a fragmented illusion that camouflages them amongst the rays and dappled light cast by the sun.

8 A crash of five white rhinos huddles together for an afternoon nap. A male cheetah uses his tail as a flywhisk during his afternoon nap.

9 Wildebeest really don't meet our fickle human criteria for beauty, but when seen up close, as this one was from our sunken photographic hide, they have long, curled, rather enviable eyelashes. This look like a rather arbitrary photo of elephants on a dry road. It isn't. I was out scouting alone and got the vehicle stuck in a malicious patch of mud. Then these elephants appeared out of the woodland and marched towards me. I ignored them. All my efforts at extracting the vehicle were unsuccessful. I made 'the call of shame' for a colleague to come and help me. Then I had a drink of water, a think about the situation, tried a different approach and managed to wiggle the Land Cruiser onto dry land. Covered in thick black mud I gleefully cancelled the 'call of shame'. The elephants had found my performance boring and moved off. Thankfully. A far less stressful scene was this of white-faced ducks waking up to a new day. Some of them still had their bills tucked back beneath their feathers, in their warm ready-made duck-down duvets. It's interesting to note where they choose to spend the night - on islands and shallows so that they're alerted to any predator's splashing approach.

10 Pornithology While parked in the shade of a thorn tree I heard a persistent racket coming from a bird way up in the sticks. I took a couple of photos although it was almost impossible to see what was going on through camera or binoculars. I presumed it was a red-billed buffalo weaver but couldn t figure out why the one was jumping around the other so much, and making such a noise. I thought maybe it was a youngster demanding food, or a juvenile being kicked out of a nest but this didn t seem likely for the species. In preparing this report I took a closer look at the photos. It occurred to me when zooming in on the underexposed and stick-obscured photos that maybe it was a mating pair. I looked up 'red-billed buffalo weaver mating', and found I'd stumbled upon a rare, if not rather sensitive, sighting. The following is edited from a report on based on a published scientific research paper....few birds are blessed with a phallus; most couples achieve fertilization by pushing together their rear ends for a functional exchange of fluids. So 19th-century reports of a mock member in the buffalo weaver sent ecologist Tim Birkhead and his team from the University of Sheffield, UK on a field trip to drought-struck Namibia. Catching the birds in the act was a tough job, recounts Birkhead: "In three years we saw eight matings." Living communally in a large stick nest, a frisky pair would occasionally emerge and fly to a nearby tree. "I'd run after them, sweating profusely with my binoculars steaming up," he says. The amorous pair would start bouncing up and down - over numerous consecutive bouts. Compared to the 1-2-second tryst most birds manage, their staying power is unique. Yet, being caught up in the action, entry of the elusive organ was hard to make out. Even in captivity "they performed beautifully," but the view was blocked, says Birkhead. So his team glued a piece of cardboard to an unlucky bird's member. The crude contraception did not prevent mating, suggesting that the buffalo weaver organ is actually a weapon in sperm wars. By choosing a male who rubs longest or best, females may be selecting top-quality sperm. "He persuades her of his suitability," thinks Birkhead. Paternity testing revealed that female buffalo weavers sire birds from multiple males, suggesting that sperm competition is hot. Time spent courting must be shown to predict sperm transfer or success to really back up the idea, says Geoff Parker, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Liverpool.

11 This is one of the beautiful trees that frame the gardens at Singita Pamushana. Written and photographed by Jenny Hishin Singita Pamushana Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve Zimbabwe 30 June 2016