I’ve been away more than I’ve been at home recently (more tales from my adventures shortly!), but thought while I have the chance, I’d check in quickly before disappearing from your screens again for a while.

The geese are faring fairly well, with eleven goslings still in tow (above). One casualty so far is sad but not bad going, considering how many contenders there are for gosling-guzzlers in this part of the world!

More new birds seem to be discovering our birdbath…including a Yellow Spotted Petronia, above (which is a type of sparrow, and is common in Tsavo) and the strange stub-tailed Northern Crombec which is now visiting our little acacia tree by the birdbath to forage for tiny insects along its branches (below).

Sandpipers are on the river again, back from their travels to Europe, the first of the migrants to return.

Remember Slim, the Black Tipped (aka Slender) Mongoose? Well, he’s still around and today I put out the remnants of a roast chicken for him.

To my surprise, the Ground Squirrels were the first to the carcass and started voraciously gnawing away at the bones (above).

What surprised me even more was that the squirrels seemed to enjoy eating fatty bits of flesh from the chicken too. Whatever next?

As soon as Slim appeared (below), he quickly made off with the whole carcass, obviously intent on having the feast all to himself. With so many squirrels about (I counted at least eight in the vicinity of the chicken today), who can blame him?

Part of the reason for the squirrel glut is that I’ve started putting out maize for whatever animals and birds want it – and it’s attracting dozens of squirrels as well as doves and francolin…even the sharp little dikdiks have found it and come each evening to have a free meal.

On a completely different note, the yellow Aloes in our balcony flowerbeds are flowering for the first time, which will probably bring in the sunbirds we see flitting around in the acacia trees around the house. I must try to remember to take a photo before I rush off on another trip again...

There’s been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing of wild things over the past few days so I’m going to have to tell you about it all in fits and starts, as I find the time…one thing which is extraordinary is how much the big beach down at Hippo Bend has changed with the high flood waters while we were away. The high ledge has been cut away completely, and now the beach is just huge and flat, with a sudden very tall step up to the riverine vegetation right at the outer edge. The Vervet Monkeys have babies in tow at the moment, as do the baboons. They’re very cheeky and cute, riding “under-slung” beneath their mother’s belly.

The sand ledge has been cut right back
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Vervet Monkey mother and baby
African Hawk Eagle in flight

It’s strange not to see our swallows or sandpipers around – they’re up in Europe by now. Nonetheless, it’s certainly been a bird watcher’s paradise recently, with a great variety of eagles soaring on the hot winds, all sorts of other fine-feathered visitors (more about them in upcoming posts) and quite a few comical avian sightings too.

Tell me: what is it about storks and standing on one-leg? The other evening we saw this Marabou Stork performing a “one legged ballet” in the treetops – it transpired (I think) that it was merely trying to balance on a rather precarious perch on a decidedly windy day. It seems that standing on one leg is something the Yellow-billed Storks like to do too…and speaking of Storks, a couple of Woolly-necked Storks are back at Hippo Bend again. They’ve been there for several days in a row now. The light was bad when I photographed them, but nonetheless they deserve to be featured here too, I feel!

One legged Marabou ballet
Click any image to enlarge

Yellow-billed storks on one leg each
Woolly-necked Storks

Speaking of all these different storks, brings to mind something which always amazes me, and that is the staggering diversity of nature. Even “small shifts sideways” create amazing varieties of creatures and plants. Take, for example, the three different types of Hornbills we’ve seen around the house in the last couple of days – similar to each other, yet each so different…

Grey Hornbill
Click on any image to enlarge
Von der Decken Hornbill (male)
Red-billed Hornbill in flight

Mongooses are another case in point. A few days back we saw a band of Dwarf Mongooses carrying their tiny babies across the road, en route to a termite mound where they would have been spending the night. Dwarf Mongooses are fascinating little creatures. They’re like bees in the sense that one animal cannot survive alone without a certain number of others. In order for these tiny mongooses to survive, each band needs to comprise a minimum of four-five members, each with strictly designated roles: the Alpha Female (leader of the pack and the only female to bear young), the Alpha Males, at least one Look-out, and at least one Nanny (if there are two babies in the group, then the Alpha Female will carry one, the Nanny will carry the other. If there are more than two babies, another Nanny is needed.) The mongooses move sleeping sites every day within their territories, carrying their babies in their mouths, in order to lessen the threat from predators, chief among which is the Grey Spitting Cobra.

Dwarf Mongoose look-out on top of the termite mound where the band's babies have been hidden
Dwarf Mongoose watching us closely
Banded Mongooses, slightly obscured by vegetation

Another social mongoose is the Banded Mongoose, which is bigger than the Dwarf Mongoose and more heavily set than the Black-tipped. As luck would have it, a band just passed by the house this morning. My view of them was not very clear, there were bits of vegetation in the way, but nonetheless I hope you can see their distinctive striped coats which give them their name. This band had big babies with them, already capable of foraging for themselves.

The Verraux Eagle Owl and the Pearl Spotted Owlette are also examples of large and small...

A giant among owls: the Verraux
...from another angle, after the owl had hopped to another branch
At the other end of the scale, a diminutive Pearl-spotted Owlette

The other evening we saw a Verraux Eagle Owl, a giant among birds, in the big riverine trees by Hippo Bend. These owls are HUGE, and they are all the more extraordinary for their pink eyelids, which you see each time they blink. The light was already low when we spotted the owl, but I hope you can make him out in the photos. As we were walking back to the house, we turned and looked back over our shoulder, and there he was again, this time right underneath the Marabou with a penchant for one-legged ballet…

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