Via Nairobi, London, New York, Nova Scotia, New York (again), London (again), Birmingham, Leeds, Scotland, London (yet again) and Nairobi (again), Ian and I are finally back home at Kulafumbi, overlooking “our” familiar yet oh-so-changed river.

But first, before I tell you of our homecoming and our riverine friends, I’m going to make a brief attempt to update you on events during late March and early April, just before I went away and during which time I neglected this diary in deference to my workload (which is not diminishing, incidentally, but which will have to make space for this diary from now on, as I do not intend to neglect it again…)

The end of March saw the river raging in a spectacular flood, the highest of the year so far. You can follow the whole episode in pictures here.

Who would have thought it? We even added a new mammal to our list of animals seen at Kulafumbi, for a Gerenuk suddenly turned up here on 31st March. In fifteen years, we’ve never seen one of them here. It was a female, and she looked panicked, as if she had been running from a predator. She hesitated by the Mtito River, contemplating the leap across, before dashing away again. I managed to get a quick shot of her. You can see the long neck and legs, which make this antelope so distinctive. In fact, in Kiswahili, they are known as the swala twiga (proncounced swara twiga), literally the antelope-giraffe. They are also famous for standing up on their hind legs to browse taller shrubs and bushes.

Another infrequent visitor appeared in early April, this time in the form of a flower, which seems only to bloom once every few years. No ordinary blossom this one, but a huge black flower with luxuriant petals curling delicately around an extraordinary skyward-seeking spike. How exquisite, you might think, until you bend down to breathe in this giant beauty’s aroma, and are met with the stench of rotting meat. You recoil in disgust but the cloying smell stays with you, haunting your nostrils for the entire walk home. Is this a carnivorous plant then? Sending out its rancid smell to attract hapless insects into that tempting curling cavern, like a siren? Why else would nature have designed it thus? (We have other foul-smelling plants here in the Tsavo region, such as the hydnora abyssinica, for example, which emits a stench of rotting meat to attract insects which then pollinate the plant.)

The extraordinary black flower
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April saw a multitude of flowers, as the rains continued to fall. Despite our beehive disaster, some of our bees did survive (and now have new homes after a swift reparation job to our hives), for we saw them buzzing around on the delicate blue commelina flowers, which were blossoming in profusion. Unlike the sporadic flowering of the bauhinia during the last rains, this time the bauhinia all flowered together - but strangely, there was not even one “Seagrass Cabbage” leaf in sight – how different to the ‘Short Rains’ when the ground was carpeted with these broad-leafed plants. (The ‘Short Rains’ normally fall in November/December, but last year were late and then persisted into January and early February. The ‘Long Rains’ normally fall during April, May and June. This year, instead of a long dry spell, one rainy season almost followed directly on from the last, with just a few weeks’ gap in between.)

A mended beehive, back where it belongs


A honey bee on a commelina flower on our balcony

CATCH UP ON MORE PHOTOS FROM APRIL 2008:
Animals
Birds
Insects and other Creepy-Crawlies
Flowers and Plants
Trees
Athi River in Flood - 29th March 2008

A Goliath Heron having a cool-down and a wash in the river
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Raided beehives
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Completely destroyed...
Wasted honeycomb...

I’ll start with the bad news. Over the full moon, which fell on the Easter weekend, our beehives were raided. Eleven hives were destroyed and the honey stolen to sell to local brewers who use it to make alcohol – changaa as it is known here. Even worse than our indignation at being robbed, is the fact that honey thieves never leave any honey for the bees that worked so hard to make it. Without that vital honey-filled comb, they won’t be able to reproduce. After the raid, we saw a swarm of bees huddled together in a big mob, clinging to an acacia tree branch, robbed of their home. I felt so sorry for them…in fact, I am furious!

The better news is that, with the river full again, the hippos are happy. One turned up opposite the house, scouting out the reed beds where we often see hippos spending the heat of the day. The following day, a mother hippo appeared in the same place with a small baby…I can’t believe this is the same mother and baby hippo that were living here before – the baby looks smaller, so I think this is a new one. Hippos are one of the only mammals (apart from whales) that give birth underwater. Imagine being a baby hippo and having to swim to the surface before being able to take your very first breath! It’s so lovely having the hippos right here by the house.

Hippo in the reeds opposite the house
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Scouting out the area...
Hippo mother and new baby

Yesterday, the river was rising and falling every few hours, changing the landscape completely as huge grey storm clouds gathered overhead, preparing for our nightly downpour. (Today is another story again, but that will have to wait for my next post…)

Changing river levels
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There must have been rain to the west of us because the Mtito River started flowing, having been dry for over a month. From the house, we watched as it broke its way into the much larger Athi, crocodiles, herons, egrets and hammerkops congregating at its mouth.

The smaller, seasonal Mtito River flows into the Athi (in the right of the picture)
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A crocodile and a Grey Heron wait for prey at the mouth of the Mtito River
So elegant: a Grey Heron and a Great White Egret near the Mtito River mouth

Unbelievably, the Bauhinia (bauhinia taitensis) are flowering again already, only six weeks or so since they were last out in bloom…In fact, the dry season has been relatively short as the last rainy season ended so late. Unlike last time, when the Bauhinia started flowering in dribs and drabs, with the sudden heavy and sustained rain, the flowers have come out en masse this time, like snow across the landscape. Do you know the feeling when something is so beautiful, it hurts to look at it? This is how I feel when I look at these blossoming Bauhinia bushes, with their pungent yet delicate scent like roses. Each flower-laden bough looks like a ready-made wedding bouquet. Even as they start drying out – ever so soon, for the blossom is short-lived, turning pinkish and shedding its petals like confetti after just 24 hours – they retain an aching beauty.

Our driveway, adorned with Bauhinia bushes in full flower
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Bauhinia in full bloom...
...and turning pink as they dry out

Pretty pink Grewia
Triumfetta flavescens
What a luscious-looking fruit

Other flowers are blossoming too, including the pink grewia lilacina and clumps of small flowers which I think are triumfetta flavescens. The yellow-flowered creeper on our lawn (which shall remain nameless for the simple reason that I don’t know what it’s called) has produced a wonderful looking fruit that resembles a melon. In our balcony flowerbeds, the most incredible white lilies (below) have self-seeded – they’re similar but not the same as the white lilies I photographed during the last rainy season. They took us completely by surprise – all of a sudden they were there on our balcony in all their glory, and the next day, they were withered and gone…but what a flush of beauty while they lasted!