Mana Magic and Hwange Highlights

[michael-ibk]

Thanks, @@Soukous , @@Big Andy , @@Big_Dog , @@Zim Girl , @@screentraveller , @@xelas , @@wilddog , @@madaboutcheetah , @@Alexander33 , @@Atravelynn , @@TonyQ , @@Africalover and @@Marks !

 

 

 

How close did you get to the hyebas? difficult to tell with the photographs.

 

Not quite sure, Linda, hard to say from memory. Maybe 20 m? My lens was at 370 mm.

Edited November 22, 2015 by michael-ibk

[michael-ibk]

We started very early next morning (left camp shortly after 05:00) to try to locate the Dogs again - but, to cut a long story short, we wouldn´t find them. At about 08:30 we admitted defeat. It was ok for us, we had seen them yesterday after all. And after a week on safari, with so many great experiences already behind us, I generally get much more relaxed, less "wantwantwant to see this or that", and am happy with what just comes along. It was a beautiful morning:





Side-Striped Jackal. No Black-Backeds in Mana, this is the common type here. We had seen several of them already by now, especially in Chitake, but they all were very shy and ran off as soon as they saw us. This one was much more relaxed, but he did seem to be in a bit of a mangy state.



Grumpy Buffalo



This Kudu female just froze, standing no more than 5 or 6 metres away from us. Maybe she thought we couldn´t see her behind her bush?



I never tire of taking photos of Zebras!





I always enjoy Southern Ground Hornbills, they are such cool birds. In South Africa, as discussed recently on ST, they are apparently quite rare, but that´s not true for Southern Africa - plenty of them around on this trip.

We spent time at one of the smaller channels where this Buffalo was quite indifferent to our presence and we had fun taking close-ups of him and his clean-up crew.







Oxpeckers and Buffalos have long been thought to be an example of a perfect symbiosis, Oxpeckers get food, Buffaloes are kept clean. As Doug told us, recent studies suggest that´s not necessarily true. Buffaloes without oxpeckers are no more prone to illnesses than others, and the birds can be quite painful because they pick in flesh wounds and keep these open. So some think the relationship is actually pretty one-sided.



Well, the Big Boys certainly don´t seem to mind them, though.





This one seemed to have some kind of tumor.

Later in the morning we drove to Long Pool:





Black-Necked Stilts





Some smaller Crocs enjoyed the morning sun. Doug warned us to stay well clear from the waterline.





Yellow-Billed Kite

[michael-ibk]

"There´s one thing we haven´t tried for yet - Nyala", Doug said, and we were more than happy to give that a shot. We drove pretty far away from the flood plains, quite some stretch on the main road leading inland, and then took a turn right, on a road which apparently is seldom used.



It leads here:



Ten Rhinos Pan, one of the inland waterholes, an oasis of life in the middle of this barren bushland. The name, of course, is a sad one now. In the old days, with this area being perfect habitat for Black Rhinos, lots of them would congregate here, and that´s where it gets its name of. They are all long gone, of course.

Nyala normally avoid open areas, they only come out if the lack of water forces them to do that. So, late in the season, there is a chance of finding them on the flood plains, when they are drawn to the pools to drink, but Doug felt that this place would give us a better chance.



We were just sitting at the waterhole, in the shadows of some trees, and kept still, hoping that something would show up. We didn´t need to wait long, some elephants entertained us.





I enjoyed their golden colour, it reminded me of the well-known images of Dzanga Bai.

Sometimes, like with our Buffaloes in Chitake, you need a lot of patience for getting to see what you are aiming for. And sometimes all it takes is sit around for 10 minutes, and - there you go:



A beautiful Nyala bull. It doesn´t seem entirely clear if it´s "Bull" or "Ram". Nyalas show a marked sexual diphormism, with the females being much smaller. As a result the male is mostly known as a bull in common with the larger antelope species and the female a ewe in common with the smaller antelopes.



We had never seen them before, and I always love seeing new species. So Nyala had been pretty high on our wishlist, and we were happy to see it!



Actually, they are not rare at all, they are classified as "Least Concern". In South Africa especially, they are "nothing special".



Also in Gonarezhou, as Doug told us, they are very easy to see. Here in Mana, however, they are quite a rare treat.



Wikipedia gives the population numbers for Zimbabwe with just a 1,000, so not much at all. But I often wonder what the actual basis for counts like that really is, especially for animals like Nyala who are living in such inaccessible areas.





They are cautious animals, and even this stately bull would be very nervous, often looking up, sometimes also in our general direction, but wouldn´t see us. Antelopes, as Doug would tell us, are colour-blind, and if they don´t get wind of one, and you don´t move, it would be very hard for them to make you.



After a while some trumpeting of the Elephants spooked him, and off he was.

Edited November 22, 2015 by michael-ibk

[CDL111]

Good to see a "first" Nyala, really enjoying this report, but a walking safari is not for us. Cannot get enough of the photos of Boswell.

[michael-ibk]

Sitting at Ten Rhinos Pan was an almost meditative experience, and a trip highlight for me. It was a perfect scene of peacefullness and serenity. We would watch the Elephants come to drink, the thousands of Doves coming and going, the Egyptian Geese swimming along, smaller and bigger raptors soaring int the sky, and no other people anywhere nearby.

Several Kudu families would come drinking over the next two hours.



Never ever would all of them get their heads down to drink, at least one or two would always observe, always scan for possible dangers.

And if anything seemed off to them, be it only a Sparrow-Hawk flying by too close - off they were.





A pair of African Fish Eagles was majestically overlooking "their" waterhole.



Doug had to take one for the team to take notice of what was one of the most heartwarming sightings of this trip: A Vervet Monkey sitting high in the tree above us peed on him. She had a tiny, tiny baby in her arms which could only be days, maybe hours old. (The heartwarming part was the baby, not the peeing-on-Doug-part, in case you were wondering.)



She touched it very, very gently whenever the baby would move. Seeing this Mother´s love for her little one was just sweet.



One young Elephant came to drink, and we were wondering where the rest of his family was. He certainly was not of an age yet to make it on his own. Still, he looked very healthy, and it was fun watching him enjoy the cooling water.



A beautiful Kudu bull:





As mentioned before, the number of Doves, especially these Emerald-Spotted Wood Doves, coming and going was just amazing.



It as already 10:45 when Doug suggested to leave. It was a long drive back to camp. "15 more minutes", I asked, hoping for Nyala females to show up.

And what was that, at 10:55? I was very proud that I had asked to wait a bit longer when Doug whispered "Nyala ...!"



It´s fascinating how similar to Bushbucks they look, isn´t it?



Well, that´s because these two were Bushbuck.



Even Doug was fooled when he had first seen them in the thickish, probably because we all wanted to see Nyala, and that´s what we all saw then. Well, the females will have to wait for another trip, we left Ten Rhinos Pan at 11:15.

[michael-ibk]

But not quite finished with Ten Rhinos Pan, before our Bushyalas we had seen some very cool Eagle interaction. The female had caught some fish:



They were performing their famous "Cry of Africa" song then.



The female would not share. "Go catch your own fish, sluggard hubby of mine", she seemed to say, and he was miffed.



But they soon had other worries when THIS happened:







We had watched this Martial Eagle earlier, he had tried to catch an Egyptian Goose even (without success). And now he had obviously decided that he needed to show the Fish Eagles who was boss.



After he had made that clear, he seemed to realize that this branch was not all that exciting after all, and satisfied that he had had driven the "lesser" Eagles off, he left again. Bully!

[Big Andy]

Ah so that's where you saw the nyala, that was the same place we saw them when we were travelling down from Chitake. We had lunch there although I'd forgotten the name of the place until you said it.

[madaboutcheetah]

Michael, that's a brilliant ME series ....

Quick suggestion (not even sure how it will be - but, give it a try) what if you tilted that shot as Vertical frame and flipped the photo - the one with the two birds in the frame?

[Big_Dog]

I like the herbivores shots. The hiding kudu cow was funny. It's rare to make the duller antelopes look interesting in photos and perhaps this is a true test of photographic creativity, not how many leopards or pangolins you can snap. Food for thought.
The buffalo bull in the lillies is also great, love that shot.

WOW for the eagle interaction too!

[Atravelynn]

Adorable shot of Doug, do email him that if you have not.

 

"Interestingly, the thing which fascinated my non-safari-friends back home the most was the long-drop toilet which takes sand" My experience too. But at least that is a more interesting topic than this question asked with dread, "How long is the flight?" or the rather prying, "How much does that cost?"

 

Fantastic fish eagle - martial eagle interaction! Wow. To think that sort of thing is going on all the time. You just happened to be in the right place to witness and photograph it.

 

I know you are always thrilled with new species so the nyala show had to be exciting. Drinking, running, bounding. Nyala put on a performance for you. I was told that those white spots on the side of the male nyala's face is where God put his fingertips when he held the nyala's face to kiss it. I have also thought that female nyala look a lot like bushbuck.

 

Getting peed on by a new born vervet is a tremendous honor. I hope Doug is aware of that.

Edited November 22, 2015 by Atravelynn

[CaroleE]

@@michael-ibk

 

Wow 3 pages in and as you can tell by the number of likes I am not liking this at all Yet another trip report increasing the 'I need to go to Mana' thoughts in my head.

Superb initial post and set of images.

A wild dog on the drive to Mana. Crikey that is lucky. Leopards, civets during dinner. Just a few of the highlights so far.

 

Kanga Camp looks great. All those visitors (especially the eles), I wouldn't leave the deck! Looks like a great place to kick back and relax before the serious camping/walking begins. Thank you for the comparison shot of it in dry and wet season and the tip about it being best in the dry season. That does make complete sense, but sometimes you should be told the obvious in case you haven't worked it out for yourself!

 

Ok onwards, let's see how muddy, dirty and real this trip became.....

[CaroleE]

 

 

A Turner-esque sunset photo . Beautiful.

 

So pleased you finally saw the buffalo....well worth the wait. Your patience was rewarded.

And congrats on the 2000th post...a mighty fine way to mark that event in my book.

Edited November 22, 2015 by CaroleE

[screentraveller]

great eagle sequence, great sunset

[Treepol]

@@michael-ibk along with many others I also really like the eagle pics.

[madaboutcheetah]

Michael, I saw a photo of you with the monopod on Big Andy's trip report - typically, how many hours would you walk at a time and did you find the monopod handy or a hindrance on the walk?

[michael-ibk]

Thanks, @@CDL111 , @@madaboutcheetah , @@Big_Dog , @@Atravelynn , @@CaroleE , @screentraveller and @@Treepol!

Good to see a "first" Nyala, really enjoying this report, but a walking safari is not for us. Cannot get enough of the photos of Boswell.

That´s ok - the world would be a very boring place if all of us would like exactly the same things. I might have one more of Boswell coming up.

Ah so that's where you saw the nyala, that was the same place we saw them when we were travelling down from Chitake. We had lunch there although I'd forgotten the name of the place until you said it.

I thought it would be the same place, Andy - so you had the females and we had the male.

Michael, that's a brilliant ME series ....
Quick suggestion (not even sure how it will be - but, give it a try) what if you tilted that shot as Vertical frame and flipped the photo - the one with the two birds in the frame?

Thanks Hari. You mean like this?

Atravelynn said: I was told that those white spots on the side of the male nyala's face is where God put his fingertips when he held the nyala's face to kiss it. I have also thought that female nyala look a lot like bushbuck.

Getting peed on by a new born vervet is a tremendous honor. I hope Doug is aware of that.

Really like the "God´s fingertips", Lynn. Well, we don´t know for sure if it was the newborn or Mum peeing on Doug. Probably less of an honour if it wasn´t the Baby?

Michael, I saw a photo of you with the monopod on Big Andy's trip report - typically, how many hours would you walk at a time and did you find the monopod handy or a hindrance on the walk?

Hari, in Chitake it was all walking, from about 05:30 to about 11:00 and from 15:30 to about 18:00, but often we would just sit and wait. On the Flood Plains we did mainly walk in the afternoons (same time) and it was some walking, but more driving in the mornings, except when we were going after the Dogs. I wouldn´t say the monopod was exactly handy when walking, but it certainly helped with taking photos. When the area was a bit more difficult I would use it like a walking stick, otherwise I would just put it (with the camera mounted on) over my shoulder. Walking was generally easy, most of it on open terrain, except - again - when going after the dogs which was through pretty thick and thorny bushland.

Edited November 23, 2015 by michael-ibk

[michael-ibk]

Well, all good things come to an end - and so we embarked on our very last afternoon walk in Mana Pools!

 

For Elephants, of course, we didn´t have to walk anywhere, as usual they were all around us.

 

 

 

Hey, is that Boswell over there?

 

 

Of course that´s him, and he delighted us with a farewell presentation.

 

 

We never really concentrated on Hippos on this trip (except when they would block our tent´s entrance and fell asleep there), but they are everywhere in the Zambezi.

 

 

 

Pied Kingfisher - one of my favourites.

 

 

The fig trees were ripe with fruits, and these Trumpeter Hornbills just loved them.

 

We joined the others for just a very small distance in the car to pass Mucheni 2 to 4, and then walked downstream. Soon we saw an impressive Eland bull.

 

 

Animals are very approachable in Mana Pools, but this one was almost absurd, we walked closer and closer and he didn´t mind one bit.

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually he remembered that he was an Eland and supposed to be skittish and backed out.

 

We wouldn´t have any "special" sightings this last afternoon, but it was just beautiful. A blue sky, the sun in our face, a light breeze from the river, and the wonderful Mana settings - Life is good!

 

[michael-ibk]

On our way East we then walked along the banks of the Zambezi, which we hadn´t really done before - what a place for a walk it is!





Sometimes we would move away a bit from the banks, and then reapproach - and often surprised Hippos who retreated into the water with amazing speed. We also saw one monster of a Crocodile but it was gone too quickly for pictures.





White-Crowned Lapwing



This is Trichellia island, one of the many smaller or bigger isles in the middle of the Zambezi. We liked seeing it since originally Trichellia campsite (a bit more downriver) had been appointed to us.



Doug in action.





Doug MacDonald, safari guide extraordinaire. The fact that we are already talking with him about a 2017 trip should make it clear how much we enjoyed his guiding. Best one we´ve ever had - by far! (And I do think very highly of many guides we had before.)



Little Bee-Eater



White-Fronted Bee-Eater



The sun was setting quickly now - our time here was coming to an end. I was trying to absorb the scenery, to take it all in, to have that perfect memory in my mind of how beautiful Earth can be.





African Darters

Not only the river to look at, to our right we had all the typical Mana scenes non-stop:

 

We met up with the rest of the gang near Trichellia campsite and enjoyed our final sunset in Mana:





With sundowners, of course!



It won´t be our last one in Mana Pools, I know that for sure!

[michael-ibk]

Our last morning in Mana Pools dawned. The first day on safari lasts what feels like an eternity, but then time seems to pass quicker and quicker, and when the end of a trip comes it´s so hard to believe - is it really already over?

Not completely. We had hoped for our flight to depart quite late, so that we would still have one proper morning activity in Mana. But it was not to be, our flight was scheduled already for 08:00, and we had to leave camp by 07:00.

Oh well, we still had one thing on our "to do list" - the Carmines! And we had a colony 100 m from camp after all.

On our first afternoon Doug had already placed a stick on the bank border, hoping that the birds would accept it as a sitting place.



And he also set up a hide. Talk about a man well prepared.





AndMic and me waited inside that thing, whereas Big Andy (with his bigger camera firepower) decided to just sit outside a bit further away.

Truth be told, the next hour was quite nerve-wrecking. We had hoped to get the Carmines in the sun, but it was too early for that, and even at 06:30 - when we really had to go to have our breakfast and say Good Byes - their nesting holes still were in shadows.

The hide was not as useful as we thought, because we were in no position to get them on the banks. At 06:20 we left the hide and just sat at the river´s edge, and most of the following photos are from that short time span.

At first no Carmines at all, still sleeping. Impatiently I took pictures of Sparrows.



After a while some Carmines would show up, though they still wouldn´t accept the branch Doug had positioned there for them, they used a different one a bit farther away.







Once in a while some White-Fronted Bee-Eaters would rest on a wood pile sticking out from the river.





I´ve read that sometimes they do nest together with Carmines.



Of course I also tried to get the Carmines in flight! God, this was one of the most stressful things I´ve ever done! The little bastards are so #*§$)§($ fast, just little red streaks flashing by, and the low light did not exactly help.





I took hundreds and hundreds of pics, and the camera´s delete button was put to the test afterwards.



Doug suggested later that it would probably be easier to just manual focus on one specific place and take a picture whenever a bird flies through that spot. Makes (a bit of) sense, though I´m not sure how easy it would be to manual-focus on somewhere mid-air with no real reference figure.

When we left our hide to try our luck at the nesting holes many of them would fly up a tree.



Their colony:













Outside I was starting to get a bit more successful with CIF shots.















But time flies when you´re having fun stress ( ) and at 06:30 we really had to go. During our hour with the Carmines I thought "Damn they´re FAST!" probably a thousand times.

[michael-ibk]

Quick breakfast and quick Good Byes - unfortunately our departure from Mana was a bit rushed, but we really had to leave for the airport now. Since Doug was moving on to Kanga with Big Andy and Shirley where he would welcome new clients Andy drove us. We saw another kill on the way - a Baboon had taken a Starling.

 

 

The next picture shows one of the scenes I would have expected to see often in Mana but we did just this once. As mentioned before we never encountered others on foot and saw few other vehicles - Doug had told us that he had tried to dodge others, and he had been very successful in doing that.

 

 

Our plane was already waiting for us, and then - off we were.

 

 

We came kind of full circle when we passed Kanga Camp on the flight - even from up here the astounding number of Impalas and Eles frequenting the waterhole could be clearly seen.

 

 

But there´s really only one way to end the Mana part of this report - with a proper group shot!

 

 

Thank you Para, Isaiah, Lewuit, Henry, @@Andrew Smith , @@Doug Macdonald , @@Big Andy , @@AndMic and Shirley, it´s been fun!

 

(NOT the end of this report, btw, four days in Hwange still coming up - and I do have the feeling some good stuff might have happened there. )

Edited November 23, 2015 by michael-ibk

[SafariChick]

I think you did great with the CIF (love that acronym based on BIF!) shots! I won't hold it against you that you deleted a ton :-) Glad you were able to get some time in with them before leaving. Mana sure is gorgeous!

[Alexander33]

@@michael-ibk

 

Such an amazing trip, and it just keeps coming. Wonderful!

 

I laughed out loud at the challenges you described in photographing the carmine bee eaters. I think that's one of the things I love about bird photography. -- it's hard! When you finally get a great shot, then, wow, now that's an accomplishment! What a great feeling

 

And what a great report. I'm looking forward to more.

[screentraveller]

Adorable: 2 carmines on 1 branch

[Zim Girl]

@@michael-ibk

 

Beautiful closing pictures of Mana Pools. That walk between the Muchenis and Trichelia along the Zambezi is just so scenic isn't it?

[Atravelynn]

Time flies, the carmines fly (and you caught them), then your plane flew. But the starling flies no more. You just caught that baboon kill.

 

Great group shot. Everybody is looking happy.

 

"Well, we don´t know for sure if it was the newborn or Mum peeing on Doug. Probably less of an honour if it wasn´t the Baby?" Only honorable mention, then.

 

"Best guide ever" is high praise for Doug!