Urikaruus, the final episode! (almost!)

As the morning dawned on our final day in this lovely little bush camp, we awoke to find a number of eagles visiting our small haven as they had at various times over the last few days. There was a tawny eagle far away on the other side of the watering hole, just too far for me to get a useful photo. We decided to go out on an early morning drive this morning, and not long after we left camp we saw this eagle with two fork-tailed drongos in attendance.

We had decided to head off in the direction of the lion kill we had seen the day before to see if perhaps there were now other predators or scavengers nosing around what the lions had left behind. Well we were in for a surprise, the lions were still there! This must have been close on 24 hours after they had originally made the kill. There were a number of jackals nosing around in the area, but they were giving the lions a very respectful wide berth. The wildebeest carcass had ben reduced now down to the head and some bones!

This was one of the every hopeful jackals that were patrolling the area.

As we had spent quite a bit of time with these lions the day before we decided to move on, and were rewarded only a few minutes later with the sighting of 3 secretary birds. Two of them were moving in an area quite close to each other and the third was 20 or 30 metres away from them.

As we were watching them one of the birds found something interesting in the grass.

Immediately the other bird rushed over and tried to claim the prize for itself. This started an amazing dance duel!

And just as it started it was over! In fact the time stamps on the three photos above show that each shot was taken one (1) second after the other! So three grand seconds of display and it was all done. Life returned to normal and they continued to forage as they had before.

A little further on we spotted a Namaqua Dove sitting in a tree quite close to the road. These a very pretty little doves (at least in my opinion!) and I had been wanting a decent shot of them for sometime. This was not too bad, but still I'd like to get a better one.

Later on we spotted another secretary bird, some large herds of springbok, one almost get bored with the springbok becuase you see so many. Then a juvenile martial eagle sitting in a tree.

After that we decided to head back to camp and make brunch, we had been out for about two hours and had some nice sightings. I'll leave this post here and wind up our Urikaruus stay in my next post, then we moved on to Nossob .... but that's another days post :-)

all the best

Ivan

http://www.andersen.co.za/

The Urikaruus story continues

Having had the excitement of the lions at lunchtime we moved back to our camp, on the way we passed a large herd of springbok right on the roadside. This opportunity allowed me to get a real close-up of some of these iconic animals.

Then when we arrived back at the camp there waiting for us at the drinking hole were a herd of giraffe. I watched with interest as these tall animals, that can look so graceful as they wander around the veld, akwardly reach down to get a drink. The shot of this one below had me holding my breath as its legs went wider and wider, occasionally slipped in the mud around the hole and seemed to have incredible flexibility as they bent under the weight and angle, forced by the massive distance the giraffe needs to come down to drink.

The Lanner falcons were also busy around the waterhole, swooping in try to catch a pigeon or two.

Also hanging around trying to look dis-interested were the fork-tailed drongos.

As the afternoon moved on we decided to go out for a short drive. The first new sighting we had was this Capped Wheatear

And then we spotted this little darlings of the desert! The bat-eared foxes. They were just a little too far away and moving further away, and the light was dropping so I struggled to get a decent shot of them, but this one illustrates their classic pose as they search of their evening meals.

We then headed back to camp. Shortly after we arrived back, the giraffe that had been at the waterhole earlier had been replaced by a large herd of wildebeest. I counted more than fifty in this image below, and that was not all of them.

We then settle down to review the photos we'd been taking and prepare for supper. Here is Claire Marie, my younger daughter looking through her pic's from the day.

And of course as it started to get darker, and the moths and other insects were attracted to our lights the geckos came out to feast with us!

I think thats all for this post ... its taken me way too long to get it finished!

all the best
Ivan
http://www.andersen.co.za/

In and around Urikaruus - part 3

Well day two (April 2nd 2010) dawned in Urikaruus, this was after an interesting evening sitting on the veranda cooking our evening meal on an open fire. As night was starting to set in my daughter Claire Marie spotted (no pun intended :-) ) a leopard strolling down out of the bush, almost directly opposite from us, towards the watering hole. She, that is the leopard, was quite nonchalant and disinterested in the hum of exitement stemming from these wide-eyed invaders of what was clearly her home territory. Unfortunately it was too dark, and she was too far away to get any kind of photo of her, so we just sat and watched in the gathering gloom, for as long as we could see her and then returned to our evening meal, as she set off to find hers.

Well, having spent so much time in the car over the first few days of our trip we decided to relax on this morning and see what may make an appearance in and around our camp. I tried to get a few landscape shots from our bedroom veranda just after the sun rose, but I won't bore you with those attempts having already posted some views in my earlier post. Having looked out front and not seen much other than the great view, I then turned my attention to behind the chalet and saw this in the rays of the rising sun!

It must have been there the day before, but it needed the early morning light to reveal it to my human eyes. What an amazing web! The top anchor line stretched probably nearly two metres, you can see it running almost horizontally accross the top of the image. The overall web was about 40-50cm high and about double that in horizontal diameter. One of the amazing things about this web was that it was virtually invisible once the sun got up into the sky.  If you look really closely you can see the spider in the top left part of the middle circle of the web. It just give you a perspective on the size of construction this little lady made!

Still struggling to see her? Well, here's an even closer view.

What amazing colours and shapes she has. She blends in with the natural surrounds incredibly well too.

I'll leave this post here, but this day started well and got better and better. So stay around and I'll tell you more :-)

all the best,
Ivan
http://www.andersen.co.za/

In and around Urikaruus ... part 2

Relaxing on the veranda of our unit looking over the waterhole in front, wondering what might come along next, I was surprised by this tiny little fuit fly (Rhacochlaena pulchella Bezzi 1920 (Tephritidae: Adramini)) and some of its friends!

I'm not sure if it was after the sweat / salt or dry skin on my leg .... yes, that's my leg it is sitting on! But it did not seem to bite or sting, and when I zoomed in I was amazed at its colours and detail. This prompted me to start looking around for some other smaller occupants of the camp.

The next resident I discovered was this kite spider, she had built her web on the side of the kitchen unit, between it and our bedroom unit.

And what an amazing web. I tried to get a shot that would illustrate the density and complexity of this web. Theses are the best I could do.

The spider you see on the image on the top of the three above, is the black blob on the end of the sausage looking object, more or less in the middle of the image on the left (vertically) and on the left side (horizontally). The image to the right of the two lower images is a landscape crop of the left side image. If you look closely and use your imagination you can see the spider. But what I'm really trying to illustrate here is the density and complexity of her web. Other than webs of sociable spiders, which I'll post later this web has to be the most complex I've seen developed by a single spider.

Another regular visitor at this unit was the Kalahari Tree Skink. There were various members of this family around. This old chap looked rather as if he/she had survived a few wars! But none-the-less was relatively relaxed around us, and would check in every now and again to see if something interesting had been dropped for it to eat.

Then just to round off this post and the day, I spotted this little web glistening in the setting sun. I never discovered the occupant as it was quite high in a tree, and out of reach from the chalet veranda. I liked the way the sunlight picked up the strands, and I think it was possibly another kite spider.

And then to finish this post, one of the other regulars where ever we went. The yellow mongoose, put in and appearance, always alert always interested.

all the best,

Ivan

http://www.andersen.co.za/

In and around Urikaruus

Whew, its been a mission getting back on-line after all the disruptions to our local internet services. Hopefully that's behind us now.

Urikaruus, a cute little camp as I said previously. We were treated to some very warm (not surprisingly) weather during our stay here. This was the first camp that we were to spend more than a single night at. It was great to settle in and feel that there was no pressure to move on again.

As I described in my previous post, the units faced out into what I suppose may have been an old river bed, long since dried-up, now with a man made watering hole put in place to provide the resident animals with some place to get a drink! And come and drink they did!

The main visitors were the blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) and springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis), and they came in numbers! Some of the herds were well over 100 animals strong. We also had giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis), a number of different bird species, the Lanner Falcons (Falco biarmicus) were there daily catching either Namaqua doves (Oena capensis), Cape turtle doves (Streptopelia capicola) or Sandgrouse (Pterocles namaqua). Here are two lanner falcons that had just caught another bird and were eating it on a dead tree just to the right of our chalet.

The White-browed sparrow-weaver (Plocepasser mahali) and Cape Glossy starling (Lamprotornis nitens) were regular visitors on our veranda.

The sparrow-weaver and his wife and child and obviously become VERY habituated to the humans residing here, and vocally demanded to be fed on a regualr basis. They were so tame that I could touch them from time to time. We are strong believers in the fact that you MUST not feed the animals in the National Parks, so we would try to discourage these persistent little birds, but clearly others had been feeding them. Sad!

This little juvenile Laughing Dove Stigmatopelia senegalensis) had my daughters very concerned that it was too young to look after itself, but it seemed to be quite capable, and also very un-afraid of the human poking camera lenses in its face!

all the best
Ivan
http://www.andersen.co.za/

Back on-line at last ... and on with the trip.

Well, over the last few days there have been apparent "upgrades" taking place to the Seacom undersea cable that supplies South Africa with a significant portion of our international bandwidth. As a result of this work it has been almost inmpossible (for me anyway) to work on any of the international sites I use, like blogger.

Well, it seems like we're functioning again. So back to the trip.

Just after mid-day we arrived at Urikaruus. A small little camp just off the main road about halfway between Twee Rivieren and Mat Mata camps. A sum total of four two bed chalets, plus the Camp Attendants unit.

The picture on the right is of the chalet we stayed in. You can just see the roof of my car at the bottom of the pic. Gives you an idea of how high these units are on their stilts! The room to the left of our chalet is the kitchen / diningroom beloning to our unit. The image on the left of the two above looks along the back of the units from the perspective of just outside our unit at ground level.

And this the view from the front of the dining room!

Amazing :-) ... One of the things that really amazed all of us was the clarity of and colours in the clouds and sky, I don't think a picture can truely do it justice, but I've tried!

all the best Ivan
http://www.andersen.co.za/

On the move again ... Urikaruus here we come!

Urikaruus is described by the offical Sanparks website as :

- Unfenced, built on stilts, tourism assist. on duty
- No children under 12 allowed
- 1 bedroom with 2 single beds - No additional persons allowed
- Equipped kitchen - Gas fridge / freezer
- Provide own drinking water and firewood
- Barbeque facilities on deck
- Solar power for lights, gas for hot water
- Wc and shower
Urikaruus Wilderness Camp - Guests have to provide their own drinking water and firewood.


This really does not do this lovely little camp justice. Once again I'm moving ahead of myself.
We left Mata Mata around 9am in the morning. There had been an impressive rain storm the previous night, so we were interested to see what had happened on the roads and in the veld as a result.
 
As we moved out into the park it almost seemed; at first; as if the rain had just been sucked into the ground. The nice thing was that the dust had settled and when you drove along there was no real dust being created. we were sure as the day went on and it got hotter again this would soon change!
 
Our first sighting on this morning was one of our regulars, the black-backed jackal. This one was right by the roadside and I managed to get a couple of decent pictures, this one being my favourite:
 

Next was another regular, the Pale Chanting Goshawk (Melierax canorus), I was still searching for a great shot of this bird, and this nwas a little better but still not where I really wanted it.
 

Then I spotted the comedian of the Kgalagadi! This gemsbok had clearly caught its horns in something and had not managed to rid itself of the foliage.
 

And then junior! This little springbok was just exercising its running legs as we arrived. I unfortunately was not in a position to catch its first pronk, and dart. I think it could not have been more than 24hrs or so old. At a close look one can see some of the afterbirth remains on its mothers rear.
 

The light by now 10am, had become extremely harsh and bright, as you can see in the background of this images, making the lighting quite challenging. So, I am relatively pleased with the outcome of these shots, although I had to do quite a bit of post-processing.
Then we spotted a Lesser Grey Shrike (Lanius minor), a Lanner Falcon (Falco biarmicus), a Tawny Eagle (Aquila rapax) all in quick sucession.
 

 
Closely followed by a striped kingfisher (Halcyon chelicuti) with a grasshopper it had just caught, another Tawny Eagle and two Southern White-faced Owls (Ptilopsis granti).

 
Then we saw the impact of the previous night rain. The road flooded and the communal nest of some Sociable Weavers (Philetairus socius) that had gotten just too heavy with the water and fallen out of the tree.
 

The some more Eagles! Wow, we had gotten so used to NOT seeing big raptors in some of the other wilderness areas we visit on a more regular basis, that we were starting to feel quite spoiled! A Juvenile Martial Eagle (Polemaetus bellicosus) and a Black-breasted Snake Eagle (Circaetus pectoralis).
 

Whew, quite a morning, and I never mentioned the usual ... herds of springbok, wildebeest, gemsbok and of course ground squirrels and some smaller birds we could not identify. All of this was in two and a half hours! Shortly after that we arrived at our next camp Urikaruus. But thats for my next post ;-)
 
all the best
Ivan
http://www.andersen.co.za/