Painted Dogs

This month we have been blessed with some excellent sighting of Africa's second rarest large carnivore the Wild dogs, the first being the Ethiopian Wolf.

The pack of ten, made up of six adult and four pups, spent the morning lounging around with full bellies. In the Selous Game Reserve they specialize in killing Impalas, this time of year here in the Selous is a time of plenty for the dogs, as this is calving season for the Impalas.

With a kill rate of 80% or more, their pray stand little chance.

The Selous is one of the best places to see these magnificent creatures.

Crocodile Courtship....

Just before afternoon tea yesterday I spotted Emmanuel, one of our guides, observing something in the river, I asked him what he has seen and he pointed out these two crocodiles, who were in the middle of a courtship display. The female (the much smaller one) had her head and neck pointing out of the water for about 15 minutes before the male moved around in front of her. He then arched his tail upwards and his head and neck expanded and raised out of the water, then ripples and bubbles of water appeared from both sides of the males body! It was really interesting to watch.

Crocodiles are the closet living relatives of the long gone dinosaurs and the Nile crocodiles can grow up to 6 meters and live for over 100 year.

Mother crocodiles also use vibrations to create ripples and bubbles in the water as a communication signal to young crocodiles that danger is approaching, her offspring feel the tremors created by the mothers vibrations in the water which make the young dive to safety.

Camp Visitors

Yesterday morning after breakfast one of our waiters looked up in the makuti thatching of our mess and spotted this well camouflaged young python. The beautiful snake was well intertwined on the wooden poles of the roof. We thought rather than leaving the snake and maybe it accidentaly falling on someone's lunch we should remove him. Our step ladder was not tall enough to reach him so we called our camp roof climber Shabani Simba to get him down, he got him down while Thom our Kiba point manager was there to catch him and release him off into the wilds once again. We were privileged to have such a close up view of a truly stunning snake.

Later in the day we heard a quiet crash on to the dry leaves outside the office, we went to investigate and found this gecko having a bad day with this stripe bellied sand snake.

The animals just can't stay away from our camp as this morning a Pygmy Kingfisher flew into our office, we waited a while for him to find his own way out, he couldn't so we released him and he flew to the nearest perch and then watched us for few minutes bobbing his head up and down before flying off.