Tuesday 27th May 2014

Back on EcoTraining duties today, a nice and easy reintroduction, I acted as back-up on a walk at Banini Pan for the Advanced Birding Course. My first task was to drive us the 15km or so to get there which was a lot harder than it sounds. Purely because we had a stand off with a bull in musth for 15 minutes. There was also the added pressure of having a truck full of guides, all of which had differing opinions on how to handle the situation.

It turned out to be the bull that I met at Nwambi Pan on the last trail, the one with the injured trunk. He was now fully in musth and quite a handful, I’m glad he wasn’t like that when we were sat on the floor just 30 metres from him.

He refused to move further than a big thicket of mopane, no more than a metre from the road. There was no way I could pass, he was actually waiting for me to try. I’m pretty sure he even tried tricking me into attempting to pass by pretending to feed. What I actually think he was doing was clearing a path so that he would have a clear run at us. He eventually gave up and moved on which meant we could carry on our way at last. But if it wasn’t for the elephant we wouldn’t have had our next sighting.

Two honey badgers… enough said.

JP and Margaux joined us this afternoon, they’re going to be here for Jomi’s group’s graduation week. Margaux came on the afternoon activity with us, it was good fun to have her in the back of the Landy again. We had a very chilled out time birding on the sandbanks of the Limpopo. Definitely coming back to this position again, hopefully I won’t have the rifle next time so I can have a couple of beers. The evening sun made the setting by lighting up the riverine forest a spring green as it curved east along the winding Limpopo.