Oct. 15th

At 5:10 am we headed out to the game reserve. Our first stop was a hide in front of a waterhole where we saw lots of animals and birds.

wildebeest

Black Wildebeest

nyala-and-helmeted-turtle

Nyala and Helmeted Turtles

helmeted-turtle

closer Helmeted Turtles

red-billed-oxpeckers

Red-billed Oxpeckers bathing

yellow-fronted-canary

Yellow-fronted Canary

male-nyala

Nyala male

muddy-warthog

Muddy Warthog

We birded outside the hide and found a number of birds, two of which were really beautiful but we couldn’t get pictures. You can check out the links though–Pink throated Twinspot and Gorgeous Bushshrike.

Then we went to a river that was dried up except for a small mud hole. Once again the drought has done its damage and what we found in the mud hole was not good.

35-hippos

It’s really hard to tell but what you are seeing are about 35 hippos all bunched together in the mud. They cover themselves with mud to keep cool and protect themselves from the sun. Normally they would be mostly underwater. Hippos come out of the water at night to graze and there is very little grass to eat. If they don’t get rain soon these hippos are doomed. We can’t say for sure but we believed some were already dead. Near to this we saw

dying-impala

this suffering Impala. It was all very sad. There is a park bathroom nearby that is currently closed as they are diverting the sewage from it to the waterhole but it isn’t enough. BTW the sewage will not harm the animals. They are immune to any human disease it might contain.

We traveled along the edge of mountains that form the border with Mozambique to wetlands with lots of birds.

wooly-necked