Jim's report on the Waterhole Count - Gee Willikers!

The Waterhole Count

Sunday, 13 March 2016

Every couple of months, CCF does a set of four all-day ‘Waterhole Counts’, in which two observers are stationed at each of four ‘hides’ (blinds), and record the mammals they see in and around the waterhole located about 50 meters in front of them. The hide is a simple concrete box with a corrugated tin roof and a wide slit in the front, out of which the two people can sit in plastic chairs and view the scene as it unfolds. Donna and I started at 650am and finished our work at 615pm. We recorded the following mammal species:

MAMMALS

Warthog                      Eland               Red Hartebeest           Oryx

Zebra                           Giraffe             Steenbok

Of these seven species of mammals, by far the most numerous were warthogs, of which we saw dozens of individuals, almost all adults or sub-adults. We saw zebras on two separate occasions, a total of about 30 individuals, and while most were adults and sub-adults, we did see two tiny one-week old foals during the herds’ second visit to the waterhole. We saw three giraffes on two occasions. On the first occasion, a single sub-adult appeared, and she was very shy at first. She lingered behind a large acacia tree for several minutes, and then slowly emerged out from behind the tree, first her head, then her neck and then her flank. For me, that moment was so special, because it was the first time I had ever seen a wild giraffe, and the sight just took my breath away.  Donna said later that I kept exclaiming, ‘Gee willikers!’, and ‘Oh Gosh!’ – it was one of the highlights of my wildlife-watching career for sure. The second group of two giraffes arrived a few hours later, and it was special to see them slowly work their legs apart to get close enough to the water to drink. On one such occasion, an eland actually tried to get a drink between the legs of the giraffe – the various species of ungulate are obviously tolerant of one another. When a giraffe wants to come back up from the drinking position, it tends to snap it’s legs up to vertical in one quick movement, which was quite an unusual behavior to see. I guess that behavior makes sense, since it allows the animal to ready itself quickly for flight should a problem arise.

Even though we were only required to record mammals during our 11+ hour day, Donna and I managed to identify a number of bird species as well:

BIRDS

Red Billed Spurfowl                Ground Scraper Thrush                       Scaly Feathered Finch

Red Crested Korhaan              Black Chested Prinia                           Blue Waxbill

Cape Turtle  Dove                   Merico Flycatcher                               Red-Headed Finch

Laughing Dove                       Crimson Breasted Shrike                    Violet Eared Waxbill

Namaqua Dove                       Cape Glossy Starling                           Black Faced Waxbill

Grey Go-Away Bird                Cape Sparrow                                     Green Winged Pitilla

Great Spotted Cuckoo             S. Gray Headed Sparrow                   Yellow Canary

Dideric Cuckoo                       Southern Masked Weaver                  White Throated Canary

Common Swift                        Long Tailed Paradise Whydah            Golden Breasted Bunting       

Swallow Tailed Bee Eater       Shaft Tailed Whydah                          

Of these 29 species, a little more than half (15) are finch-type birds, starting from the Cape Sparrow, and ending with the Golden-Breasted Bunting, indicating that most of the species we saw were seed-eaters of various kinds. This is consistent with what we generally see as we walk and drive around the CCF property.

The other three pairs of people saw somewhat similar species as we did, though perhaps not quite as many individuals. However, one of the groups got a special treat: between 1000am and 300pm that day, a sub-adult leopard visited their waterhole, climbing in and out of a nearby tree, taking a swat or two at visiting warthogs and zebra, but generally being unsuccessful at catching anything it saw. In fact, they said that the wildlife generally exhibited little respect for this young leopard, probably judging that it was inexperienced. Yet perhaps the mother leopard was nearby, and this was a lesson for her kid. That realization kept the two observers in their hide well past the time when they would have liked to have made a visit to the bush to relieve themselves.