Читать книгу Your Kruger National Park Guide - With Stories - Frans Rautenbach - Страница 11

I have thought a lot about how to convey my ideas about game watching. There are two sides to the story: on the one hand there are certain common-sense principles that undoubtedly help, and have often helped me. On the other is the fact that the game reserve is a wondrous part of the cosmos that works in patterns we know only in part. And it is exactly this that makes it so exciting – and that makes the experience one I wish, with my whole heart, everyone could have.

For the moment I accept that readers want to see as many animals as possible, and preferably as many of the Big Five (lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo, rhinoceros) as possible – or if you add cheetah and wild dog, the Great Seven. I am not saying that to see the Big Seven is the only reason to go to the game reserve. But if I don’t tackle this topic thoroughly, I am not doing my job.

In the same breath I also ask that you do not cheat yourself out of the largest part of the wildlife – the plants and the birds. Without them the park would be similar to a zoo or a farm. The big advantage of bird- and tree-watching is you simply have a much broader experience of the bush. What’s more, most of these species come to you, or stand in one place. Stop and smell the roses – or in this case the buffalo grass/mopani trees/river rushes.

The best way to enjoy trees and birds is to learn their names, and the best way to do that is by acquiring a good book to identify them. Buy a pair of binoculars too. They needn’t be special field glasses. Most models available in shops – some of which don’t cost more than a few hundred rand – will work. You need not assiduously study in order to learn the names of the trees and birds. Just make a point of noticing what strikes you as interesting or unusual, or commonly occurs, and look up its name and other information.

I guarantee you within the first day someone in your group will say: “I wonder what kind of tree that is – the one with the thick trunk that looks as if it was planted upside down?” Or: “What are those shiny blue birds in all the camps?” In other words, research the species that catch your eye, especially in the camps or at picnic spots. It’s a great way of getting to know the bush. It isn’t hard work. I keep my books and binoculars in a shoulder bag in the front of the car. As soon as there is something that I want to look up, the book and binoculars are on hand.

Trees most people notice sooner or later because of their characteristic appearance are: umbrella thorn (speaks for itself), baobab (the very thickest trees with branches like roots), wild pear or “drolpeer” (fruit like buck droppings), sausage tree (use your imagination), paperbark thorn (speaks for itself), lekkerbreek (“breaks easily”), marula (distinctive thick twigs and compound leaves, bark pattern like a Monet painting), knob thorn (knots and knuckles, fine round leaves), wild syringa (another type of umbrella tree), naboom (those cacti in Thomas Baines paintings), ilala palm (palms with long pointed fan-like leaves), apple leaf (guess), mopani (red and green butterfly-shaped leaves, a few million specimens to practice on if you are battling), leadwood (distinctive blocked bark pattern and leaves), bush willow (long, smooth, mossy cross branches and distinctive leaves, often hangs over water), fever tree (yellow trunk, branches and leaves) and wild fig (thick, light grey, smooth, curling trunks and branches, shiny green leaves).

The same applies to smaller mammals. It can be extremely frustrating not to know what any one of the following are, and yet you will see them sooner or later: klipspringer, warthog, duiker, steenbok, bushbuck, nyala, dwarf mongoose, tree squirrel, banded mongoose, water mongoose, rock rabbit, otter and tsessebe.

Or birds: glossy starlings (shiny blue birds found in most camps), hornbills (name speaks for itself – also in most camps), ground hornbills (large red and black cousins of hornbills, along roads), fish eagles (white, brown and black eagles along rivers), kingfishers (different kinds, spear-like beaks and crests), bee-eaters (colourful, along riverbanks), bee-catchers (black with distinctive forked tail), grey louries or the “go-away” bird (with a crest, and sounds like its nickname) and lilac-breasted rollers (the most beautiful bird for many – blue and lilac feathers, normally in a dry tree by the roadside).

1 Yellow-billed hornbill

2 Baobab

3 Mopani

4 Ground hornbill

Good books for each of these types of wildlife are:

»Trees

How To Identify Trees In Southern Africa, Braam van Wyk & Piet van Wyk (Random House Struik)

»Birds

Roberts Birds, Hugh Chittenden, Ian Whyte, Guy Upfold (Jacana)

Sasol Birds Of Southern Africa, Ian Sinclair, Phil Hockey, Peter Ryan and Warwick Tarboton (Random House Struik)

»Mammals

Field Guide To Mammals Of Southern Africa, Chris and Tilde Stuart (Random House Struik)

But don’t fret if you can’t find any of these titles. The park shops always stock a collection of good books that serve the purpose. I grew up with the following (perhaps now classic) research works: the Afrikaans version of Mammals of the Kruger National Park and other National Parks by the National Parks Board (Eds) (National Parks Board), 66 Transvaal Trees by Fanie de Jong and others (Pretoria Botanical Institute) and Birds of the Kruger National Park (National Parks Board), the latter consisting of four thin folio-sized volumes in red, green, blue and brown, with a pen drawing of an ostrich on the front. These books have been out of print for decades, and were fairly basic. But they worked a treat. I learned to identify trees, birds and animals from early on.

Another thing: find a way to keep a record of what you see. One of two ways, or a combination, works well: take photographs as far as possible, or note down the sightings in a book, with the time, date and place. Let the kids do it. It’s a really fun game – kind of like hunting, only more economical! The satisfaction is so much greater when you look back on your achievements of the day or the week. It satisfies our hunter’s instinct like a trophy room does for a big game hunter. Trust me.

Don’t just check off the animals on a list. Once you spot the game, you must look, and enjoy. Look at the multi-coloured gloss of a starling’s feathers in the sun; the fat buttocks and swinging tails of zebras walking to water; the turns in the horns of a kudu bull and the chalk stripes on its flanks; how a giraffe’s lower jaw grinds from side to side as it chews; how a warthog kneels while upturning the earth with its curved teeth. Don’t take my word for it. Look properly, and you will see.

Nowadays photographs needn’t be a technical specialist’s exercise. Most smartphones, tablets and instant cameras take remarkably good pictures in the park – some are even in this book! – and digital photography means one can take an unlimited number of pictures. Of course if you’re an experienced photographer, there’s little I can teach you.

While we’re on the subject of books: It’s essential to purchase a book with a map of the Kruger Park as soon as possible when you arrive.

Back to the great animal hunt: I have decided to give advice on the basis of seven principles.

What “everyone knows” about game watching, ain’t necessarily always so. For example, I bet someone has told you that if you want to see lots of game you need to drive as slowly as possible and look around carefully because game is difficult to spot in the thick bush.

Then I have to ask: why have I invariably seen my best game when in a hurry on my way back to camp to reach the gate before closing time? And why have I, without fail, seen the most game on a long stretch of road, when my eyes are so tired they can barely focus on the road?

Let’s do some maths first. Let’s accept we’re keen to see lions. Recent estimates are that there are about 1 600 lions in the Kruger Park. But the park is about 380 kilometres by 80 kilometres, thus about 30 000 square kilometres.

The total road network of the park is about 2 600 kilometres. Let’s round it off to 3 000 kilometres. Let’s further accept that one can, on average, see for about 50 metres on either side of the road. Sometimes it’s further, often much less, but let’s accept it’s about 100 metres on both sides in total.

That means that at any given moment there is about 3 000 kilometres x 100 square metres – that is, 300 000 square metres – visible in the sense that one would be able to see a lion if it were there. That is 300 square kilometres, which is one percent of the surface of the game reserve. If lions were distributed evenly across the park’s surface, that would mean only one percent of them – 16 – would, at any given moment, be visible at spots on the road network. That means 16 lions on a total of 2 600 kilometres of road!

And yet almost everyone who goes to the park sooner or later sees a lion. How is that possible? This is why we have the seven principles.