4 May 2009

Colleen and I were woken early on Sunday morning by a loud rumbling noise outside our tent. Looking through the front flaps we could see Freddy slowly walking past our tent heading out of camp towards the katisunga plain. Freddy is a huge bull elephant that has been resident in and around Katuma camp this past week. As we were leaving the tent to start the day we looked cautiously around us making sure that Freddy was no where near. At first we thought he had gone but when Colleen and I started talking to each other he slowly came out from behind a thick bush and at the sound of our voices he started walking casually towards us. Colleen and I were now standing on the verandah of our tent watching him walking towards us. As he came even closer I was beginning to wonder if now wouldn’t be a good time to get back into bed and try starting our day again a little later on. We stood dead still as Freddy came right up to the verandah and almost rested his large head on the handrails while he sussed us out. After a short while he must have thought we were ok as he turned and once again walked casually backed towards the thick bush and began feeding. Not once did he show any sign of aggression, he was just simply very curious.
Besides Freddy giving us a rude awakening, the game in and around Katuma seemed unusually quiet on Sunday morning. So Peter, one of our guides and me decided to take a short drive to see what is out there, and this is what we came across.
Red-billed hornbill, a small herd of impala, a nice sized herd of zebra, magpie (long tailed) shrike, greater blue eared starling, several male buffalo, sighted along the river. Cattle egrets. About 8 or 9 huge pods of hippo. We had a beautiful close up of the majestic African fish eagle. Giraffe were also sighted along the river as well as lilac breasted rollers, little bee eaters, red necked spur fowl, Egyptian and spur winged geese. And I have never seen such huge crocodiles as I saw on Sunday just sunning themselves on the banks of the Katuma River. Also sighted on Sunday were warthog and baby, yellow billed oxpecker, woodlands, malachite and grey headed kingfisher, grey backed fiscal shrike, white fronted shrike, and white browed coucal. Wattled and long toed lapwing, as well as a breeding herd of elephant, an impressive bachelor herd of eland and to end off the drive we saw a large family of very excited banded mongoose disturbing a grazing herd of impala by playfully running under their legs.
So you see game wise Katuma bush lodge in the Katavi National Park is never quiet.
Geoff Mullen.