|
She clicked a bullet into the breech of her rifle and clipped the gun onto the dashboard of the open Land Rover. Then she rode over the peach-pip-paved driveway and headed down a dusty road.
I watched the back of her blonde head as she drove, leaning out of the door and staring at the sand beside the front wheels. We’d travelled hardly a kilometre when she stopped and pointed at the spoor.
“Three female lions, heading down the gorge,” she announced. “They must be going back to the male lion.”
Alouise knew which lions they were because Keir, the head ranger had come upon them unexpectedly at dawn, far from their normal territory. He’d seen them while searching vainly for one of the more rare birds of Africa, the Crimson-breasted Warbler.
Thinking of lions, I realized it was going to be a good day, little knowing how memorable it would be.
As the walls of the canyon rose on both sides of us, I looked up at the Bushman cave in the first storey of those soaring cliffs and pondered its priceless paintings. A weird image came into my head. My vision was of driving down an ultra-broad Fifth Avenue, with its scattered penthouses in the skyscrapers of another world. Ten thousand years ago - or even forty millennia into the past - human occupants might have lived up there among their noisy neighbours the baboons, rock-rabbits and other denizens of the cliffs, staring down at the traffic. Below, long lines of buffalo and elephant; compact herds of red hartebeest; springbok and kudu would have passed each other in convoys travelling up and down the gorge that linked the lower and higher plains. Scurrying bands of smaller animals would have thronged the sides of this busy highway, while the cleverest residents looked down on them from their penthouses nearer the sky.
A moment ago – well, in about 1780AD - it was different. A farmer had built his homestead above the gorge and brought his sheep to this majestic land. Many more farmers followed over the centuries. Then, a split-second ago (in 1960) the land shook. The tetonic plates shifted slightly. This small corner in the mountains of the little Karoo, changed again. The clear, pure water that gushed from the hillsides suddenly disappeared. So did many of the steaming pools of hot bubbling water that had brought comfort to many tired bones. Without water, the farmers struggled, and eventually slaughtered their sheep and abandoned their orchards and vegetable gardens. The last of them left at the turn of the 21st century, selling to a bold conservationist who reintroduced some of the land’s natural wild game.
We turned a corner in the gorge, where it opened up slightly on our left and where a Pale Chanting Goshawk stood sentry. The gaunt predator kept vigil from the same treetop we had seen him on yesterday. On our right a sudden movement caught our eye, and we saw two great black eagles (Verreaux’s Eagle), flying so low at the base of the soaring cliff that we could observe their white backs, rather than the customary view of blackness and narrow, white-flashed under-wings.
Down on the first plain we heard the male lion in the dry river bed where we had encountered him before, but his three women had apparently decided to hunt on their own. They had not yet joined him, despite his prize of a kudu which he had managed to kill (then eat) all by himself.
We drove into his river-bed further down, towards the elephants browsing among the tamarisk trees. The elephants were at peace with their children and their new-born baby, and this time the restless bull did not trumpet or mock-charge. The hippos, also recent newcomers to this ancient stamping ground, popped up their heads from a pool nearby. They seemed equally serene.
What a day this was turning out to be. The air was like champagne. I turned to confirm this with Arlene, but she was huddled under a blanket, hood, scarf and dark glasses, sheltering herself from a wind we were driving into that came from the snowcaps of the Hex River Mountains, far to the West. I’d forgotten how chilled the champagne air could be in this corner of the hot, mostly arid Karoo.
Cresting a rise, we startled a kudu which bounded up the slope then froze in statuesque pose to observe us. We drove across the flood-plain beyond – now a flat, chalk-white expanse of dust – and watched two herds of springbok moving ahead, their slender white legs seeming to float above the pan. We turned up another ridge; down a long mountain slope; into the rich valley where farmers had once irrigated their crops. Dry reed-beds and dying rushes are a reminder of the lush past. Yet, since the earthquake and loss of surface water, the valley celebrates its new life with touches of gold, white and purple flowers and rare-flowering succulents. They bloom among the greens, the blues, the greys, the bronze and yellow Karoo shrubs and aloes. It is a Spring celebration in an arid expanse which makes lush meadowlands look dull.
A Booted Eagle wheels about in the cold blue sky. Another perches precariously in the wind on a low thorn-tree. A Rock Kestrel swoops down in front of us onto a patch of open gravel – and lifts off with an unlucky mouse in its talons. A young Secretary Bird in tight black trousers and grey waistcoat steps up to our vehicle and gives us a penetrating stare. The “pens behind his ears” seem precisely in place. (An hour later, when we encounter an adult Secretrary Bird, his somewhat bedraggled tail-feathers and very sloppy “pens” remind us how immaculate the youngster was.) An aggressive little Black-shouldered Kite is chasing a much larger bird, nearby, and a little bird I’ve never seen before flits across the Land Rover and settles next to the reeds beside me. But there is so much else to see, I am unusually uninterested in birds today.
Beyond the shelter of a rare grove of trees, and in middle of a vast plain with a backdrop of mountain crags, we come upon the goal we have been hunting for – the White Lion. He is alert and sitting up in the bright – cold – sun. While he examines us, we study him carefully. His eyes are indeed not the normal glaring sulphur, but light, almost blue. He has a coif in his magnificent white mane, giving him the appearance of an imperious actor with a carefully swept-back lock of white hair. This is no comic figure. It hints at dramatic tragedy. And terror perhaps. The black eyebrows on so white a forehead and the deep jaw and chin below his black mouth make him appear even more majestic than the usual king of beasts..  We study him carefully. His eyes are indeed not the normal glaring sulphur, but light, almost blue. He has a coif in his magnificent white mane, giving him the appearance of an imperious actor with a carefully swept-back lock of white hair. This is no comic figure. It hints at dramatic tragedy. And terror perhaps. 
We study him carefully. His eyes are indeed not the normal glaring sulphur, but light, almost blue. He has a coif in his magnificent white mane, giving him the appearance of an imperious actor with a carefully swept-back lock of white hair. This is no comic figure. It hints at dramatic tragedy. And terror perhaps. More so than the white lion I once glimpsed slinking down a sandy river-bed at Timbavati.
The White Lion appears as if he is about to give audience. He is surrounded by his family who pose as a group – all clean, pure and starkly white - which dominates the huge amphitheatre of dark veld and distant rock-ridges.
The lioness ignores us. She sits close to the king, but facing the other way, staring at the distant mountains. Two of their three offspring – all of them male heirs - sit in dignified stillness, deigning only a casual glance at us. But the third pops up and down from behind a bush in a game of peek-a-boo. He has a round, mischievous face, and round ears. Without a mane, he looks like a Walt Disney bear. Arlene would like to hug him. But Alouise would shoot him (or her) if it happened.
“Yes, they were born in captivity – but they are not tame. They have learned to kill,” she says, “more and more successfully. We are supplementing their food less and less.”
Nobody wants to be supplementary food. We depart. The White Lion, who has hardly moved his head or his eyes since we arrived, watches us impassively as we back off.
Well, now that we’ve seen everything we came to see, we can spend more time identifying little birds. The various sunbirds, the different species of canary, the Karoo chat, Karoo robin and the Karoo prinia are easy. So was the Thick-billed Lark. But what’s this little brown job behind that stone there? It has to be either a lark or pipit. There are about 50 species of larks, finch-larks and pipits in southern Africa, but fortunately only about 16 in this region.
This little brown job is definitely a lark. And it has a plain, unspotted, unstriped breast, which narrows down the field considerably. It has a longish beak, but is definitely not a Long-billed Lark or any of its newly categorized sub-species. It has a touch of white in the tail feathers – another strong clue. Aha! Now our quarry is standing quite straight; an upright position that is a diagnostic characteristic of the Spike-heeled Lark. Look in the guide-book. Yes. Gottim! Everything fits. Right place. Right habitat. Right indicators. It’s a confirmed sighting, except that we forgot to look to see whether it had a spiked heel. Never mind, the spike is indefinable even in the illustrations.
We’ve had a wonderful day. But what’s that over the-re? A pair of White Rhino! There, in the open; beside that lone bush. And nearby - another two White Rhino plus a Black Rhino! No. That’s not a Black Rhino, that’s the shadow of the big Whitey, which has mounted her. Look they’re mating, and he’s kicking up a helluva dust as he prances around.
I’m thinking: I’ve been chased in my time by both Black and White rhino, over some terrifyingly long distances. And I’ve nearly been urinated on by an unnecessarily close lady rhino, as Helen can vouch for. . . but I’ve never stood watching their mating, as that third rhino is not doing. He’s chewing a bush.
I’m thinking: The couple, meanwhile, are taking ages over it.
Alouisa says: “That poor thing is carrying his whole weight on her!”
I’m thinking: Typical female prejudice. You can see by the clouds of dust that he’s struggling to balance on two legs.
By the time we have traversed the dry river-bed, battled through a foot of sand and stopped to let some graceful Red Hartebeeste canter by, the act of love is over. Two of the rhinos gallop up the hill, and the threesome prepare to trot across the plain, none looking the worse for wear.
On the way home we paused to admire two delicate and elegant klipspringers, poised on rocks; at eye-level; ten metres away. Another unforgettable mind-photo.
Arlene asked Alouise: “Can you show me the guide-book illustration of that Cinnamon-breasted Warbler everyone is looking for?”
“Here it is . . . you can see it is endemic to a very small region of arid, empty country where this warbler needs to find riverine vegetation.”
I looked at the picture Alouise was pointing at.
Well, God Bless My Soul, that’s the very bird I’d been staring at when it alighted by the reeds on my side of the open Land Rover this morning. I’d stared at its plump little body – almost counted its spots – without even knowing I was looking at a rare bird – a ‘lifer’.
Undoubtedly one of life’s better days.
|
