South Africa is fortunate to have a stunning diversity of birds. We have several well known sanctuaries for our avian friends. One of them is close to where we live in Johannesburg. It is Marievale bird sanctuary near Nigel about a 45 minute drive away. It is Ramsar site which is a wetland site designated to be of international importance. Marievale has an especially diverse array of wetland birds which attracts birders and wildlife photographers alike.

“For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports.” ~Sandra Postel

Helen and I go to Marievale several times a year. Each time the weather and the water level in the wetland are different. These changing wetland conditions attract different combinations of waders, ducks and geese, raptors, seed eaters and insectivores. It is never the same.

Being an enthusiastic wildlife photographer I also get much needed photographic practice. Photography like any language needs constant practice.

I am a keen birder, not the “list ticking” kind but I am very interested in bird physiology and flight and why you finds certain birds in particular places at specific times. There is a fascinating natural intelligence at play which I am keen to tap into to better understand behaviour which should help me anticipate what my subject will do next and so get that more interesting images.

“Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.” ~ Wendell Berry

A male Stonechat, a little wet from the grass after it had rained earlier that morning. These little chats are ubiquitous in Marievale and the male can be seen staking out his territory.

A female Stonechat perched on top of purple statis.

A male Long-tailed widowbird in full breeding plumage. This male was displaying with his slow deliberate flight with his luxurious tail feathers between his legs. His short broad wing shape allows him to display in flight the way he does.

Another image of a male Long-tailed widow bird. This character was perched on an old statis stem. He was displaying to passing females. His display when perched consists of puffing out his head and body feathers and opening his wings to show his colourful epaulets.

A Squacco heron wading through the shallow marsh water to warn off a nearby competitor. The main diet consists of relatively small prey, particularly fish, frogs and tadpoles, and insects and insect larvae, depending on the area. It is a solitary feeder and will defend its feeding territory against other Squacco herons using forward displays (when the back, crest and breast feathers held erect and puffed out to make the defender look bigger) and supplanting flights, where the heron suddenly and aggressively flies and lands either on top of its opponent or on the spot it has just vacated.

The Squacco heron is very comfortable in water but also forages in the short grass for insects. It has an amazing ability to stretch its neck which comes in handy when fishing from an overhanging branch or when walking through longish grass.

“Hardly any one is able to see what is before him, just as it is in itself. He comes expecting one thing, he finds another thing, he sees through the veil of his preconception, he criticizes before he has apprehended, he condemns without allowing his instinct the chance of asserting itself.” ~ Arthur Symons

A male Swanson’s spurfowl. It was early and the sun had just risen. This male was noisily declaring his territory. Looking at the spurs on the back of his legs, he was a youngster who had not been in many territorial fights.

A Black shouldered kite perched on a power line which traverses the wetland. This is an ideal perch from which to look for prey scurrying below in the grass. This kite feeds on mainly rodents and larger insects,but not fish. This kite has an incredible ability to hover when aerial hunting. Once locked onto its prey it dives into the grass to capture it. It can often be seen feeding on the wing. If the prey is too big it will find a suitable perch to support it while it feasts.

A Purple swamphen was feeding on something in the reeds. I could not see what it was, but its beak had plenty of yellow residue on it. This image gives a good idea of the large size of its feet. It can remain elevated in the reeds by bunching the reeds together with its feet. The large feet help spread its weight out over a large area enabling it to walk easily over fallen reedbeds along the water’s edge. These swamphens are also good swimmers.

“Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told.” ~ Wendell Berry

As we arrived this is the scene we were confronted with – a Black headed heron had caught a large rat in the grass and had just started to swallow it whole and semi-alive. You can see the nictitating membrane covered its eye as it began to swallow its prey as the front legs of the rat were still moving. This heron’s neck is able to kink in an S-shape, due to the modified shape of their 20 cervical vertebrae.

It was incredible to watch this Black headed heron swallow this rat head first and whole. No taste involved and it went straight into its stomach. A special vertebrae in their necks enable it to create an “s” shape, almost like a recoil which allows them to snap their necks deep into water or in the air to catch their prey at lighting fast speeds. Their razor sharp beaks allow them to stab their prey. Herons do not have gizzards which are in most other birds and help break down tougher parts of the food like bones. Instead herons just swallow their prey down their flexible esophagus and into their loose and stretchable stomachs.

Seeing this hunting Black headed heron as we entered Marievale was a good reminder that you need your camera set up and ready before you drive into the sanctuary. You just never know what is around the corner. Also understanding the hunting behaviour of a Black headed heron helps exercise a little patience as you can anticipate this kind of image.

“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
~ Wendell Berry

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its inter-connectedness and let it be.

Have fun, Mike

It is estimated that around a hundred years ago there were as many as 200,000 lions living wild in Africa. In 2012, National Geographic reported that only 32,000 lions remained out of 100,000 roaming Africa in the 1960s. Recent surveys put the number of wild lions at around 20,000. Around a third of African lions are thought to have disappeared in the past 20 years due mainly to hunting, illegal poaching/wildlife trade, human-lion conflict and loss of habitat.

“With roars that rend the African night, lions have captured our imaginations since the dawn of humankind.”~ Craig Packer

According to the National Geographic, the lion species has disappeared from 94 percent of its historic range across almost the entire African continent but is now limited to less than 660,000 square miles. Lions are extinct in 26 African countries and are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which determines the conservation status of species.

“…few can sojourn long within the unspoilt wilderness of a game sanctuary, surrounded on all sides by its confiding animals, without absorbing its atmosphere; the Spirit of the Wild is quick to assert supremacy, and no man of any sensibility can resist her.” ~James Stevenson-Hamilton

The Serengeti-Mara ecosystems covers 24,000 km² from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Masai Mara in Kenya and is home to one of the highest densities of lions in Africa.

Most lionesses reach sexual maturity between three and four years of age. Female lions can go into estrus (a period of fertility) at any time of the year and that period can last four to seven days. The male lion will stay close to the lioness during the mating period where mating usually occurs approximately every 20 minutes for the first few days though the frequency will slow somewhat in the last two days of the mating period.

Male lions, like all cats, have spines on their penis which cause minor trauma to the vagina upon withdrawal. The resulting pain triggers ovulation.  This probably also explains why females bare their teeth at males during mating.  

The odds are already stacked against a female lion bringing a cub to term. The gestation or pregnancy period for a female lion is between 105 – 110 days and the lioness usually produces a litter of between two and four cubs. A female lion has only four teats, so in litters larger than four, a number of the cubs will not survive.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” ~John Muir

Just prior to the birthing of her cubs, the heavily pregnant female will move away from the pride and give birth in a well-hidden den usually in a thick section of reeds in a marsh area, or a dense thicket in the savannah or hidden in a secluded section of a rock outcrop. The mother will keep the cubs hidden for one to two months allowing them to grow strong enough to survive the robustness of the pride. During this isolation period, the lioness will regularly move her cubs from one den site to another to prevent the concentration of scent so as not to attract other predators such as hyaenas.

Newborn cubs weigh between two and four pounds. Their fur is spotted and they are born blind. The new born cubs typically open their eyes when they are between three and 11 days old and can walk after around two weeks and run after four weeks.

Overall, somewhere between 60% and 70% of the cubs will die within their first year, and even fewer—about 1 in 8 —live to adulthood (lions mature around two years old). The cubs that don’t make it either die from starvation, or are killed by other predators or are killed by other male lions looking to take over the pride.

“It seems everything in nature that has beauty, also has a price.
Let the value of our planets wildlife be to nature and nature alone.”
~ Paul Oxton

Once the cubs have been accepted by the pride, all lactating females will suckle the cubs. After six weeks, the mother leads her cubs to an animal that she has killed to give them their first taste of meat.

The cubs are weaned off their mother’s milk after they are six to seven months old. The females tend to stay with the pride as they mature but the males usually leave or are forced out of the pride to fend for themselves by around two to three years of age and spend a few years building their strength and knowledge before they can look for their own pride.

A valuable method of aging lion cubs is given in the Livingwithlions.org. Assuming the lioness and the cub are standing, the two month old cub’s front shoulder is about two inches below the lioness’s belly. The four month old cub’s shoulder reaches around three inches above her belly and the six month old cub shoulder comes to mid-torso or midway up her shoulder. The 12-month old cub’s shoulder is a few inches below the back line of the adult lioness. Most of the lion cubs shown in this post look to be around two to three months old.

Lions are considered apex predators, meaning they are at the top of the food chain with no natural enemies and as such play a pivotal role in sustaining the natural balance. By weeding out the slow, weak, and dying animals, apex predators serve to keep prey numbers in check and are key to the health of an ecosystem. They maintain the balance between prey species and the rest of the system. Without them, everything gets out of balance, leading to cycles of population explosions and crashes, depleted lands, stunted forests, and flooding rivers.

“Perhaps the most poignant image of our time is that of Earth as seen by the space voyagers: a blue sphere, shimmering with life and light, alone and unique in the cosmos. From this perspective, the maps of geopolitics vanish, and the underlying inter-connectedness of all the components of this extraordinary living system – animal, plant, water, land, and atmosphere – becomes strikingly evident.” ~ Richard Benedick

Once we understand the lion’s role in the ecosystem, human interference in the natural balance becomes obvious. In particular, indiscriminate trophy hunting taking out pride males below six years of age destroy the balance especially for the one predator which operates cooperatively in a pride.

“Hunting is an integral part of Africa’s conservation history and its approach to wildlife management. To disentangle hunting from modern African conservation will require a realignment of conservation policy, entrenched since colonial times and embraced and supported by African elites and political interests. But as civilization has the ingenuity to put people and machines into space, split the atom, and routinely send unimaginable amounts of information through the ether, surely we can think of a better way to save the wild animals we love besides killing them.”
~ Andrew Loveridge

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its inter-connectedness and let it be.

Have fun, Mike

We were wandering around the Mara Triangle in the Masai Mara National Reserve in November 2019. The Masai Mara is a wonderland. Open spaces to drive in and big blue skies to fly in. In the very early mornings you can hear the burners of the hot air balloons as they rise and fall while wafting on the light cool early morning breezes over the plains of the Mara.

“The winds of grace are blowing all the time, but it is you that must raise your sails.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore

A family herd of elephants wandering under huge rain laden morning skies.

A lugga in the wet season, holding water long enough for water lilies to grow.

An eclectic mix of wildlife – life and death living side by side in a green meadow with some respite during the daylight hours.

Craning to look at the golden crown above the ice blue eyes, velvet black forehead and red wattle.

A yellow-billed oxpecker, the Masai Giraffe’s very own dermatologist with all the rights ticks.

Looking through Leopard Gorge under gorgeous clear blue skies. Beyond the gorge flowed the Mara river.

Time for a teenager to rest after a mud bath and a busy morning.

Rest is not an option when there are youngsters around who want to play.

That in-between time when the foreground darkens and the last blazes of sunlight paint the darkening sky with oranges, pinks, purples and blues. A time when the fragrances of the flowers, grasses and trees are released by the latent temperature change just before the sun bows down below the horizon to allow the stars to shine.

Endangered black silhouette.

Two elephant bulls following a breeding herd in the plain below the Oloololo escarpment.

Pregnant zebra mare with herd mates silhouetted against a golden sunset sky, heavy with rain clouds.

A lone elephant bull wandering the great plains.

A little pushing and shoving – young male elephants sparring and testing themselves.

Sometimes even the daring get put in their place.

Success for a loner working the drainage lines along the road. A remarkable lioness doing it alone. She had worked out a strategy to ambush her prey using cover from the embankment along the road. Unusual and very successful.

Stripes with teeth – bolt if you do not want to get bitten.

Stripes for the winner

A new born topi calf looking for its mother.

A male Oribi up on the slopes of the Oloololo escarpment.

One of a pair of lappet-faced vultures who had joined the vulture frenzy after the lions had abandoned the zebra kill. With a beak like that……..!

A full grown male lion in his prime courting his female.

A time of breathless tawny magic and new beginnings!!

Travel with an open mind and an open heart. The abundance will reveal itself if you take the time to look and more importantly to appreciate what you are seeing. Once the African bush has etched its way into your subconsciousness you will always long for those sublime quiet times in the wide open spaces. There you can hear the red-crested korhaan calling and zebras braying through the long grass during the day and the Scops owl’s trill accompanied by hyaena whoops at night. The hippo grunts from the river will help you waft off to sleep under the starlit African sky.

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its inter-connectedness and let it be.

Have fun, Mike

Large sections of our African wildlife are disappearing at an alarming rate. We humans, as a species, are taking their space with little care or concern. Given our consciousness or perhaps the lack of it, most of humanity sees itself as the superior being in the community of nature. Humans are inventive and restless but few have understanding about their responsibility or the sustainability of their actions when it comes to the natural world. That is not to diminish the incredible work of a minute proportion of the human race are doing to try to preserve and sustain what we have left in the natural world.

“Have the will of a tiger, the speed of a cheetah and the heart of a lion.” ~ Kevin McCarty

When you enter the Masai Mara your senses are filled with the wonder of the natural world. The vastness of the place, the huge open blue skies, the abundance of wildlife combine to make it all feel so natural and right.

In these posts, I am trying to show the diversity and stunning beauty of the Masai Mara. This is one of nature’s great stages upon which African wildlife puts on a daily show the likes of which will be beyond your imagination, even for the most seasoned rangers, and will fill its audience with wonder.

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” ~ W.B. Yeats

The global cheetah population continues to decline with only about 7 000 individuals left in Africa, half the population of 40 years ago. The decline has been caused by the loss and fragmentation of their natural habitats, a decline in their abundance of their prey, the illegal trade in wildlife and growing conflict with humans for space.

Some of the actors on this stage will leave you spellbound, One actor in particular which will capture your imagination is the cheetah. It is the fastest land mammal reaching speeds of 70 miles per hour. Even more impressive is that it can accelerate from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in three seconds, making its acceleration faster than that of a Ferrari Enzo, a McLaren F1 and a Lamborghini Gallardo.

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”
~ Wayne W. Dyer

On our travels around the Mara Triangle in November, we were fortunate enough to find cheetah on two different occasions considering the vastness of the Mara Triangle, which is only a small part of the Masai Mara National Reserve.

“It is only when you immerse yourself in the vastness of the Mara do you realise how much you value space to wander, space to gaze, space to breathe deeply, and appreciate the new perspectives which the space unlocks.” ~ Mike Haworth

Our first sighting was of a coalition of two rugged looking adult male cheetahs. These two were obviously seasoned hunters. We found them down in the southern section of the Mara triangle where you find the inselbergs. These two males were resting in the shade at the foot of an inselberg. Judging from the size of their bellies they must have fed earlier that morning.

Cheetahs need space and the Mara gives them that. Research shows that Kenya’s Masai Mara has one of the highest cheetah densities in the world, but it is a landscape under increasing human pressure, mainly from tourists. The Mara Reserve – with the exception of a conservancy called the Mara Triangle – doesn’t limit the number of tourists who enter the park per day, and there are no restrictions on the number of tourist vehicles at a predator sighting.

“Nature’s stage changes daily. The plot is mercurial, the actors are unscripted and the backdrops, washed with blues, greens and yellows, are splashed with wind and rain, and illumined with the sun.” ~ Mike Haworth

Thankfully, we were the only vehicle travelling around the south of the Mara Triangle one morning when we found these two male cheetahs which were walking up the hill towards a ridge crowned by a few bushes. The bushes would provide them with shade and the ridge had sufficient elevation to give them a perfect view of the plains below when looking for potential prey.

“An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.” ~ Martin Buber

This male looked strong and healthy as he was walking towards us on his way up to the ridge behind us. The two males were walking up from the plains below where they must have made a kill. They clearly fed well but probably had to abandon their meal due to hyaenas.

A cheetah’s nemesis, the ubiquitous hyaena lurking in the background. The Mara has a large, healthy and active population of spotted hyaenas. There are many clans. These clans are usually centred around a den and the clan members scatter to far reaches of the clan’s territory to hide during the day in gullies, ponds of water or large tussocks of red oat grass. This surveillance system ensures little happens in their territory without the hyaena clan knowing about it. Even though the hyaenas operate mainly at night they are aware of cheetahs hunting in their territory and only too ready to steal the cheetah’s hard won prize at any time of the day.

Cheetahs are well known for their speed, but there is more to these creatures than their pace. They have several unique features. Much like a human fingerprint, the arrangement of a cheetah’s spots and the ring pattern of its tail are unique.

Cheetahs have distinctive spots which are quite different to the leopards rosettes. The spotted fur of the cheetah helps it to blend into its surroundings. The spotted pelage is thought to create camouflage by offsetting shadows in the gray-hued grasses. This camouflage enables them to stalk and hunt their prey more effectively.

“It is not what you look at that matters it is what you see.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Cheetahs have a small head in proportion to their bodies which help their streamlining when running at high speed. Their eyes are set high on the skull. Cheetahs have small rounded heads, a small muzzle and short whiskers compared to a leopard. The cheetah has a long neck and a deep chest which enables it to accelerate its breathing from a normal rate of 60 breaths per minute to 150 breaths per minute when in full chase. Its feet are also specially adapted with claws that are non-retractable and special pads on their feet which provide extra traction when running. The cheetah’s legs are long, slim and muscular. All of these features combine to enable this predator to run at exceptional speeds. Cheetahs are unable to run at full speed for much more than about 300 metres because of a danger of overheating.

Other than mating, male and female cheetahs do not interact. Cheetahs are territorial and intruders who breach these scent borders are attacked. Cheetahs do not roar like lions or cough like leopards, but when agitated hiss and growl or whine.

These two male eventually walked up onto a ridge where there were a few bushes to rest for the morning. This ridge gave them an ideal vantage point over the plains below. We left them in peace for the rest of the morning only to return later that afternoon in the hope that we would see them hunt. We stayed with them until dusk but they must have feed well first thing that morning as their tummies still looked full.

It was getting dark by the time we left the two cheetah males who were blissfully resting in the cool of the evening. It was a quiet and serene time but with heavy skies

This is typical of the landscape down along the Mara Triangle’s border with the Serengeti. Huge open plains dotted with balanites. The first place you look for a cheetah is in the shade under a balanite or, if the grass is reasonably long, perhaps on top of an anthill which offers an elevated view of the plain.

The second cheetah sighting was of a lone male cheetah on Topi plain west of the Eluai ridge. The Mara Triangle has rolling hills but there are also large plains which are relatively flat. Given the long grass, cheetahs need to find a vantage point from which to look for potential prey and scan for possible threats. A decent size anthill can provide just such a vantage point.

The next image shows the lone adult male scanning the surround plain for prey. Set in the background was the Oloololo escarpment which provided blues and greens and gave a sense of the vastness of the place.

“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”
~ C.S. Lewis

As you can see the red oat grass can get quite long so the cheetah gets an endless shimmer of golden grass strands until it can find a lookout point. The advantage of the long grass is that it also hides the cheetah very well.

Cheetahs are equipped with several special features which provide them will excellent vision. Binocular vision is a very important asset since Cheetahs rely on sight to hunt as opposed to scent. The retinal fovea of the eye is an elongated shape, giving a sharp wide-angle view. This aspect of the eye is also adapted for speed. The dark “tear marks” on the Cheetah’s face reduce glare from the bright sun. The black hairs in the tear lines absorb light from the sun and are thought to enable cheetahs to run straight towards the sun and still be able to see. (source: Bigcatrescue.org). Cheetahs can see up to 5 kilometres in detail.

Although cheetahs will hunt throughout the day, they mostly hunt during the early evening and early morning when it is cooler. The temperature in the Mara is relatively stable between 25 and 30 degrees centigrade during the day and 12-13 degrees centigrade in the evenings. When its rains it can be quite a bit cooler. The temperatures are even throughout the year because the Mara is so close to the equator.

The cheetah’s long tail is multi purpose. It is a perfect fly swat for all the biting flies such as horseflies and tsetses. It is a counter balance enabling the cheetah to make surprisingly tight turns at speed when chasing down prey. The shape of its tail from the base to about a foot from the tip is elongated and acts like a rudder at high speed.

Cheetahs are racing towards extinction. It is clear to save cheetahs we need to save the wild open spaces. According to National Geographic, the cheetah has been driven out of 91 percent of its historic range—the big cats once roamed nearly all of Africa and much of Asia, but their population is now confined predominantly to six African countries: Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, and Mozambique. The species is already almost extinct in Asia, with fewer than 50 individuals remaining in one isolated pocket of Iran.

“Nature is a working machine constantly evolving. We can only start to understand the moving parts through patience and observation” ~ Mike Haworth

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its inter-connectedness and let it be.

Have fun, Mike