20th May 2008 : Playing Catch-Up
Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 11:05AM
Via Nairobi, London, New York, Nova Scotia, New York (again), London (again), Birmingham, Leeds, Scotland, London (yet again) and Nairobi (again), Ian and I are finally back home at Kulafumbi, overlooking “our” familiar yet oh-so-changed river.
But first, before I tell you of our homecoming and our riverine friends, I’m going to make a brief attempt to update you on events during late March and early April, just before I went away and during which time I neglected this diary in deference to my workload (which is not diminishing, incidentally, but which will have to make space for this diary from now on, as I do not intend to neglect it again…)
The end of March saw the river raging in a spectacular flood, the highest of the year so far. You can follow the whole episode in pictures here.
Who would have thought it? We even added a new mammal to our list of animals seen at Kulafumbi, for a Gerenuk suddenly turned up here on 31st March. In fifteen years, we’ve never seen one of them here. It was a female, and she looked panicked, as if she had been running from a predator. She hesitated by the Mtito River, contemplating the leap across, before dashing away again. I managed to get a quick shot of her. You can see the long neck and legs, which make this antelope so distinctive. In fact, in Kiswahili, they are known as the swala twiga (proncounced swara twiga), literally the antelope-giraffe. They are also famous for standing up on their hind legs to browse taller shrubs and bushes.
Another infrequent visitor appeared in early April, this time in the form of a flower, which seems only to bloom once every few years. No ordinary blossom this one, but a huge black flower with luxuriant petals curling delicately around an extraordinary skyward-seeking spike. How exquisite, you might think, until you bend down to breathe in this giant beauty’s aroma, and are met with the stench of rotting meat. You recoil in disgust but the cloying smell stays with you, haunting your nostrils for the entire walk home. Is this a carnivorous plant then? Sending out its rancid smell to attract hapless insects into that tempting curling cavern, like a siren? Why else would nature have designed it thus? (We have other foul-smelling plants here in the Tsavo region, such as the hydnora abyssinica, for example, which emits a stench of rotting meat to attract insects which then pollinate the plant.)
The extraordinary black flower
Click any image to enlarge
April saw a multitude of flowers, as the rains continued to fall. Despite our beehive disaster, some of our bees did survive (and now have new homes after a swift reparation job to our hives), for we saw them buzzing around on the delicate blue commelina flowers, which were blossoming in profusion. Unlike the sporadic flowering of the bauhinia during the last rains, this time the bauhinia all flowered together - but strangely, there was not even one “Seagrass Cabbage” leaf in sight – how different to the ‘Short Rains’ when the ground was carpeted with these broad-leafed plants. (The ‘Short Rains’ normally fall in November/December, but last year were late and then persisted into January and early February. The ‘Long Rains’ normally fall during April, May and June. This year, instead of a long dry spell, one rainy season almost followed directly on from the last, with just a few weeks’ gap in between.)
A mended beehive, back where it belongs
A honey bee on a commelina flower on our balcony
CATCH UP ON MORE PHOTOS FROM APRIL 2008:
Animals
Birds
Insects and other Creepy-Crawlies
Flowers and Plants
Trees
Athi River in Flood - 29th March 2008
A Goliath Heron having a cool-down and a wash in the river
Click any image to enlarge
Reader Comments (5)
Welcome back. Hope you had a good time on your travels. 4 days 'til I get on that plane to Kenya. Can't wait!
We're going to be doing the Mara this year. I thought about Tsavo but, in the end, I knew our guests would *probably* see more in the Mara.
What's the weather like at the moment?
Hello Tanya !
What an incredible pictures of the river. I've staring at them for a while !!
The pictures of the flowers are very beautiful.
And the gerenuk at the river, what an elegant animal, just like the giraffe. We've seen them in Samburu.
Say hey to Ian from us !
Audrey
Hi Audrey! Hi Imogen! Great to see you here....We had a good trip - it was for work and very hectic, but altogether I think it was successful...
Imogen, I wish you were coming to Tsavo, but you're right, for your guests, the Mara may be a better bet - as you know, Tsavo can be more tricky...in some ways it's more exciting because you never know what you're going to see when, but you can't guarantee sightings of the Big Five (for example) in the same way you can with the Mara. The weather down here is overcast but warm at the moment - not sure what it's like in the Mara though. Hope you have a fabulous time!
Hi Tanya, this week there was a plant in the news because it only blossems every 8 years. It was like the plant on your picture and it's called Amorphophallus titanum ( Titan arum ). They also call it the penisplant. You don't need any imagination why...
Bye, Audrey
Audrey - how amazing! I'm going to google it right now...though maybe using the Latin name, not its nickname!!! Thanks so much for this information...