Swimming elephant, wild dog kill and lions
Reported by: Sandibe Team (3/28/2001)   

On an early morning trip on Lily our electric boat, guests were treated with a surprised sighting on an elephant bull swimming in the Santantadibe river. He eventually rested his head on the papyrus while his body was submerged in the river.

Our other fortunate guests who were out on a game drive witnessed ten wild dogs kill and consume an impala. The dogs stayed in the surrounding area for about three days.

A male lion was seen on the airstrip and a pride of four lionesses and a young male were seen at the Gomoti river.

A heuglins robin was seen with a grub in his beak and we followed him to his nest. The pair of robins had made their nest in a fork of tree about waist high and outside our curio shop. The secretive birds were not fazed by all people walking past their nest, but it is so well hidden that it is difficult to see unless you knew exactly where. On closer inspection, we saw two nestlings in the nest.

The Sandibe Team

Rare beauty of sitatunga
Reported by: Byron Ross (3/2/2001)   

While enjoying our first cup of coffee with two guests early this morning, we were treated to a rare sighting. By chance, we looked up and saw a young sitatunga quietly feeding on the edge of the Santantandibe River in front of the lodge. The sitatunga moved silently along the channel, allowing us to photograph him, even though he was very aware.

This shy and reclusive antelope occurs on the fringes of the permanent channels of the Okavango Delta, but I have only had three sightings of sitatunga, all in camp, and all when the camp is quiet.

This morning’s game drive also turned up three bat eared foxes under a tree, and last night we saw a serval and a herd of elephant.

Wild dog, tsessebe calving and attractive waterways
Reported by: Byron, Boyce and Sandibe Rangers (11/28/2000)   

It’s been a fantastic week for predators. A highlight for me was to see wild dogs again after a long period. Judy, one of our waitresses, saw a wild dog when she was walking from the staff village to the camp one morning. Not much later, a pack of 13 wild dogs were seen at the camp waterhole. That night, they killed an impala behind the camp, and we saw them for three days after that. One dog possibly has a broken leg, but seems to be keeping up with the pack, and they have been feeding it.

Other pleasant surprises are the continued sightings of serval on the night drives. Also spotted were a relaxed caracal, two servals and a civet that were found one evening in close proximity to each other, but no interaction took place. Boyce saw a bat-eared fox. A yearling tsessebe (topi) was seen moving around, quite naturally, with a herd of impala.

Wildebeest and tsessebe have started calving. A couple of days ago, we were watching a tsessebe with a young calf, when a hyena came and tried to attack the calf. The mother charged forward and protected her calf by knocking the hyena over and it moved off quickly.

A Yellow-billed Kite started nesting near the airstrip while a Swamp (Gabon) Boubou has a nest with two eggs next to Room 3. Also, two Heuglin’s Robin are frequently in the camp and are not shy. We saw them feeding a juvenile that hopped along behind them, begging for food.

Most of the seasonal channels have dried up and are now covered in short green grass that is attracting a lot of general game. The occasional pans in these channels are holding some water and a lot of water birds are attracted to them to eat on fish trapped there. At one pan we counted about 200 Eastern White Pelicans.

The Gomoti River is still flowing on our Eastern border and the Santantadibe Channel, in front of the camp, is a permanent channel. Both waterways are attracting lots of elephants. Along the Gomoti, herds of buffalo numbering up to around 2 000 are coming in from the Moremi Game Reserve.