A Word From Willie Sonneburg

Willie Sonnenburg shares two unique sightings that he witnessed recently:

 

Lions versus Tortoises

One cold, grey winter's day I came across a pride of 11 lions huddled together against the cold and snoozing peacefully.

I love watching lions. Even if all they're doing is sleeping, they're such iconic creatures.

After a while I noticed something decidedly strange. Directly under the tail of one of the lionesses and dangerously close to her "poop chute", lay a small leopard tortoise. Can you think of a worse predicament to be in?

How in the heck had the tortoise landed up in such a delicate situation?

Then I noticed that one of the young males had his paw on another, bigger leopard tortoise. Every now and then he'd lick the poor thing or gnaw at its shell. Needless to say the tortoise had retracted its head and legs inside its shell.

Time passed and apart from the lions changing position and a solitary male leopard popping in and then out (speedily) -nothing much happened. The two tortoises remained captive.

Suddenly another one of the young males focused his gaze on something in the thicket. He got up, stalked slowly forward and then pounced - reappearing carrying a larger leopard tortoise jauntily in his jaws.

He lay down, clasped the tortoise firmly in his paws and licked and gnawed the hapless reptile.

After a while he grew bored with this and dozed off - the tortoise slipped out of his grasp and landed on its back in the grass.

Minutes ticked by. Cautiously, the tortoise poked his head out from its shell and after much to-and-fro, it managed to roll over and seemingly none the worse for wear, it sloooowly walked off on its thin, comical legs. Unbelievably, it stopped about a metre from the lion to nibble at some tiny green shoots and after what seemed like ages, made good its escape.

Meanwhile its medium sized compatriot, perhaps emboldened by big brother, also vamoosed.

That left junior, the smallest of them all, still trapped underneath a mountain of feline fur and muscle. At one stage one of the adult lionesses actually lay right on top of the small prisoner.

It grew dark and I left.

The next morning I went back, half expecting to find a few fragments of shattered shell. The lions had gone. And there was no sign of the tortoise, no bits of shell evident in the grass.

I reckon it was 3 - 0 to the tortoises.

Rare Visitor to the Timbavati

On Saturday 29 October, I came across a great white pelican at a dam in the Timbavati. It was together with a lot of White-backed vultures, Marabou storks and African fish eagle.

Listed as a rare vagrant to the area, it was my first sighting of this exotic bird in nearly 65 years of visiting the lowveld.

It spent most of the time preening itself.

Later in the afternoon I saw it again, roosting in a tree with two Marabous.