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News from Selinda

What a rollicking good time we’ve had at Selinda this month. It’s a visually stunning time of year, with lush green vegetation and billowing indigo thunderclouds making for some incredible photographic backdrops.

Our birdlife hasn’t failed to disappoint the avid birders who have visited us recently. A single afternoon’s game drive has yielded more than 60 different species in the space of just a couple of hours. And it’s exciting spotting too.

Three ospreys have made themselves at home along the spillway, we have several pretty swamp hens nesting in the reeds and there’s even a big old pelican doing the rounds.

Away from the water’s edge, a couple of secretary birds have befriended three ostriches and between them have raised a few heart rates on our airstrip of late. The ground hornbills are also out in force at the moment and a lucky few birders have managed to spot a few wattled cranes too.

Predator action has been pretty spectacular recently too. We were delighted to find the 15-strong Zarafa pack of wild dogs over in Selinda territory, where they’ve been for several days now, hanging around Star Pan and taking advantage of our juicy, well-fed impala.

We were lucky enough to join them on an adrenalin-filled midday hunt a couple of days ago, guided by two intrepid Selinda guides, Mokopi and Joseph. As we sat admiring the pack sleeping soundly in a thicket of wild sage, a terrified female impala broke the treeline and unwittingly shot straight through the middle of them. Faster than our eyes could believe, the dogs awoke and took chase – from dead asleep to dead impala in less than 30 seconds. Bad luck for one, but extraordinarily good luck for the rest of us.

A couple of weeks ago, we also witnessed the power of forty hungry hyena jaws as they polished off a dead hippo carcass just outside camp in just 36 cacophonous hours. Their lingering whoops and cackles could be heard all through the night, and our nearby bush dinner drew the shining eyes of several latecomers, hoping to snatch a chunk of fillet off the braai as a consolation prize.

Back in camp, our new swimming pool is filled to the brim, sparkling and ready for action! We toasted its completion with a bottle of bubbly and christened it with a rather unrefined bomb splash – which was caught on camera, of course.

So with a shiny new pool and 320,000 beautiful acres of bird-filled excitement across the reserve, this coming month promises to be a great one. Here’s hoping we get to share it with you soon. Pula!