This week at Adonsonia

This was a fairly quiet week as we were mainly busy in our workshops or behind our desk. But even in a quiet week there are always some great photo opportunities around the Lodge.

We are seeing our resident pair of Brown-hooded Kingfishers more often now that the Woodlands Kingfishers have left for warmer climes. In the beginning of the week the male was warming up in the early morning sun and provided a lovely photo against the blue winter sky.

Our ‘vintage’ game viewer got a new lease of life with a few small repairs so we went out for drive. It was a wonderful winter evening and the light was fantastic.

On Friday I saw a lot of vultures heading over towards the neighbours behind the koppie. After watching for a while to see if they were rising or landing I could see that they were indeed landing, which meant there was a very good chance of a kill of some sorts. I went out to see if I could find it, but unfortunately it was too far from the road to see. But the vultures were most obliging subjects for photos.

With so many vultures flying around the chances of getting a good shot were fairly high ;)

Did you know that a group of vultures in flight is called a kettle of vultures?

Mea culpa!

Ouch! It’s been 2 months since my last blog post….mea culpa!

It wasn’t that nothing happened, and in my head I wrote lots of posts, but somehow I just didn’t make the time to sit down and type them out, add the photo’s, upload them, link to them…. You get the picture…. I love sharing our experiences here at the lodge but I wish it could go straight from my head to the blog :)

Anyway…

We have been working on a lot of stuff to make the lodge even nicer. We now have a King size bed in Koedoe, and a Queen size in Waterbok, and all rooms will have mosquito nets soon. Michel has been hard at work on the outside of the lodge, rebuilding the carport and storm proofing the roof even more.

Even work is fun when you have a giraffe in the background

A lot of admin was done; we are now on booking.com and AirBnB and very soon you will be able to book with us directly from Facebook and the website.

Also Michel has put up pages on the website for Penga Ndlovu Customs, handmade knives, and I am working on my page for Glass Monkey Beads.

And in between we a week full of unexpected adventures with our guests. Including a lion sighting in pyjama’s, the guests that is… not the lion!

The best way to start a week at the Lodge, with a lion posing nicely on the driveway

But enough of the excuses… I am determined to better my ways and have at least one blog post up each week from now on!!!

Happy Monkeys

When we bought the lodge we bought it lock, stock and barrel. This included all the furniture, curtains, wine, trophy heads and various other surprises hidden in the cupboards. Also ‘included’ was our ‘bush wake up service’ consisting of a troop of vervet monkeys, who sleep in the trees around the lodge.

At the moment our monkeys are in hog heaven. Not only are the guava trees starting to bear fruit (none for us as the monkeys eat it before it is ripe!), but our wild fig tree on the front lawn is also full of figs for them to eat. So they spend the first few hours of the day stuffing their faces with figs, and a couple of hours in the afternoon as well.

A quick blog about Lions

Since the beginning of this year we have been spoilt by lion sightings.

We hear them roaring close by and they regularly wake us up at night…….

We see them when we are coming back from getting the mail…

We see them passing the house…..

We see them just ‘lion’ around….

And we even see them pooping….

So we are very spoilt, and because of this we almost take them for granted and see them as big ol’ kitty cats.

Until…. you are at a lion sighting and this big male just walks straight at you, looking you in the eye… and then when he passes the car, so close that you can almost touch him, you realise that he is huge, almost level with the car window…. then, when the goosebumps subside, you are once again aware that these are Lions, and they are the owners of the Bush!

Expect the unexpected

As far as the larger mammals on the reserve, we generally have a good idea of what we see or what we are going to see or are looking for. We quite often hear or smell them before we see them or there are other signs that they are there. The smaller animals however are often unexpected sightings, and sometimes very unusual!

On Saturday we were having a relaxing day after saying goodbye to our guests. As I could hear a lot of birds outside the bathroom window I decided to take the camera and see what I could find. Unfortunately most of them decided to stay in the leaves of the trees but I managed to get this rather nice shot of a Scarlet-Chested Sunbird.

And then, as I rounded the corner of the Lodge I saw a Leopard…….

…………………Tortoise that is. Actually it was two of them, and they were finally catching up to the fact that it had been Valentine’s Day a week ago. He looked absolutely thrilled, she was more interested in the grass blade she was eating!

And then after all that excitement I had another nice find, one of my flip-flops that the monkeys had stolen was lying there waiting for me. None the worse for wear apart from some extra bite marks :)

I’m still missing one of my other pair, but that one is bright pink with a flower on it, and it has gone walkabout before, so I don’t think that will come back any time soon. Maybe we will see a monkey wearing a pink flower on its head one day…