Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"

I was staying at this reserve for a week with my good friends Gigi Gottwald and Daniel Rossouw. They own a share in a chalet – there are several such chalets throughout the reserve. The region is part of the Waterberg Mountains, but in the reserve these are not very high, being more rolling hills with many boulders and occasional rock sheets and outcrops. The vegetation is well-developed but open broad-leaved woodland, with a grassy understory. There are a few large expanses of open grassland with widely-spaced trees; there are also several large ponds, fed by rivers and streams, and a few marshy places. Unfortunately there's also a lot of invasive alien plants, especially Zinnias, especially along the sides of the roads. These are not eaten by the local animals and thus to spread at the expense of the tasty grasses, herbs and shrubs. The reserve staff have an ongoing struggle getting rid of these. But in the more hilly parts, the vegetation is pristine.

Even before we reached our chalet we enjoyed a fine sight: a large colony of bright yellow flowers in a swampy patch. They were orchids! Here you see a couple of shots showing them in their glory. This species is Eulophia angolensis, a widespread and robust orchid found over most of South Africa in marshy areas like these. They can grow more than 5'/1.5m tall! The flowers are, like those of pretty much all orchids, quite complex; you need to see them up close for yourself to appreciate them fully, but I hope you get at least an idea from my photos.

The chalet where we stayed had a 'stoep' or porch facing east, where we sat to enjoy the view and the wildlife in the mornings and evenings. We could see a few hillsides opposite the one we were on, and animals walking in the distance. But action was often closer at hand! Just in front of the stoep, Gigi hanged some feeders with fruit in them in a small tree; she also placed finely cut pieces of cheese in a few feeders along the stoep wall, and also sprinkled bird seeds on a lower wall around the 'braaiplek', the barbecue place. There's also a small bird bath/drinking pond on this wall. Lastly she also threw out the kitchen scraps onto the ground just below the stoep. All of these therefore attracted a variety of Kamonande's denizens!

The regulars at the feeders were mostly birds: Dark-capped Bulbuls, Black-collared Barbets, Cape White-Eyes, Familiar Chats, Yellow-Eyed Canaries, Bronze Mannikins. But the highlight of them all were mammals – the bushbabies! A family of them live just below the grass roof of the chalet and come out in the evenings. They move with graceful and sometimes prodigious leaps, first entering the trees to the side of the feeders, and only cautiously approaching to feed, peering this way and that and twitching their ears all the time. Unfortunately they come out when it's already quite dark so it's hard to see them very well, but the porch light helped – it's not very bright, though, and we also did not want to scare them away with our camera flashes, so we took no photos. But we could make out their long, fluffy tails and huge eyes even in the dark.

They ate by bending down or even hanging mainly suspended from their hind legs, eating using only their mouths, not assisting with their hands. And there was even a female who carried a couple of babies out of the nest, holding them in her mouth! She first carried the one out, then came back for the other. She probably 'parked' them on a branch in a concealed position while she fed and foraged.

Galagos are tiny, graceful, energetic and absolutely captivating little critters, and they were a joy to watch! They also made soft chattering sounds as they fussed about; they did not give their loud, crying territorial calls around the chalet, though.

Other delightful visitors were a family of Natal Spurfowl. These partridge-like birds are quite common in South Africa but often wary and skulking. But these came out to feed on the seeds sprinkled on the wall of the braaiplek. The two chicks were about half grown and made very subdued peeping sounds as they ate. The adults were a different story! Every now and then they'd stretch their necks and start uttering the raucous series of crowing/cackling noises by which they proclaim their territories.

What amazed me, was how many insects came to the feeders! The stand-outs were butterflies, who came in their masses to the sweet, juicy fruits. They were mainly large and lovely Charaxes, but a few smaller yellow ones came as well. There were also large wasps and small flies who came to the fruit.

And then there were the kudus! Gigi and Daniel know a female kudu called Emma, who comes to the chalet a lot, feeding on some of the bits of food thrown out and on the leaves of the trees beyond the porch too, for good measure. Well, a few kudus came, we're not sure which one was Emma! But here you see a shot of (probably) her in the night. She came in the daytime also. She was tame and would eat out of our hands. Sadly, she was absolutely covered in ticks! They were packed in masses on her ears, and there were even ticks on her eyelids! We didn't see the oxpecker birds in the reserve. In much of South Africa, these birds live with big game and clean them of ticks and other parasites. I will write an article about them soon. But in Kamonande these birds are apparently absent, and so leave some of the animals at the mercy of the ticks. While many other kudus were looking healthy, our visitor was doing poorly indeed. Gigi thought that we might spray her with tick repellent, but she was scared of the spray can – maybe the smell. But then Daniel found she would stand still for us to manually pick the ticks off her! And that was amazing. Here we have this enormous, powerful animal that docilely stands still for us to clean her of these parasites! She absolutely knew that we were helping her! She lowered her head and turned her ears towards us so we could pick them clean. Most amazingly, she allowed me to clean the ticks off her eyelids! Imagine that – I was practically poking my fingers in her eyes, and she let me! I had to work rather roughly since ticks don’t want to let go and some were quite large. Nevertheless she let me pick them from around her eyes, even pulling them from between her eyelashes. What level of trust is that? By the way, kudus have absolutely huge eyes, about three times the diameter of our own, and dark. At the end her one eye was watering, as if she was crying; I wiped off the 'tear'. My hands were stained with her blood from the ticks I'd pulled off. We didn't get all the ticks but I hope we gave her at least some temporary relief. We saved some of the ticks in a jar for Ali, the University of Limpopo's parasite specialist.

More critters came out in the evenings and the night. There were several species of small to large moths, all beautiful. There were also some red toads! There was a big one and at least two small ones. The toads come out to hunt at night, because it's too hot and sunny by day, which would dry out their sensitive, moist skins. So they crawl into a hole or a crevice under the bark of a tree by day. It was lovely to see them hopping along by the lights of the stoep. But they were being particularly clever! The bird bath, as I said, was on the low wall around the braai place. The toads headed right for it, early in the evening! They hopped onto the wall, hopped along the wall up to the bird bath, and then hopped into it. They then sat and soaked in the shallow water for a while, with just their heads and hands sticking out, complete as if they were enjoying a bath or a swim. Then, once moistened enough, they'd leave for the night's hunting.

Gigi brought along some meal worms (actually the larvae of a species of beetle). One evening she fed some of these to one of the toads! It was amazingly quick: it would rapidly identify the meal worm as something tasty and with a flick of its tongue would grab it and swallow it in a jiffy.

Other critters who enjoyed Gigi's meal worms were the skinks (a shiny and slinky kind of lizard). There were two species, striped skinks and varied skinks. Gigi fed one of the latter; it was even faster than the toad, grabbing each meal worm practically the instant it landed on the ground.

We saw several reptiles, actually: also a ground agama, a sand lizard, a dwarf gecko, a giant plated lizard, and a tortoise. Gigi also saw a house snake – not in the house, but on a path, actually. It is indeed not particularly associated with houses; it is simply a widespread and abundant snake of the entire country, which also tolerates humans and enters their houses frequently. It is not dangerous to humans at all.

It was pleasant to sit on the stoep during the day and see what comes. In the distance we saw zebras, impalas, blue wildebeests, and baboons. Some animals came closer. Aside from the kudus, a nyala bull came close to the chalet, and a family of zebras also. Here you see a couple of them. The foal is well-grown, but still cute! They allowed a fairly close approach.

We took a few drives through the reserve also. Gigi says the animals were few, compared to previous visits of theirs. Still, we saw the zebras, wildebeests, impalas, and also giraffes (including a cute baby!), waterbuck, and warthogs. The warthogs were especially entertaining. We came across a few that were licking a big block of mineral salt – many animals enjoy supplementing their diets with this. The warthogs were 'kneeling' (actually resting on their wrists) to easily reach the mineral lick. Unfortunately I couldn't get a photo! They ran away when we approached. We saw the hogs several times, including a family with four (if I remember correctly) quite tiny hoglets!

We visited a part of the reserve called the Serengeti – a large open, grassy plain with trees spaced very wide. Unfortunately we saw no game there – a first, say Gigi and Daniel. We also visited a camp which supposedly contained a couple of Buffalo, but again, we didn't see them.

A mouse came into our chalet one night, but luckily it left again soon – I'm not sure which species it was. Another unidentified species was the bats that also flew out from under the chalet's grass roof in the evenings.

Ed. Note: That's not all! Read the rest of Willem's wildlife adventure story here.

Colours of Wildlife Archive

Willem

03.04.17 Front Page

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