So this month we are going to try and add a few more words than we have been doing recently… So lets start with the heat. This year has been hot – there was even an extreme weather warning issued by the Zambian Meteorology people. As the month wears on so do the expectations of rain. We had a few drops and even some rumbles of thunder, but the expected downpours never materialised on Independace Day. Traditionally it is often said that the rains come then. In fact the rain season for 2015/16 are being predicted to be low. This is less than ideal, already the last season was not great and the rolling blackouts (or “load shedding”) are a huge issue here in Zambia. We often are very, very grateful to be completely off-grid with our solar panels and pumps and so on.

With all that in mind, there is no surprise that this year the river is low. In fact it is so low that we are seeing new rocks that we have never seen before start showing their tops in the river. This makes boating a bit “interesting” shall we say. We are literally inching our way up certain areas. All good fun though, although I have had Mike strengthen our propellor guards! We do have to say though that the ‘funnel’ will be almost impassable with the larger boats if the river doesn’t stop dropping soon, so Rick is thinking about putting out an advert for anyone with underwater demolition skills… Anyway, despite these really low levels the surprising thing is that the pools on the ‘pools loop’ have held water right through the whole month. Which of course has meant good sightings.  In fact the sightings this month have gone up to volume 11 – spectacular stuff being seen almost daily.

I will get to sightings in a minute or so, so please bear with me… October saw us continuing our work with GRI at the community school, this time Jeni Jack and I went down with a couple of guests. We took a tiny generator, laptop and projector and Jeni backed up her lesson with pictures and video. This had the children absolutely enthralled. We are hoping that Novembers newsletter will see us posting a bit about a visit to the Elephant Orphanage Project with around 30 children. Stay tuned!

In between taking bets about when the first real rains will be, we also start to wonder when the Impalas will start giving birth. For those that are interested we pretty much reckon that it was the 10th of October this year.

The nesting skimmers did produce a chick! Sadly it was seen once by John and Kaley and then the next day when I went up to take a look there was a large croc coming off the island and no more chick. Bugger. Two years in a row now, with two nests and no offspring. To be honest when you see how they nest it is incredible that any ever survive with all the Harrier-hawks, monitor lizards and crocodiles around…

So more on sightings. Well the ripe fig trees around camp make for some great bird sightings well. But this month we have decided to create 3 slide shows to try and really give an impression of being here as a guest. With family out visiting we took the opportunity of doing a boat cruise or two and a couple of gamedrives. Julia was keeping score on the boat cruise – 32 bird species in two hours.

The first slide show is the general happenings in camp and associated with the camp. Everything from school visits to walks to violet-backed starlings eating figs:

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The we move onto a montage of what we see from the boat.  These pictures are taken from two boat cruises.  The average guest does a minimum of two boat sessions usually and the birdlife is spectacular.  Recently we have also been seeing a fair few lions from the boat as well.

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Then a game drive.  This was one drive.

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Towards the end of the month we suddenly started running into cheetah! The first drive Israel and John found a collared male (Zambia Carnivore Project we assume) and then the following day John found a coalition of three feasting on a Puku.  Cheetah are a rare sighting here, the Kafue is one of the very few places in Zambia where they can be seen.

The sunsets have also being getting better and better as the month wore on.  The few scattered clouds and the vegetation greening up make for spectacular sundowners on the rock.

So now we have November to look forward to.  We have a few interesting bookings, from dedicated moth experts through to a large photography group.  I hope they bring camera covers!  The rains are going to break any moment….