A noisy night followed by a Rhino extravaganza

Last night was certainly quite a cacophony of sounds. As we fell asleep to the lullaby of the hyenas whooping we were suddenly woken at around 1am by the sound of two hippos close by to our tent/Land Rover. It sounded like two males who had come across one another whilst out grazing and were having a 'stand off'.  They bellowed and growled each other for some time, sounding like neither was prepared to walk the 'other' way and carry on with grazing. It seemed to last forever and was so loud that it was impossible to get back to sleep. However, no complaints from us as: A) we were not prepared to ask the hippos to be quiet! and B) we are actually quite happy to be woken by the amazing sounds of the bush, no matter what time.

Shortly before the alarm went off at 5.45am Andy and I had already woken up, again by something VERY close to our tent. As we were a little 'drfity' from waking it was hard to tell what it was. It was certainly large with quite heavy footsteps and had a large bladder!, which it duly emptied next to our vehicle. You could clearly here the sound of snapping branches and sounds as if it was pulling at trees. It was at the side of our roof-tent so we could not see what it was and did not want to start shining torches around so not to surprise the visitor, although given how close it was it would have clearly smelt our human presence so must have known we were in the tent.

Initially it made sense to think it was an elephant, (although did perhaps seem to be a little heavy footed for an elephant, who are surprisingly quiet on their feet). To be safe we resided ourselves to the fact that if it were an elephant that close we were tent bound until it left or moved further away. The noise however, soon passed and Andy ventured into the darkness to check all was clear, and it was. As the light began to improve I began to have a look around the area to see what it was that had been there. Mmmn, there were no discarded branches and little other sign of elephant damage, it could not have been an elephant after all and the sound of snapping branches sounded too 'high' to have been a buffalo or even Rhino and it was definitely not a Rhino.  Seeing no tracks anywhere were were none the wiser until we left the camp and then saw giraffe droppings nearby. So the mystery was solved, it was a giraffe and our initial diagnosis was a little wrong!. We collected the remote camera that we had placed at the entrance to camp and also had photographic confirmation. I must admit I had set it at a height to catch small to medium size animals so apologies for half a photo of a giraffe! The night before we also stuck it lucky with a Hyena on the remote camera which we have also attached below.

As we made our way for a stop to catch up on the Mgoro pride (and again to see if Notch/boys had returned from their trip across the river) my attention was soon diverted to a large obscured dark shape in the tall grass 250 metres in the distance and near the river. Initially my brain went to process the object as a hippo that was returning to the river, a second later I could see that no it was not a hippo as its back was too concave and walked with the gait of something I knew was a rather special and rare creature. Andy quickly stopped and then out from the long grass (which covered nearly all of its body height) came a Rhino, a large female, a second or two later it was then revealed it was not one rhino but two, she was followed by a lovely little calf and likely to be the same one we had seen last year in the same area with a younger calf.

Wow!, two Rhino and no cars and a lovely glowing light casting over the grass tips. We made a quick apology to the Mgoro ladies for not stopping (who we spotted a moment after)  and drove far ahead over toward the lugga toward where the Rhino may be headed, this way we did not follow the animal and if it moved where we expected it to do so it meant we could get a shot of it without 6 foot high grass and let it come to us if she wished. Which she very kindly did. By this point a few other vehicles had arrived and all gave the Rhino the space they needed. Not only are these animals rare they are also very shy, getting too close not only spooks these animals but would just force it into cover or make it a little aggressive, especially as she had a young one with her. Although we were amazed how calm she was as she plodded with her calf at her own pace and gave a good show to all who were at the sighting.  From our initial sighting we had over 45 minutes watching the rhino, what a massive treat and sorry lions but this was pretty special and you were clearly still sleeping!