South Africa 2024: Day 5

6 December 2024: Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

My happiest birthdays are spent traveling. If you had asked me a year ago where I would be spending this one, South Africa would not have made my top ten guesses. Instead of cake and candles, our team began the morning digging post holes to widen the enclosure around a cabbage tree (Cussonia spicata), a native species heavily damaged by elephants, who clearly consider it a favorite.

Another experience that would never have appeared on any birthday wish list was being chased by ostriches. Yes, chased by six of them, territorial and unimpressed with our presence. We dropped our tools, jumped into the jeep, and drove off. Once the ostriches were satisfied, they returned to grazing, and so did we. Then they came back. It felt like a game of chicken with prehistoric dinosaurs. The dominant female and lead troublemaker, Saskia, was having none of it. Eventually our manager leapt from the jeep, sprinted to retrieve the tools, passed them to me, and we drove off down the road. The cabbage tree would have to wait for another day.

In an ostrich group, sex can be identified by feather color. Females are light brown, while dominant males are marked by pink-orange legs and beaks. One dominant male mates with all the females but favors one, helping her protect their eggs. The other females, less sentimental and quite strategic, quietly add their eggs to her enormous nest. She, being wiser still, moves those eggs to the outer edge, where they are more vulnerable to predators than her own. Ostriches cannot fly because their feathers lack keratin, allowing air to pass through them rather than provide lift. They also swallow small stones to aid digestion.

The afternoon unfolded more gently. We identified plant and tree species, encountered the resident black-backed jackal, Parthos, watched elephants coat themselves in cooling mud, saw a zebra standing still in the oppressive heat, and passed rhinos sleeping near the anti-poaching unit building. Not a conventional birthday, but one I would not trade for anything. That evening, one of the participants baked me a birthday cake, a gesture that made me feel unexpectedly loved by a group of people who were strangers only days earlier.

What did I log seeing today?

Birds: Yellow-billed kite, Baby crested Francolin (mom and babies), Long-Tailed Paradise-Whydah, Yellow-throated longclaw, White-backed vulture.

Mammals: Black-backed jackal, Impala, Kudu, Nyala, Zebra, Giraffe (Danny and two unnamed), White rhinos Thabo and Ntombe (she has half of one ear), an elusive Bushbuck, some type of small rodent, Wildebeest, Warthog, Vervet monkeys, Cachma baboons.