Binoculars

After a recent short visit to the Tarangire and spending some time with guides I felt that I would like to write something about binoculars, but not so much what a binocular is but what an effective guiding tool it becomes if used properly. A common thing I saw is how little some guides use their binoculars, which I can’t understand as mine, was glued to my face almost all the time. Binoculars become a vital tool when you are in the field guiding and if you use them properly can play a big role in what you will find and what you could tell and show your guests. It can also help you interpret useful and different information to your guests, telling them what you see or can see through binoculars. A common mistake in guiding is jumping to conclusions and many of these mistakes or miss identification could be avoided by just spending a bit more time looking through your binoculars.

With binoculars you will notice the pretty blue above the eye

There is nothing better than sitting with a group of animals or maybe a pretty interesting bird and just watching them through binoculars, this is when you notice animal and bird behavior and often things that you don’t always read in a book. A good example is the Little Bee Eater it is a fairly common bird seen in the parks and absolutely worth stopping next to and showing your guests and everybody will admire its beauty. When looking at it with binoculars and getting your guests to do the same you will also notice another hidden color this bird has which is the most amazing blue above its eye. You can then go further and watch it hunt, sitting on a favorite perch with a clear view where it can scan the air for any flying insects. After catching something it will often return to the same perch and smack the insect against a branch until it is dead and can be swallowed. If he caught a butterfly you will also see how he first discards the wings before swallowing.  All of this is really interesting stuff to see and show your guests, and all it takes is a few minutes of looking through your binoculars and interpreting what you see and this you can do with almost any other animal.

 Another important use for binoculars is to stop and scan your surroundings especially if you are battling to find stuff, my favorite saying when guests come back from a drive and say “We saw everything this morning except a Leopard” is that it does not mean there was no leopard you just did not see it! Sometimes you drive through an area and you think to yourself “Man there must be something interesting here” and if you stop, switch of the vehicle and just do a good thorough scan with your binoculars you will often find that there is something special.

It does not mean there was no Leopard, you just did not see it!

From far away just another sausage tree, but looking through binoculars, something special!

Another fine example of scanning, we found this Lioness out on the Lemai Plains in a small Balanites after stopping and scanning.

So next time when you are out guiding try and use your binoculars a bit more then normal and you will see it makes a huge difference, it opens up a whole new world of hidden things and by getting your guests to do the same it makes them feel more part of the whole experience, after all, you did not bring your binoculars along for nothing!!

Incredible Siafu !

So I think all of us (including some unlucky guests) at some stage had a run in with these guys. I can remember in the Northern Serengeti they are particularly bad. On a number of occasions we got home after hosting dinner and would find our house completely covered in Siafu, they would be everywhere, so much so that we had to go and sleep somewhere else for that night. Sometimes the guests would also call and let us know that their tent is covered in millions of ants, and we would normally end up moving them as well, really tricky when the camp is fully booked.

But every time I pass a big column of Siafu ants I cant help but stop and watch them, they are mesmerizing almost like sitting around and watching a camp fire burn, as they move along in their millions.

Siafu ants on the move with larvae.

Siafu or also known as driver ants or safari ants are from the genus Dorylus. They are found mainly in central and East Africa but also extend into tropical Asia. The Siafu is without a doubt the king of swarm, marching columns can contain up to 20,000,000 individuals a truly scary sight and when food sources become scarce and the move home the numbers can grow up to 50,000,000. What I have noticed up in Northern Serengeti is that their movements increase when there is good or heavy rainfall, as there will also be all kinds of other insects out and about. Siafu are predators and they move in huge columns attacking, killing and feeding on almost everything they find, bigger prey can also be killed especially if the animal can’t get away from the attacking ants and the animal will eventually die from asphyxiation which have also been reported occurring in humans.

Siafu swarming and feeding, Northern Serengeti.

However Siafu ants can be easily avoided if you know they are there, just don’t stumble into them in the dark or stand in their lines, they will be up your pants in no time and we all know what happens then.

The marching columns are arranged with the smaller ants walking in the middle and flanked by the bigger soldier ants on the sides giving them protection and they will fiercely defend against anything that might be a threat, often standing with their huge jaws open and pointing in the air ready to bite. A bite from a Siafu ant especially the big soldiers is extremely painful leaving two big puncture wounds and they are not easy to remove as their jaws are so strong that when you try and pull them of you often break them in half leaving the head behind. Because of the head often being broken of the body when trying to remove a biting ant, some tribes for example the Maasai have used them for emergency sutures, holding the wound together and letting a soldier ant bite on either side and then braking of the head, keeping the wound or cut in place, I have never seen this done but believe that it can work

Siafu columns hunting at night, Northern Serengeti.

Within a Siafu colony things are made up very similar to other types of ants where you have a queen, workers and soldiers, and as with most ants they are sterile non-reproducing females and blind, communicating primarily through pheromones. Male driver ants or also called sausage flies because of their big sausage like abdomens are attracted to columns of Siafu’s, when the columns come across a male they tear the wings of and carry him to be mated with the queen. Male driver ants leave the nest soon after hatching and die not long after mating.

Example of the soldier ants protecting the smaller ants in the middle, ready to bite !

So next time when you curse the bite of a Siafu ant, take a moment to remember what incredible and formidable hunters/predators they are of the insect world. Imagine a column of 20,000,000 lions!!!