African nights are a treat in the bush, you will have many many sounds, birds,frogs, animals and insects.As many as five different owls for starters. Most guides/PHs know their birds. Lions are a classic along with mfisi the spotted hyena, there are other more obscure sounds that a sharp guie will id for you. Monkeys and baboons sleep at night but if you are lucky (?) enough to have a troop of baboons roosting nearby you should hear them muttering and squabbling all night long with an occasional shriek. We had a gang that slept near our camp and it sounded like they had bad dreams! Guilty dreams perhaps?
Stars are fantastic especially early in the year before the fire season. You will see the Southern Cross almost all through the night in SA but further north it will dip below the horison for a few hours. The hunting season starts with Ocorpio hanging across the eastern sky after dusk with Orion the hunter dipping in the west late in theseason sept oct you will have Orion rising in the dawn sky along with Taurus. Scorpio rules the winter sky. A good guide will know a fair bit about stars and it is worth staying up late, meteor showers etc, a dim moon helps helps the hunt too! Clear air will enable you to see all the zodiac signs (some are really faint) that are visible in the winter, if your birthday is between sept and april you might get to see 'your' birthsign, appears 6 months away from your actual b'date. A good starguide is worth the money as are computer programmes, decent 10X40 or 10X50 binos or a spotting scope add enormously to what you can see. The planets of course as well as Jupiter's moons.
Have fun
chrisg
( nothing going on? Just walk off thirty metres from camp and sit down with your eyes closed for ten minutes...Tell your ph to keep an eye on you Ha ha)
Topic: African Nights (Read 1933 times)
