I didn't sleep much past 4am - the hippos were making lots of noise and added to this I could hear lion, hyena and an early hadeda ibis calling followed shortly after by a turtle dove - so I lay there listening until our wake up call and the water arrived in our wash basins.
During breakfast we could see impala running - clearly unsettled by something - probably the lions as that's where we heard them.
We set off for our walk to Long Pan in beautiful soft orangey morning light - I took pictures of impala, baboons, kudu all bathed in the early glow. We spent a long time with a male elephant watching him shake a tree to dislodge seed pods, then really stretch into other trees to get the seed pods and leaves - fascinating and unique to Mana Pools.
We passed a drying water hole, with hippo in the middle and a hammerkop flitting between them and using their backs as a vantage point. Also there were Egyptian geese, yellow billed stork and a green backed heron washing his freshly caught frog. At Long Pan - it has water all year so is a Mecca for all animals, there were more birds - this time heron on a hippo, black winged stilts, one of the first ruff to arrive, egrets and white crowned plovers. We sat watching life for a while - animals eating pods and coming to drink - the latter very warily, as they are aware of the dangers outside the pools and the crocodiles within.
By the time we returned it was really hotting up and we looked forward to tea and biscuits -we were nearly back in camp when sidetracked by a big male bull elephant, Boswell, he is one of the six who have mastered the art of standing on their hind legs to pull branches from the tall trees - so we watched him do it - he unusually had two other young smaller elephants with him - they were probably learning the skill for when they grow up and importantly for now finishing off eating the branches Boswell pulled down and was fed up with - one was stretching in the shorter trees for his own food but not yet standing on two feet!
Finally back in camp @ noon we had lunch with tea rather than tea and biscuits. Over lunch we talked with Humphrey the owner and ex Wilderness guide about our previous visits - Kingsley who guided us at Kasaka - is now freelance and was with him last week and the two guys who took us on the canoe trip -Henry is working in a fishing camp and Matthew sadly died from cerebral malaria while working in the fishing camps.... it's a small world.
After a siesta - apparently while we slept elephants were round our tent after pods - but we didn't hear them - we had iced tea and lovely snacks before heading off to look for the wild dogs. The dogs were seen by the national parks guys earlier while they were walking and were just north of us.
We set off in the vehicle but could see nothing from the road - so walked onto the flood plain - as we focused on an eland Doug saw them on pop onto the plain from drinking down in a river inlet - fantastic. We headed down and sat with them - we saw 12 adults and 8/9 puppies (today's photo.) The adults went off hunting but as we left to watch them one returned no doubt wary of the hyena close by - we think they thought the pups would be safe with us so all 12 left - probably they have been habituated by the BBC film crew!
The hunt was unsuccessful as impala, elephant and baby and waterbuck scattered - we didn't see what happened next as it was getting dark and we had to get back to the car and camp...a great and special sighting nonetheless.
A lovely dinner again under a cloudless starlight sky - we could see Venus and Jupiter first followed by Mars, Saturn and Mercury......and loads of stars!