hunger strike

It was 07h00 one morning in late November last year at the Klein Okevi waterhole near Namutoni in the eastern part of Namibia’s Etosha National Park.

- DIRK HEINRICH

Nothing much seemed to be happening, with only Cape Turtle and Emerald-spotted Wood doves, Red-capped Larks and a few Burchell’s Sandgrouse apparently the only visitors at the waterhole.

Suddenly, in the shade of a step in the limestone formation, a movement next at the water caught my eye. The next moment an African wild cat leapt up to catch a dove coming in to land, but the bird managed to avoid the little predator. Some 10 minutes later the cat noticed a Cape Turtle Dove that had landed on the limestone step; again, its lightning-fast attack was unsuccessful and the dove escaped unscathed.

The wild cat settled in the shade again, effectively camouflaged, and closely tracked the arrival of every bird. It launched a few more attempts, but all were either aborted or unsuccessful. At 07h51 the cat once again leapt straight up, twisted around a metre above the ground and fell back to earth, head first. With its front paws it had snaffled an Emerald-spotted Wood Dove in mid-air, but then fallen before it could secure its prey between its teeth and had to release the dove.