Summer at Kruger National Park

Summer at Singita Kruger National Park, and the area feels like something from a fairy tale. We have had a fair amount of rain, which was well received after the heat waves that drained us in the early days of December 2024. The rivers which had been flowing gently through the dry season dropped even lower than they had been in the winter months, and the vegetation which had been tricked into thinking the dry season had turned from brown to green, very quickly went back to brown again.

Now, we are grateful to see the beautiful green grasses have become thick and lush, blowing gently in the wind with all the different shapes and sizes of the inflorescences, which will give way to an array of seeds and tassels, all part of the plants attempt to propagate and spread in the short growing season. The herds of elephants that decided not to move west for the marulas have been revelling in the abundance of the season.

The trees and bushes are also full of their deep green foliage, flowers and eventually seeds and fruit are emerging on the ends of the branches adding beautiful splashes of deep purples, bright yellows and juicy greens. The baboon and vervet monkeys are spending their days foraging in the trees and the brown-headed parrots and African green pigeons call happily and with full bellies from the fig and jackalberry trees.

The birds are not the only ones calling happily, there is an abundance of life that emerges on those hot days following the small bouts of rain, and tries desperately to seize the opportunity to mate while conditions allow. Crickets and katydids “chip” and “chrrr” and the cicadas fill the hottest hours with a constant “bzzzz” and then, as the evening falls and the temperature cools, the frogs have their turn.

Every drainage line across the reserve has a soft trickle of water flowing downstream towards the main river, the N’wanetsi, which flows in front of the lodge and snakes its way out into Mozambique. But now the rivers are not the only places for aquatic life to thrive. Every little stream, every mud wallow that has grown in size little-by-little year after year, even the puddles on the road hold life, especially frogs and toads.

These little creatures are a very special addition to our summer chorus, as you drive along a road you know where the little puddles are, not because you can see or smell them, but you can hear them, a seemingly constant din of calling. What’s interesting is that the calling is not truly constant, it only sounds so because of a behaviour know as ‘time-sharing’ where multiple frogs in an area call at slightly different times from their little spots to enable the females to find where the specific male that is attracting her is sitting. If all the males called at the same time, the females would be unable to pinpoint where her suitor was positioned, and therefore may not have the opportunity to mate with the male whose call she found most appealing, an important part of mate selection.

The success of their breeding is also very dependent on the environment, especially the availability of water as their eggs are externally fertilized and then require an aquatic environment to develop, as do the tadpoles as they start their metamorphic progression. This is where all these small water sources become so important: if all the frogs in the area were forced to breed only in the river, the survival rate of the offspring would surely be far less, as there are far more predators in permanent water sources. Little temporary puddles could be much safer, as long as the water lasts.

This is where frogs also become such an important indicator species in an area and symbols of conservation. They are one of the first to suffer when an area struggles with pollution or deterioration due to human activity and global climate change. Not only is their breeding heavily affected, but the adults themselves are incredibly sensitive to environmental pollutants. So, we count ourselves very lucky to have such a thriving amphibian population, as it indicates a healthy and balanced environment, something that many areas across the globe are not lucky enough to have.

In the last 500 years, there have been 777 known extinctions across the globe, most being attributed to the effects of human activity and influence. There are believed to be even more which have gone extinct before having been identified by scientists… So among other animals in the same situations, many species of frogs and toads are so specific to their environment that they exist nowhere else on earth. Now, because of humans, their very specific environments have been altered, no longer able to provide them with a suitable habitat, and so the species as a whole disappears, sometimes without anyone even noticing they were there in the first place.