“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly coloured than the day” said the artist, Vincent Van Gogh. His glorious painting Starry Night reflects this, but the painting that captures the night for me is The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau. Here, his brush describes a wandering mandolin player who, overcome with fatigue, has fallen asleep in an arid desert lit by a full moon. A lion has chanced by the sleeping woman. Looming above her, the lion draws in the wanderer’s scent, yet it does not devour her. The lion simply lingers there, like a wild dream, human and beast in harmony.
A night in the wild has a similar dreamlike quality to me. While we humans verge on the edge of slumber, it is in the darkness that Africa’s creatures truly come alive. During the day, ’flat cat’ is often the call you’ll hear from safari guides who’ve spotted a lion, supine and sleepy in the heat. Draw night’s curtain and that beast comes alive, a prowling spectre at once graceful and menacing. It is at night you can truly appreciate this and many other creatures in their most dynamic form.
The north west corner of Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe is renowned for lion activity, and it wasn’t long after we had left the dinner table at Hideaways Nantwich Lodge that our guide caught the flick of a tail in the glare of the Land Cruiser’s headlights. Like a stage illuminated, the entire cast walked into the light: a pair of lionesses with their five cubs, ambling towards us along the dirt track, their overgrown paws flicking up puffs of dust. Without skipping a beat, they came alongside my side of the vehicle and with unnerving fortitude, each of the beasts, young and old, glared up at me, holding my gaze as if in a vice until they had passed. Those eyes, their fiery stare, stayed with me in my dreams.
Big cats were a favourite theme of the painter, Rousseau, none less so than leopards. With its lush riverine forests and woodlands, Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park is a magnet for leopard. One appeared to hover over our heads as the spotlight was trained on the canopy of a fig tree near Tafika Main Camp. Within the dense foliage, the light stopped on a flash of spotted fur, and there above us lay a golden beast, replete and calm having fed on a young puku antelope that it had dragged up into the tree. Rousseau had never portrayed such a scene, in fact the painter never actually left France, but his imagination transported him far beyond the Seine, and as I looked up at that glowing leopard among the dark foliage, I felt I was gazing at one of his fantastic creations.
Of course, many other creatures take part in this nightly pageant, and what also makes night drives so magical are the animals that you seldom – if ever – see during the day. Nightjars often swoop through the beam of light cast by the car, hunting insects like night fighter planes. On game drives during the day, you’ll often see burrows dug deep into the earth, but it’s only at night that you’ll see the creatures that live there.
Most of these burrows are dug by Aardvarks, a peculiar creature reminiscent of an overgrown elephant shrew crossed with a long-eared pig, and it’s in the cool of the night that they appear, snorting at the ground, ears pointed downwards as they sniff and listen for the termites upon which they feed.
Abandoned aardvark burrows become homes for aardwolves, which also come out at night. The smallest of the hyena family, this stripy long-haired carnivore doesn’t eat carrion like its cousins but survives on termites and other insects by licking them off the ground. Other rent-free burrow lodgers are porcupines that make use of the darkness to feed on plant tubes and bulbs. Often seen on pairs, they are terribly shy creatures, their long quills rattling as they scurry away from the glare of the car light. With all these peculiar beasts on this dark stage, a night drive often has a Midsummer’s Night Dream quality to it.
And they’re not the only players. Nary a wave of the spotlight is without a glittering cast, waiting in the wings. Eyes sparkle in reflection, often hundreds of pairs belonging to impalas, zebras, wildebeest and warthogs, or the dark and dangerous buffalos that are so one with the night.
Then turn the engine off and douse the lights. Be still and listen in the darkness for the shuffle of dainty hooves, the clatter of great horns, and the thrilling roar of lions that brings such rich colour to the night.
Author: Anton Crone | Editor of African Birdlife Magazine
