In Namibia there is hardly ever a smooth transition between seasons, and this year’s end to winter was no different. The cold season arrived, made itself known, but by late July and early August, the days were already beginning to soften, although the wind had other ideas. It came sweeping across Okonjima, rattling through the thornbush and reminding everyone that the Namibian seasons rarely follow a neat script. And then, almost imperceptibly, spring began.
This month’s edition of While You Were Sleeping takes its inspiration from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, a story built around a hidden garden, a locked door and the discovery that life has been quietly stirring behind it all along. That felt rather appropriate for Okonjima. Because our camera traps spend much of their time showing us things that are easy to miss. The cameras become our keys, opening doors into parts of the reserve that guests and researchers cannot always see for themselves. And spring is the perfect season for such discoveries. Not the pastel, blossom-covered spring of a garden centre catalogue, but a distinctly Namibian spring. It arrives in shifting light, warmer nights, restless vegetation and animals responding to changing conditions in their own ways.
For some, spring means babies. For others, it means food, movement, growth, companionship or simply another season to navigate. The important thing is that the garden was never really asleep. Spring merely makes some of its secrets easier to find.
So, this month, we are unlocking the door and taking a look inside. Our cameras found a rarely recorded fox moving through the darkness, young gemsbok growing into their future horns, one of Namibia’s largest antelope appearing where it was least expected, a leopard mother with her cub, a busy brown hyena nursery and two notoriously solitary steenbok sharing the same frame.
Spring, it seems, has many doors. So, this month, we are turning the key.
Spring has barely arrived, and already the garden has revealed something extraordinary. For the first time since our camera traps began watching Okonjima, a Cape fox has stepped into view. Noy only is it a rare sighting, it is a species we have never recorded on our camera traps before, making this little fox one of the most unexpected discoveries in this month’s collection of springtime secrets.
With its big ears, slender body and dark-tipped bushy tail, the Cape fox is unmistakable. But what makes this encounter particularly intriguing is how little we know about why this individual appeared here. Camera traps give us a moment in time, but not always the explanation behind it. Was it passing through? Exploring new territory? Following food? Or has this small carnivore been moving through parts of Okonjima that have gone unseen?
Cape foxes are primarily nocturnal and are well adapted to life in dry environments. They are opportunistic feeders, taking a varied range of food including small mammals, insects, birds, reptiles and fruit. Their large ears are particularly useful in the darkness, helping them detect sounds as they move through the landscape. Whatever brought this one into the frame, its timing feels rather fitting.
In The Secret Garden, spring is a season of discovery, when hidden life begins to reveal itself and unexpected things appear behind the garden’s walls. Perhaps Okonjima’s garden has decided to do the same.And if this is what spring has brought us already, who knows what other secrets are still waiting behind the door?
For the Cape fox, spring represents surprise. Sometimes the garden’s most exciting visitor is the one you never knew was there.
Every garden has its inhabitants, and Okonjima has had its baboons for a very long time. In fact, they are written into the reserve’s name. Okonjima means “place of baboons” in Otjiherero, a reminder that these intelligent and highly social primates are part of the landscape’s story.
This month, two camera traps captured two slightly different moments in the lives of young baboons. In the first, a tiny infant is riding securely on its mother’s back, holding on as she moves through the bush. In the second, a slightly older youngster has graduated to travelling on its own two feet, walking alongside its mother rather than being carried by her. It is a small progression, but one that tells us something important about growing up.
Baboons breed throughout the year, so these infants are not necessarily a seasonal response to spring. For a young baboon, growing up is about much more than getting bigger. Life in a troop means learning a remarkably complicated social system. Who can be approached, who should be avoided, when to groom, when to follow, where to move and what all those different alarm calls mean. Neither has left the garden yet as they learning how to move through it. Like Mary discovering that the garden is full of life once she starts paying attention, the longer you watch baboons, the more there is to notice.
For these little ones, spring represents growth. The garden’s newest inhabitants are beginning to find their feet.
In The Secret Garden, the mystery begins with something hidden. There is a wall, a locked door and a place that has been quietly existing beyond everyone’s view. Okonjima has its own hidden corners, although ours tend to contain leopards. Freya is one of the reserve’s more elusive leopards. Daughter of Naya and Mawenzi, she is rarely encountered by guides, making camera-trap records particularly valuable. This time, however, the camera caught something especially interesting: Freya and her cub together in a tree, feeding on a leopard bait.
The bait tree is part of Okonjima’s leopard monitoring programme. By placing bait in carefully selected trees, researchers can encourage leopards to come within range of cameras, creating opportunities to identify individuals and follow them over time. These photographs can reveal far more than which leopard has visited. They can help researchers understand movements, population changes and family relationships. In this case, the bait revealed a family. Freya was once the cub being watched. Now she is the mother, and beside her is the next generation, sharing a meal high above the ground.There is something fitting about finding this particular secret at a leopard tree. The bait may have brought Freya into view, but the camera captured something much more private than a feeding leopard. It opened a little door into Freya’s life.
For Freya, spring represents revelation. Sometimes you only need the right key to discover what has been happening behind the wall.
In The Secret Garden, spring is the moment when the hidden life of the garden begins to announce itself. Plants push through the soil, flowers appear and a place that seemed quiet suddenly becomes busy with growth. Out on Okonjima, a young oryx offers another version of that awakening.
Few animals are more immediately associated with Namibia. The gemsbok’s striking black-and-white markings, long straight horns and remarkable adaptations to life in arid environments have made it one of the country’s signature antelope.
These youngsters are still growing into that familiar silhouette. The horns will become longer. The body will become stronger. The slightly awkward proportions of youth will eventually develop into the powerful form of an adult gemsbok. For now, there is still plenty to learn.
Young antelope have to become increasingly capable of moving through the landscape, finding food, recognising danger and keeping up with the herd. Growing up in the bush is not simply a matter of getting bigger. It is a gradual process of becoming better equipped for the world around you. The garden is awakening, and these youngsters are growing with it.
For these little gemsbok, spring represents potential. The finished animal is already there in miniature. It simply needs time to grow into it.
One of the pleasures of The Secret Garden is discovering that the garden was never really empty. It was alive all along. Mary simply had to find the door. Okonjima has its own animals that seem remarkably good at doing exactly that and eland are a perfect example.
The world’s largest antelope is not exactly difficult to spot once you know where to look, yet at Okonjima they can be surprisingly elusive. A herd appearing in front of a camera is therefore something of a small victory for our wildlife detectives. There are no calves in this sequence and no obvious story of new life. Just a group of enormous antelope going about their business. And that is precisely what makes the sighting interesting.
Winter was short this year, followed by a particularly windy August. Through it all, the eland have continued moving through the reserve, feeding and surviving the changing conditions. Spring is not only about what is born. It is also about what endures. Somewhere beyond the roads and the usual wildlife-viewing spots, these animals have been here all along. The camera simply happened to catch them passing through.
For the eland, spring represents rediscovery. Sometimes the secret is not something new at all. Sometimes it is simply something you had not seen before.
Mary’s discovery of the garden is also a story about learning how to look. The more time she spends there, the more she notices, and the more she begins to understand the life unfolding around her.
Khaleesi’s two cubs are doing their own version of this. They have been photographed with their mother regularly over the past several months, and both have now survived their first stretch of life in the wild. In this sequence, Khaleesi and the cubs are taking turns drinking water. It is an ordinary necessity, but for young leopards, ordinary moments are full of information. They are learning where water can be found, how to approach it and how to move around their mother and each other. As they become more independent, their knowledge of the landscape will become increasingly important.
And water is only one lesson. Young leopards also spend enormous amounts of time developing the physical and behavioural skills they will eventually need as adults. Climbing, chasing, pouncing, wrestling and playing can all contribute to coordination, strength and behavioural flexibility. For now, they are still learning the garden’s rules. And like Mary, they have a great deal to discover.
For Khaleesi’s cubs, spring represents curiosity. The wider world is opening up, one lesson at a time.
Some of the most interesting parts of a garden are the ones you cannot see from the path. The same is true of a brown hyena den. From the outside, a den entrance may reveal very little. Behind it, however, an entire nursery can be unfolding.
Our cameras have given us a glimpse inside this season. At least four brown hyena cubs appear together in one sequence, while guides have recorded as many as five. And they are clearly keeping themselves busy. One cub was photographed carrying a guinea fowl in its mouth. Whether it was dinner, a trophy or simply an entertaining object to carry remains one of those questions the camera cannot answer.
What it can show us is a den full of growing young animals. For brown hyena cubs, the den provides an important refuge while they develop and become increasingly familiar with the world beyond it. Much of their early life takes place close to this sheltered space before they gradually venture further into the surrounding landscape. It makes the den an almost perfect Secret Garden scene. There is a hidden entrance. There is a world beyond it. And behind the door, life is already in full swing. In Burnett’s story, Mary needs a key to discover what lies beyond the locked door. At Okonjima, the camera is the key.
For the brown hyena cubs, spring represents discovery. The outside world is waiting.
In The Secret Garden, the robin becomes a guide to Mary’s discoveries. It draws her attention towards things she might otherwise have overlooked and helps lead her deeper into the hidden garden. Our camera traps occasionally do something similar. This month, one pointed us towards two steenbok.
Steenbok are generally solitary antelope. Individual animals maintain territories and communicate in part through scent, including marking at dung middens. Males and females can have neighbouring or overlapping territories, however, and their lives are not quite as isolated as the word “solitary” might suggest.
So what were these two doing together? The photograph cannot tell us. They could have been moving through the same area, sharing space temporarily or meeting for reasons connected to reproduction. The image gives us the encounter, but not the entire story.And that is what makes camera traps so useful. They do not always provide answers. Sometimes they provide questions worth investigating. Like the robin leading Mary towards the hidden garden, the camera has drawn our attention to something we might otherwise never have seen.
For the steenbok, spring represents connection. Even the most solitary residents of the garden occasionally cross paths.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about spring is that it does not mean exactly the same thing to every animal. For the Cape fox, it brought an unexpected visitor into view, a species our cameras rarely recorded. For the baboons, it is a new generation growing from being carried to taking its first steps beside its mother. For Freya, it is motherhood revealed through a camera trap at a leopard tree. For the young oryx, it is the slow process of growing into an animal perfectly suited to Namibia’s landscape. For the eland, it is another season survived and another reminder that some of Okonjima’s wildlife is hiding in plain sight. For Khaleesi’s cubs, it is a time of learning, drinking, playing and discovering the wider world. For the brown hyenas, it is a busy nursery hidden behind a den entrance. And for the steenbok, it is an unexpected encounter between two animals that usually prefer their own company.
This is where The Secret Garden becomes more than a theme for this month’s photographs. The magic of Burnett’s garden is not that spring suddenly creates life. The garden was alive before Mary found it. The plants had been growing, the robin had been moving through it and the hidden world behind the locked door had continued without her. She simply found the key.
Okonjima is much the same. The bush does not suddenly become alive when spring arrives. It has been alive through the short winter, the dry months and August’s relentless wind. Spring changes the conditions, but it also changes what we notice. And while you were sleeping, the cameras were keeping the keys.
An in-depth look at ethical wildlife photography at Okonjima Nature Reserve, exploring leopard research, guided encounters, and research-led photographic practices shaped by time, knowledge, and restraint.
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In wildlife conservation, the decision to intervene is never taken lightly. At AfriCat and within the Okonjima Nature Reserve, we operate under the principle that nature should, as far as possible, take its course. However, when an injury fails to heal, causes undue suffering, or poses a significant risk to an animal’s survival, targeted intervention becomes not only justified but essential.
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