Spring is always a lovely season in Africa and is a time when it unashamedly displays the remarkable fecundity of wildlife with the sudden and often mass appearance of the newborn. Here on the banks of the Chobe River, where a month ago it was showing the desolation caused by the heavy concentration of elephants over the summer months, the short rains have transformed the bushveld into a carpet of green and sustenance for the vital milk supply of mothers with young at foot.

In this drawing we see part of an impala crèche of numerous fawns with attendant adult females so characteristic of this species where there is a sharp annual lambing season. The bountiful season stimulates birds such as oxpeckers to nest, lining their nests with hair plucked from the impala.