I spent an amazing few days at Phinda recently, and was lucky enough to not only have a fabulous ranger and tracker team to work with, but also got along brilliantly with the other guests on the vehicle. I have so many photos to go though when I get home; some of the highlights included some of the tiniest babies I have had the pleasure of seeing in the bush (elephant and rhino), spending time with two families of lions, a mother with 3 cheetah cubs, 3 older cheetah brothers, and some really cool eagle sightings. I’d still rather be outside than on the computer, so here are just a few of the special moments from Phinda.
I asked Dave to find me an owl if possible during my stay – he said give me 15 minutes (at 4 in the afternoon). About 20 minutes later he and Thoks found this adorable sleeping southern white faced owl.3 cheetah brothers lounging on a termite mound.Look between the leader’s front legs, and you will see a tiny elephant calf Quite possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen.I had two opportunities to photograph lions at night with red filters. I am looking forward to the black and white conversions when I get home.We spotted Mom and the cubs late one evening, and came back in the morning to view. Sadly, in the night the mom had lost one of the cubs, leaving her with the 3 seen here.The young lions were far more interested in getting up than the adults.The resident genet at Phinda, hanging around the dining area at night, hoping someone will drop something tasty. They call her Genet Jackson.
The area of the delta where I stayed was one of permanent water, but day by day, changes in the landscape were apparent as the flood waters flowing in from the Angola highlands began to fill previously dry channels. I think I had the best of both worlds as I was able to see the delta from both land and water – and as a special treat, by air on a helicopter tour.
I took over 1800 photos in 3 nights in the delta. I hope you enjoy a few of the highlights.
A lone giraffe wanders through an area of new flood.A leopard peers down from a tree.A spectacular sunset over the delta, taken while on a sundowner boat trip.A gorgeous female leopard using a fallen tree as a vantage point. I had no expectation of seeing leopard at all in the delta, but I had told my guide the previous afternoon that my dream photo would be capturing a leopard on a tree branch. In two days, I saw three leopards. Talk about lucky!A pair of spotted hyena cubs rest outside of their den.Stand-by passengers at the airstrip?A fish eagle from above.The delta by air.A herd of elephants from above.Water crossing! One of the camp vehicles carrying luggage from the airstrip to the camp.afr
The Kalahari was far, far greener than I anticipated. I had expected a dry and dusty, somewhat barren landscape. But we arrived at the end of the rainy season, and the desert had received rain only a day before we arrived, so everything was quite lush and green. As such, all the animals we saw were very well fed.
Here are a few images from my time at Kalahari Plains.
A pair of lion cubs peek at us from behind their mom.A Kori bustard searches the grass for his next meal.A black backed jackal gives us the eye as the daylight begins to fade.
I know once I am home I will be able to fill several posts with photos from my time at Sossusvlei, but for now, here are a few highlights from my brief stay.
Coming into Sossusvlei from Windhoek.Desert take off.I landed in Namibia hoping I would see Oryx, and within a few minutes, I did The lodge had a small watering hole, and I frequent sightings.Some young zebra playing in the desert. These little guys were whipping around, without a care in the world.One of the dunes at Sossusvlei.An oryx tests the water of the lodge pool.
These birds seemed to think that breakfast is not only the most important meal of the day, but an easy breakfast is!
Too many carbs??? A sociable weaver looks sleepy atop a bowl of museli.A pair of mountain wheatears and a sociable weaver look for crumbs.A group of sociable weavers line up on the patio steps, waiting for me to leave the table so they could help themselves to leftovers.
A quick panorama from the top of table mountain.The old limestone quarry at Robben Island.Rusted barbed wires around Robben Island are just one of the reminders of its very sad past.A view of Table Mountain from Robben Island.A couple of hungry African penguin chicks beg their parents for food at Boulders beach.A baby baboon, no more than a few days old, scampered around the side of the road, seen on our way into Franschhoek.An orange breasted sunbird on some flowers (which I didn’t note the name of) at the Kirstenbosch Gardens in Cape Town.
I am gratefully, happily, joyfully back in Southern Africa again, and spent the past few days in Cape Town. This time, I was lucky enough to get the cable car to the top of Table Mountain (the “tablecloth” covered it almost my entire stay last time, and high winds had the cable car closed). I took the journey to Robben Island, seeing where Nelson Mandela spent his imprisonment and heard a first-hand account about what life was like in the prison, and had a lovely day trip to Franschhoek, the Cape of Good Hope and Boulders Beach (penguins!).
Honestly though, the absolute highlights of my time in Cape Town was having the opportunity to meet up with a friend I met my first trip over, and finally meeting my fabulous SA based travel agent in person.
I’ve brought along a tablet/PC hybrid to back up photos, and the editing capacity is a bit on the sluggish side, but I will do my best to get a few highlight photos posted when I can, because I can honestly say I would much rather be outside enjoying the beautiful scenery than spending too much time inside on the computer.
I’ve finally had a chance to sit down to post this one day two of my time in Namibia, depending on internet connections, I might get a chance to post some photos of the desert and animals in the next couple of days.
Seeing about 6 or 7 of our beautiful great blue herons on Tuesday reminded me that I still had a few photos of grey herons to edit. These are the last of the photos I had flagged off from my stay at Zimanga for editing.
Enjoy
A grey heron, an egret and a pair of pied kingfishers. Those were some busy rocks!Grey heron reflectionA grey heron with an antelope skull and various bones littering the background.A grey heron in flight above Jozini Dam.A grey heron nicely poses in the grasses next to the dam.
I may have posted a version of this photo before, but I somehow lost the PSD file when transferring things from one computer to another, and I liked it enough to edit it again
I was so excited when I had the chance to watch a goliath heron two evenings in a row; I wasn’t so impressed with the light and weather conditions I had to photograph them. Hopefully one day I will see one of them again in more favourable conditions; until then, here are a few of the photos I captured
Have a great evening!
Feathers ruffled in the wind.A goliath heron in the tall grasses along Lake Sibaya.
On my first trip to South Africa, I completely blanked on the name of this bird while watching a pair perched in a tree along the river, and asked my guide the brilliant question “What is their primary prey?” Fish. Oh dear… I felt quite silly. I learned a bit more about the fish eagles this past trip (thank you to Graeme, Rebecca and Vincent for all the valuable information throughout my stay!) You can tell the difference between the males and females by the white front feathers. The males have a shirt, and the girls have a skirt. I had serious trouble distinguishing between the two at times though – those fish eagle girls sometimes have VERY short skirts! I’ll give my best guess as to the sexes in the pictures below. I’ve got a 50/50 shot of being right. Have a great evening!
Maybe not the nicest perch, but it certainly was a popular one. During my two weeks at Zimanga, I saw herons, kingfishers, fish eagles and an assortment of other birds on this dam structure. By looks I think this is a male, but I think this may be the eagle that I was told was indeed a female with a very short skirt. 1/320 sec, f5.6, ISO 640A male fish eagle gave us a fly by while we were out doing our monitoring activities. The more I look at this picture, the more it looks like I (badly) photoshopped the bird into the background. I can assure you I didn’t! 1/800 sec, f5.6 ISO 800A female fish eagle along the shores of Jozini Dam. I saw several fish eagles during my morning boat trip, but unfortunately for my photography, most were too far away to get a reasonable picture on a somewhat bumpy boat ride. 1/1250 sec, f5.6, ISO 320I’m not even going to hazard a guess on the shirt vs skirt for this photo! 1/1600 sec, f6.3, ISO 400
Quite possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen.
