Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
I found this image in my file of edited images; somehow I missed posting it. It’s a few years old now, and seeing it brings back such happy memories of a wonderful morning out in the bush.
I hope you enjoy, and wishing you a wonderful week ahead.
While this leopard sighting was almost two years ago, it feels both like a lifetime ago, and also like it was yesterday. I find it interesting how the same experience can occupy those different spaces, seemingly at the same time.
This was the second to last day of my last safari, and the photos don’t need too much commentary. Our ranger took us to a leopard and her two cubs that were deep in a ravine, and while we perched, parked on the side of a rather steep slope, the cubs went about their day, playing, chasing, exploring and occasionally, snuggling up with their Mom.
I hope you enjoy my selections for today. Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead.
Hopefully no one is getting bored of leopards, after having a few posts in a row featuring my favourite cat.
If you missed the post from yesterday, you can check it out here, with lots more images of this beautiful cat.
Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead.
Even spending a short time in the bush with a given animal, it is easy to get caught up in the drama of its life, and care how things turn out for it. Regardless how deeply I realize it is all part of nature and the circle of life, I still find myself feeling sad in hearing of the passing of an animal that I had a special sighting of.
I recently read on the Londolozi blog that the Tamboti female leopard has not been spotted in over a month, and is presumed dead. I had two sightings of her on my last trip; the first, we arrived to the riverbed moments after she stashed her cub into a new den site, missing what we thought would have been the sighting of a lifetime. We did catch a brief glimpse of her moving a cub into a deeper part of the bushes she stashed them in, and as we headed back to camp, I was happy to even have seen the briefest glimpse of a cub so tiny.
The next morning, our last on safari, after having an amazing moment with elephants we headed off on a whim back to the clump of bushes where she stashed the cubs. Our wonderful ranger Dave had an instinct that she might move the cubs again, and as we arrived, we found her with one of the cubs and were able to follow her on a long journey through the bush to her new den site, and then spend some time watching her interact with her two tiny cubs. I’ve posted about this sighting before, and you can see some other images here.
Reading that she is now presumed gone, and only her female cub remains, prompted me to edit a few more of my images to share, and to relive those wonderful moments in the bush, watching nature unfold.
The photo prompt of the week is smile; either an image of a smile, or something that makes you smile. Since baby animals are a universal crowd pleaser, here are a fewer images of youngsters that have made me smile.
I hope you enjoy!
Does this bring back memories of childhood for anyone else? Of the times when your sibling was being a complete jerk and Mom looked on and told you to sort it out for yourselves??? 🙂
Happy Monday Everyone!
You never know what you are going to find when you are out on safari. It gets said time and time again, along with the concept of heading out without expectations of specific things that you want to see. Just being out in the bush is heaven for me, and anything I see is a bonus, so it is pretty easy to stay in that mindset.
While staying at Londolozi, we were on our morning game drive, and our ranger Dave heard about leopard cubs being spotted fairly close to where we were, so we headed off in that direction. We ended up doing a lot of 4 x 4’ing through the bush, and ended up stopping the vehicle at a rather severe downhill angle, to be able to view the cubs at the bottom of a ravine area. Soon enough, they decided that napping next to Mom was boring, and began playing with each other, running around fallen logs, chasing each other and generally acting like rambunctious little kids. The late morning light may have been a bit harsh, but the moment was absolutely epic to experience.
This week’s photo challenge topic, Variations on a Theme, seemed a great opportunity to share a few shots from this wonderful sighting. I hope you enjoy them; editing them has certainly brought back many happy memories for me.
I posted a few other photos from this sighting, as well as other images from my last visit to Londolozi. You can find that post here if you missed it before.
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