Africa Wild

Just a few kays down the road there was another spotted eagle owl - maybe dad?



As you can see, it was rather warm again.

A couple of days earlier I had complained to Spots that despite the amount of ostriches we had seen there hadn't been any young ones around.
Well, we got them today too.

And then... nothing... No life at any of the waterholes... You would think that the animals congregate there to work against the heat by drinking. But no... They did not.

Because it was so hot, I had wanted to go to Houmoed and return back to the camp from there. Spots got greedy and wanted to cross the dune road to go up to Leeuwdril to find the cheetah family again. I ended up letting him decide what we would do and obviously Spots decided that we would drive there. But I have to give him credit for what we were about to see just because he had made that call.

The mating couple and their mate had moved a bit passed Houmoed waterhole, so that's the first thing we would have missed.

Another two kays down the road we bumped into a traffic jam of 3 cars. I immediately spotted the cause of that, or so I thought:
A confused owl who was up at 10.30 in the morning in 40 plus degrees.

Intrigued by what the owl was staring at so intently, I averted my eyes to the ground as well...

How PRECIOUS!



Tucking in!

Warning! The next post might be a tad gross for some...

Gooey

All the while the owl had been sitting and watching but got fed up at some point and came flying towards us. Unfortunately I missed it starting, but even if I had, the settings on my camera would have been all wrong anyway as my lens was trained on the cheetah.

So there is only a sitting owl.

Eventually mother nature called and since we were closer to Twee Rivieren than to Urikaruus, we opted to head that way before returning to the camp.
Another excellent choice we should learn

Also, once we had decided to go the cheetah finally got up and allowed me some leg shots for identification.





Like I said - a very PRECIOUS sighting.

So that was sighting number 2 I would have missed

And if we had turned around at Houmoed, I also wouldn't have seen the wide awake Verreaux's chick just before Twee...



As well as the one and only eland right outside the gate at Twee.