The red-billed queleas had been unleashed

[Ratel]

Flying Wildebeest!!

Those Elephant herds are a beautiful sight, but at times can really test your patience.

[Mel]

Fantastic (inter)action photos of the zebras, the ellies and the wildebeest

[Richprins]

Marvelous relaxation, Pumbaa!

Quite a big ellie bull there first up!

[nan]

lovely Zebras, love the pic of the Ellies with "presents" and of course the flying Gnu

[Flutterby]

Wow, great pics! Nice to see big ellie herds and the wildebeest are sure looking frisky!

[ExFmem]

I always like to see some action from a sighting, and you got zebras, ellies, AND wildebeest all interacting. Lovely to see them so "animated", turning a common sighting into such an enjoyable afternoon.

[Pumbaa]

Thanks so much Lisbeth, Ratel, Mel, Richprins, nan, Flutterby and ExFmem for your incredible comments

[Pumbaa]

Meanwhile it started to drizzle again and we carried on and met again a black bellied bustard



and could finally turn into another favourite of ours – The S39 where we right at the beginning saw ostriches,



waterbucks



and a bald vultures in a tree.



The rest of the drive was disappointingly quiet but it is once again such a road which gives you either all or nothing and today we had to be satisfied with nearly nothing at least the many views into the Timbavati river compensated a bit the loss of animals.

Another brown raptor was more than worth to stop for



and close to the Timbavati picnic spot we had to cross a causeway where we always stop and took the obligatory pictures to the left



and also to the right – This year it looked like a jungle there especially with the rainy weather.



After our break at the picnic spot itself where we walked a bit around we also did stop at the Ratel pan hide and gladly the bad weather discouraged the people not to stop there as although we heard a lot of cars we stayed the whole time alone in the hide.

Lots of hippos, crocodiles and yellow billed storks could be discovered far away but we directed our attention to a weaver searching for food to fed the little ones

[Pumbaa]

but each time we were allowed to observe excessively the yummy food the weaver caught and this time same presented proudly a caterpillar, disappeared in the nest and flew away to captured more yummy food.



It took a while whilst we looked around until the weaver now presented a large grasshopper



which looked very yummy at least to the little one and although it meanwhile rained heavyly we had a great time in the hide.



A yellow billed stork was approaching



and after all we stayed quite a while at the hide simply enjoying the silence. Shortly after the hide we always do have a good view onto some hippos



and at this stretch of the road we saw far more animals than during the beginning so we met a large group of male impalas





whereas not far lots of ladies where hanging around as well



and a giraffe was feeding from a bush.



We notices far away a fish eagle and on a causeway on which we always stop and which is normally always great for birding we photographed a village indigo bird



and then I shouted pygmy kingfisher – another lifer for us!



It was such a cute fluffball and same stayed a long time at the same spot so Timon could take shot after shot



and this sighting indeed compensated us extremely for the quiet start into the morning.



to be continued...

[nan]

like Bald Vulture and Bustard
love the busy Weawer
and Village Indigo Bird, not so often seen
and of course the Pygmy