Friday, 07.February 2019 – Malelane
Travelling from the O.R. Tambo to Malelane is for us meanwhile a routine trip and on top we had luck that there was not that much traffic and so we reached again around 16.00 o’clock our Lodge along the Crocodile River after we spent again nearly one hour at the Malelane Superspar.
Timon already struck out after we arrived at our lodge with the cameras from view point to view point there whilst I was still busy with un- and repacking our luggage and food into the Kruger mode but also this is a routine meanwhile so it did not take that much time and I could join Timon in absorbing the smell, the noises and everything else and soon I started to relax and got even happier and happier as now our holiday started.
First thing I noticed was that the Crocodile river was far fuller and also the grass and vegetation was far greener and lusher than last year but for sure there are still a lot of dead bushes around which normally are favoured by our feathered friends and so it was today as well – A dead bush full of birdies -
the advantage of a bleak bush is that you notice also birds which stay normally out of sight in a lush bush but today we had luck in spotting a resting reed cormorant.
The earlier heavy rainfall produced also lovely bushes with beautiful flowers which attracted pigeons
and somehow the bleak bushes attracted all of a sudden an invasion of grey louries.
We spotted as well a pair of Egyptian goose
but for sure there were quite a large number of Egyptian goose around or better to say the river was full of them. More pigeons appeared as well and now landed in the bush full of flowers.
The speckled mousebirds kept in the beginning a bit hidden
but therefore now the grey louries could be found in a bush with yellow flowers.
Already when we entered the parking area of the lodge we noticed behind same a lovely pond covered by water lilies which we somehow must have overlooked last year or same was not existing due to the lack of heavy rain during the time we stayed there but today same had to be visited as well as we heard already whilst unpacking the car twittering of birds. A lot of nests from the masked weavers were hanging on the bushes and also these birds were around
and willing to pose.
A couple of nests were already older than others
but these birdies were not tired in bringing new building material in order to start building a new nest. We are always fascinated by these birds and their unbroken building skills.
Caracal, pangolin, gorilla 
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