When the Lions are away, the Leopards come out to play (April 2019)

[Mel]

Mel

still a lot pleasur to follow your journey into "our" beloved Kgalagadi

The chance you had to see so many Elands all together and your pictures are magnificent, I especially love this one with the dust and sun, so atmospheric
and our friend the Crow, still telling all his life to everybody
and again a Genet (the only one I saw was in a tree, in a night drive
I love too the Ostrich chicks, they are so cute
glad the Lioness has no pain anymore

and the Cheetahs, never, never I will be boring by these raced (purebred) cats, you can post as many you want
ready for more

Hello nan,

long time no see. Nice to hear from you and thanks for participating here.

Unfortunately I can't provide you with more cheetah photos. That was the only sighting we had. Ever since I started looking into them more closely they seem to avoid me while other get to see tons of them

But still, we can't complain. We did have some good sightings.

And that lioness was actually a lion. Goes to show just how bad shape he was in

[Mel]

All i can say is wow how amazing

[Mel]

Fantastic cheetah shots, Mel

also love the ostrich chicks, the meerkat and the hornbill

Poor Boy

Pumbaa! I'm always happy when my photos of my most favourite animal are liked

[Mel]

You HAVE seen a nice variety of animals/birds despite the less than optimum conditions

Naturally, the cheetahs are SO special! I can't even begin to ID them now that there are so many new ones not yet in the Guide , but so thankful you are "in the loop" on behalf of the rest of us.

The ostrich chicks rival meerkats to me, in cuteness factor

Best sighting ...

The conditions were really dire. So, yes, cannot complain. As you will see in a moment

As for the cheetahs: I'll try to stay on top of them best I can and we'll just have to do our own stuff on here, I guess

[Mel]

13th to 19th April 2019 Urikaruus - Continued

By the third morning friends of ours had moved into the cabin next to us. They are pretty eager beavers and usually out by gate opening while the SO and I find that we had most of our bestest sighting if we left about half an hour after that (or in the magic year 2013 even much later than that ). So we were travelling down the road and it was dead quite. Nothing. Not even a spoor of a lion was to be found anywhere. We had passed Montrose waterhole when we saw our friends' taillights. But they shot off without seeing us. In the dust they left, we saw this:

AT first the SO had thought it was a lioness lying there in the riverbed, but a quick check with the binocs confirmed my suspicion: another leopard! It became clear very quickly that this had to a be a male. And I was so hoping that I had finally the luck to see the legendary Urinanib.

But to this day, it remains a mystery to the SO & I how our leopard-adoring friends could have overlooked that animal

[Mel]

Once again we got majorly lucky and - as it turned out to be indeed - Urinanib got up and walked towards the road and therefore in our direction.

[Mel]

He crossed the road in front of us and since we were the only car around (again!!!), we had all the time in the world to get positioned

[Mel]

After that we trailed him for almost half an hour before one other car arrived Urinanib was busy walking and marking and checking the shrubs for a quick wild cat meal Get ready for a leopard photo overkill

In my excitement, I did forget to adjust the settings though

And the beast would only look into my camera when there was enough branches to prevent me from taking "that" shot

But beautiful he is

[Mel]

[Mel]

Eventually, Urinanib didn't not show up from behind one of those bushes he had kept checking anymore. And only then more cars arrived. Some of them tried to sit and see what happened, but the SO and I were so thrilled that we decided to get out of there since we had had the best sighting anyway. Or so we thought

We went down to Auchter for a much needed toilet break and when we moved north again we saw one of the people who we had told about Urinanib at the picnic spot at Kamqua. So we turned in to asked if the leopard had come out again. He had not. But about 10 minutes before we arrived at the picnic site, Itumeleng had crossed the road with her small cub to relocate it once again. We had missed that… On another day I would have been horribly mad, especially that one of the reasons why we didn't always leave Uri early, early in the morning or went out for evening drives was because we had waited for her to show up at the camp waterhole. She did twice. But only at night. And always alone

But anyway… What a morning!!!