Africa Wild

Oh, wow! - what a variety for the first three letters of the alphabet alone

Wonderful sequences of the naughty boons

So many wonderful shots, ExFmem

especially love all the birdies

Thank you Sis, Flutts, Mel, and Pumbaa

RP - the cheetah was seen from one of the bridges on 9/14, and we were staying at Lower Sabie at that time. We headed north from Sunset Dam. Sorry I don't know more specifically, but the bridge "scenery" may give you a clue (?) - left side heading north.

nan - yep, seems the oxpeckers were everywhere this trip - which brings me to my next OFF TOPIC post...

Those Cape Buffalo pics reminded me….
There's something I need to get off my chest. Oxpeckers!

Mind you, there's not an actual oxpecker ON my chest, since I don't have ticks, fleas, or lice… okay, fleas or ticks, but I have a certain disdain for them.
What do you call a dentist, an otolaryngologist, and a proctologist all rolled up into one? An oxpecker.

Their very existence depends on sticking their face in their fellow inhabitants' nooks 'n crannies. Precursers to modern day TSA agents.
This multi-specialty degree can only be obtained through that highly esteemed English university, (from which 27 British Prime Ministers, 50 Nobel Prize winners, and 120 Olympic medal winners graduated), Oxfordpecker.

It's not like they're coming up with cake, cookies, or candy - it's all for the chance to eat a tick, a fly, a succulent maggot, or reopen a grisly wound. What do I know? Maybe they taste like the proverbial chicken.

If they ever come across a piece of chicken, do they say to themselves, "MMMmmm, tastes like maggots!"

Perhaps their ancestral DNA is Chinese, who it is rumored will eat anything (think sheep penis and scorpion). Why anyone would eat a scorpion, I don't know.

The Chinese call them "yerro-beard" and "red-beard" oxpeckers, tho' I have never personally seen one with facial hair. Coincidently, "oxpecker" in Chinese means "are you really gonna eat that?"

Wonder what they did in a past life to be reincarnated as an oxpecker - migrate up and down instead of horizontally?

In this age of freely choosing ones own identity, I highly doubt anyone self-identifies as an oxpecker. Except maybe tapeworms or politicians who are looking to improve their social status.

Little known fact - a group of these birds is called a "nincompoopery of oxpeckers".

There. Glad I got the oxpeckers off my chest!

D



DAMSELFLIES
DRAGONFLY
DIKKOP (Water)

not a lot of Yellow-billed.... but Oxpeckers

DOODLEBUG
DRONGO (Fork-tailed)
DOVES
DUCK (White-faced)
DUIKER (Common)

ExFmem...I love your oxpecker info!!

Ja I agree with Flutts on the Ox-pecker, very good and funny

This multi-specialty degree can only be obtained through that highly esteemed English university, (from which 27 British Prime Ministers, 50 Nobel Prize winners, and 120 Olympic medal winners graduated), Oxfordpecker.



Keep it coming, Ex!

Thanks for the cheetah location!