Africa Wild

Flutts!

RP, that one was definitely checking if something was to be gained from me. Even the resident Cape fox looks up to see if some meat will be flung in her direction. And I'm sure the equally resident hornbills and crows do get their share from visitors. Although I have to say that both are very clever birds who also live on the unawareness of first time visitors who leave out food unattended before meals because they are still laying the table or so.

Squirrels

The tree squirrels in Kruger are also playing a lot, but as they are always running up and down the trees and at an enormous speed it is much less entertaining than the KTP ground ones, which are also less shy

Lovely clouds, but they do not look like rain clouds

Also love the squirrels and really love such days spent in camp

Thanks Mel

Itumeleng She's quite reliable in that area. SO glad to see she's still healthy. Any offspring for her yet?

Yep, sometimes the "little things" can be quite satisfying - just the stress-free atmosphere of the KTP makes the whole trip worthwhile.

Looking forward to Grootkolk

Those hornbills can make a nuisance of themselves.

Pumbaa wrote: ↑Wed May 01, 2019 3:26 pm (…) and really love such days spent in camp

Ja, and it is beyond my grasp how people who managed to tacked some nights in a wildness camp
go out early in the morning just to sit at a different waterhole I mean, what's the difference?
Apart from being locked up in your narrow car without a toilet and most likely without a fridge

ExFmem wrote: ↑Thu May 02, 2019 10:55 pm Itumeleng She's quite reliable in that area. SO glad to see she's still healthy. Any offspring for her yet?

Yep, sometimes the "little things" can be quite satisfying - just the stress-free atmosphere of the KTP makes the whole trip worthwhile.

Looking forward to Grootkolk

Itu has a little cub. We missed them both by minutes because we had to attend a different leopard that day

Uh, ah... Grootkolk... Not much to look forward to really. Pretty quiet up there

Alf wrote: ↑Fri May 03, 2019 5:15 am Those hornbills can make a nuisance of themselves.

True, but it wasn't that bad with them lot and I really like taking photos of them

8th April 2019 Urikaruus to Grootkolk

The next morning we managed a fairly early start - after all we had to cover about 260 kays to Grootkolk. But being out early didn't help either. No sign of anything, not even cat spoor in the road. Then onto the dune road which we don't really favour even though we had the odd good sighting on either of them three (counting the one from Twee into the Auob riverbed as the third).

The first 15 kays were quite uneventful and when we had passed Valpaan I was thinking of the people who had seen leopards at that waterhole and how we had never had a single spotted cat on any of the dune roads so far… when all of a sudden I saw the "tail" telling shape sitting sunning itself in the dunes.
As if I had no care in the world I told the SO to stop and to reverse because I had seen a leopard. Understandably, the SO couldn't really believe it since - as mentioned before - we had never seen one on a dune road.

But there it was. To that day I have no clue, if it's a male or a female, but it was named Boipelo by people who apparently had seen him later than us but reported it earlier. That's the closest I will ever get to naming my own leopard. Darn!

Boipelo was sitting there quietly, watching us and occasionally checking to the right...
and to the left.

We sat with the leopard for about half an hour - no other car in sight. Eventually Boipelo would get up and stretch:
Then the animal tried to disappear behind a small patch of grass blades that you can see on the left and we
made the decission to carry on.

While starting to roll, I looked back at the leopard only to find it sitting up again, watching us leave. So I made
the SO stop and reverse again. The leopard laid down again… We started to roll again… The leopard sat up again…
I made the SO stop and reverse again… The leopard laid down again… Then the SO ordered me not to look back
anymore which I dutifully not obeyed But luckily, the leopard stayed down, so we finally carried on.