Africa Wild

Pumbaa wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2015 8:42 am

Lots of repair work was in full swing and the first larger construction site came across on the causeway on the S119/S25 as only half of the causeway was so far finished they built a short detour via the dry riverbed in order not to disturb the workers with finishing the rest of the causeway and in order not to close the road from that point onwards but before crossing same we noticed a bit farer away three different kind of raptors on a kill so we parked the car and observed that get-together a bit more in detail.



We observed a white faced vulture, a juvenile bateleur and a fish eagle close together and obviously the fish eagle caught a fish and attracted the other two but after quite a while



under the eyes of the food enemies the fish eagle decided to flew away with part of its prey and then the white faced vulture started to feed on the remains which the fish eagle had left and after the vulture had finished and took off it was the turn of the



juvenile bateleur who even put one of its feet on the kill to declare: “All is mine”. After a more than fantastic time we had also the bateleur finally had enough and flew away



so we still had a bit time in admiring a great white egret who just landed on the other side of the provisional causeway whilst we were about to cross same now finally.



A bit further down that road is leading via some loops / look out points nearly into the riverbed and that is once again one of these spots to simply sigh but we were not alone there as a herd of impalas had also the same impressions as we and could be found nearly everywhere

Pumbaa wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2015 1:58 pm Due to the lack of birds and also in view that this was not our last visit at this bridge during this holiday we continued our journey to Crocodile Bridge. Obviously it was snack time as we came across a couple of birds with their kills – first a European roller with a nearly swallowed kill



and then a yellow-billed hornbill with a fat green caterpillar.



After that Biyamiti bridge until the turnoff to the Hippo pools this is one of my favourite parts of that road as same always reminds me of a fairy tale wood, an overgrown jungle, mysterious and mystic and I still had to look forward to a couple of drives here. A small elephant stopped right in the road to play with a branch – this little fellow in fact looked familiar to us as this was not the first time on several trips when we saw him



together with his Mom and another herd member. “Come on, Mom”



Furthermore there are a couple of ponds a bit hidden and most of them still had water left. I was busy in observing a beautiful heron a bit hidden in a bush I nearly overlooked this fellow resting in full length on a branch above the said pond



and after finally having found out that the beautiful heron was in fact a dwarf bittern I was over the moon



a pity was only that same nearly kept hidden the whole time we stayed there in the thick vegetation but at least there is always a lifer to be seen!



One of the many burchall’s coucals could be captured – never remember having seen that much of them this year as ever before.



Now the area started to get wider and opener and so more and more “general” game all over could be spotted to start with a lot of crowned plovers to be found between their legs and a warthog family with nearly grown piglets



munched happily away on the roadside.