Addo Elephant National Park (January 2011) *

[Peter Betts]

I spent a lovely hour at Hapoor on Saturday and enjoyed taking many ellies as they came past. I used a 70-200 f2.8 anda 1.4x convertor ona full frame camera

[Peter Betts]

A very young Gina at Mbabala Loop

[Ronnie]

My sighting of evidence of Honey Badger in Addo Park

On Sunday while driving through the Park I came upon this hole that had been dug right next to the road.
I was able to pull up close to it and found evidence that the hole had been dug by a Honey Badger.

Here is a pic of the hole




I was able to zoom right into the hole and here one can see the remains of some honeycomb and dead bees




This honeycomb was lying about three meters from the hole




Honey Badgers are mostly nocturnal and are very seldom seen during the day
and as such makes this a very special sighting for me in Addo.


This is the reply I received from Megan at Addo after I had posted my sighting on the SANParks forum and I quote


Wow, good find Ronnie

We have only seen evidence of honey badgers on our camera traps in the Park, although we always thought they would occur here.
Here is a pic from the camera trap inside Jack's picnic site (taken before it became a picnic site):



Megan Taplin
Communications Manager: Frontier Region

My thanks to Megan for her post and pic of the Honey Badger taken on a camera trap.
Learning that Honey Badgers and evidance of them have only been seen on this camera trap will always make this a special sighting for me.
:D :D :D

[Peter Betts]

My Christmas Addo lion

[Ronnie]

Spent Christmas Day in Addo

Wishing Christmas Blessings to all and a wonderful 2012 :D

[Peter Betts]

The little waterhole just before Harvey's Loop is great for early light sightings

[Peter Betts]

It wasa really harsh light day last Saturday when I went to Addo with the PE Camera Club Addo Fanatics Facebook section. I hadnt seen my old friend Valli Moosa for awhile but found him at Hapoor @ 10h30 in glaring light. Now if I left the camera in Aperture Priority and set the ISO manually I would have gota silhouette in that harsh light or a washed out version with a bit of detail so it was time for the camera to get out of its comfort zone so I switched everything to Manual (exposure) and set the Shutter at 2500 sec so as not to let too much light in. I opened the 500 lens to F4 to give me a pleasing background and I let the camera decide the ISO on Auto ISO with a ceiling of 12800 which I also specified. Then I used Nikons little wonder feature and set the Digital Lighting function to the 2nd highest level (High) and got these 2 pics which I posted in the wrong section last week..The camera by the way chose ISO 220 and the distance was 66 meters

[Peter Betts]

The 2nd pic with the settings for harsh light mentioned above..quite chuffed with the lens at that distance in the heat haze....more than sharp enough and that at wide open too!!

[Ronnie]

Leopard Tortoise Breaking Speed Limit

I took these pics in 2011 and are one of my all time favorite sequence pics.
I found this Leopard Tortoise going down the road at great speed breaking the Park’s speed limit.
I am just having a bit of fun, tortoises are notoriously very slow. -O -O -O










A short video of the tortoise walking down the road


.
-O

[Ronnie]

Lion sighting earlier this week.
I had sighted Gina and her two male offspring laying in some tall grass early in the morning
I returned in the afternoon and fortunately they had moved a 100 meters to an open area.





There were some ellies nearby and I waited for them to move past in front of the lions. I was waiting for the right moment to get some pics of the lions through the legs of the ellies, a once in a life time opportunity, I only managed to take this pic because at that moment another car pulls in and obstructs my view.

I would love to hear what you would have done .........