Africa Wild

I is for Iridescence, Interesting Insect and Insignificant Impala.

Isn’t it amazing how a bit of sunlight can change an otherwise drab looking bird into an Iridescent Wonder…..

Violet-backed Starling



Green Wood-hoopoe

Diderik’s Cuckoo

Greater Blue-eared Starling

Marico Sunbird

As I have mentioned earlier there were not many insects around ..apart from Tamboti Camp. But I photographed these insects elsewhere and I am not sure what they really are ..anyway they look interesting…can anybody give them a name for me ?



Impalas are not really insignificant at all. As a matter of fact they are quite graceful, beautiful and photogenic animals so I am not quite sure why I only have one photo of these animals …..clearly something else was more significant at the time (probably those Oxpeckers on the Impala’s back )

Beautiful shiny, brilliant birds

And yellow billed oxpeckers

The impalas are insignificant only because there are so many. If they were like the duikers or even kudus, they would not at all be insignificant, but "one of the prettiest antelopes"

I have seen those insects somewhere lately, will try to find them (wasps I think ) The bigger one hanging down is something different.....

Interesting, Informative, and Ifficient!


Beautiful pics again, MN! But enough birds now!

Where were the yellowbills?

May be a mole cricket type thing under the wasp? Try the ID thread?

canibale again... these insectes
nice picture

love the details of the Impala... but would be nice to have the yellow-billed Oxpecker... maybe with O

Beautiful birds, and you even got some Yellow-billed Oxpeckers!!

WoW To all your bird shots, Michele,

and what luck you had with the sunbird, wood hoopoes and violet backed startlings, the diderick and even yellow billed oxpeckers

Lisbeth wrote:Beautiful shiny, brilliant birds

And yellow billed oxpeckers

The impalas are insignificant only because there are so many. If they were like the duikers or even kudus, they would not at all be insignificant, but "one of the prettiest antelopes"

I have seen those insects somewhere lately, will try to find them (wasps I think ) The bigger one hanging down is something different.....

Thx Lisbeth....Yes I think a wasp and a cricket maybe

Richprins wrote:Interesting, Informative, and Ifficient!


Beautiful pics again, MN! But enough birds now!

Where were the yellowbills?

May be a mole cricket type thing under the wasp? Try the ID thread?

More about the Oxpeckers later..will work out where we saw the Yellow-bills...and I have plenty more birds for you...

Thx again everybody..one very brief episode coming up right now...:)

J is for Jagermeister.

Well not just Jaegermeister..a bit of Amarula thrown in as well.
This is a Nel Tradition that travels around with us wherever we go. Whenever Doug and I light a fire ( which is every night while in the Bush) we toast to the day's events with a Jaeger. Even though Doug was not in Kruger with us we still had to uphold the tradition…and because we were flying home we had to make sure the bottle was finished at the end of our trip. We didn’t light a fire every night but we certainly had a toast to the day’s events every evening. But try as we might Rob and I could not get Rookie to join in with a Jaeger…but she happily joined in with a Amarula.
So as we were driving around spotting birds etc we would comment as to whether it was the “Jaeger Jaeger" sighting or not. After a while we thought it was a bit unfair to just say "Jaeger Jaeger"…that was totally excluding Rookie and her Amarula….so we changed it to “Ama-JaegerJaeger" !!!!!
We had many wonderful sightings to cheers to each evening but apart from that the AmaJaeger toast is just a lovely opportunity to sit back and savour the day’s happenings and to realise how privileged we are to experience those wonderful sightings.
Needless to say Rob and I did ourselves proud ..there was not one drop left by the end of our stay.