Having the Time of my Life revisited (October 2016)

[Bushcraft]

Some brilliant owl sightings

We shall start with the owl sightings

You dangled the summary introduction carrot first

[PJL]

Fantastic owl sightings! And what an amazing variety

[ExFmem]

WoW! I've never seen so many owls in a single trip.

Can't wait for the next installment - your enthusiasm about the trip is contagious.

[Alf]

Wow lucky to have seen so many owls

[PRWIN]

great shots

[stefan9]

Love the owl sightings. You seem to have seen more owls on one trip then I have seen going to parks ever :)

[Mel]

I'm happy that you all appreciate the owls as much as we did! The amount of different ones we saw on this trip certainly was amazing and I feel I'm getting good at spotting them. Oh, and the SO does too! While I made him stop for another tree with a large weaver nest that held a big hole in it to see if it was occupied, he casually asked me why I didn't look at those in the opposite tree And with that he had found the spotted eagle owl family

Funnily enough, I am learning from the book of faces that I missed out on still quite a few other nests. Although to defend my spotting reputation, they were on those stretches that we only drove ones, aka between Twee Rivieren and Kij Kij

Thanks for you wonderful comments

Flutts, Lis, Pumbaa, nan, Dewi, steamtrainfan, Bushcraft, PJL, ExFmem, Alf, PRWIN and Stefan

[Mel]

Lazy days at Grootkolk

Staying at Grootkolk for the first half of our trip meant winding down and sitting mostly at the camp's waterhole to see what was coming and going. And since the lions didn't hog the camp like we had experienced it in the past, we received big herds of visitors daily. They were mainly wildebeest, springbok and kudus, but also the odd oryx and even some elands. In fact, the second night when we sat outside I heard them approach from the left, but maybe we spooked them because we were sitting at the fence rather than on the patio (as you can see the waterhole better from there). They never came to drink. But Franco said on a later day that he had been surprise the waterhole had been empty one morning although the wildbeest had come through in masses throughout the day and he didn't think it had been them.

[Mel]

These were part of the largest herds of springbok and wildebeest... 60+ bokkies and 80+ wildebeest - at the same time

[Mel]

The kudu population really seems to thrive around Grootkolk.