Sightings WOW, photos not so... (Oct 2018)

[Mel]

Like I said at the waterhole at Kielie was really hot! That night we saw a lone - extremely bulky - lioness. Definitely a mum soon to be She was followed by a brown hyena and the local wild cat. Already by now we had seen more than on all our previous stays combined. And we still had another night there

[Flutterby]

That lioness looks so comfy...I can imagine that sand was cool and soft!

Lovely pics of secretary birds!

[Richprins]

I have a very healthy respect for predators at night, Mello...totally different kettle of fish!

The lions do look less beaten-up in the desert there than ours, I must say!

The trailer park lion looks pregnant!

My favourite is the secretary at the water...they do look so self-important!

[Lisbeth]

Lovely light at Auchterlonie and the secretary bird is ..."high up" Never seen one in a tree

Nice purple roller

[GavinW]

Loving your travel tale

Can't wait for more

[Pumbaa]

Love that shot from the lioness sleeping in the sand - That is so typically KTP

Great variety of birds and here especially raptors on top - That secretary bird shot is brilliant

Mel

[Mel]

Thanks for carrying on reading and commenting, Fluts, Richprins, Lis, Gavin and Pumbaa

Next batch is on its way

[Mel]

Like I said… Kieliekrankie was hot - and luckily we are too lazy these days to leave the camp sharp on gate opening time
Otherwise we would have missed the first cat sighting of the day - lions.

Funnily enough we had seen at least one of them on our last day at Urikaruus in April. Easy to identify because he's got a bad
eye. The lioness is a different one to the lady we saw the night before. Her belly isn't nearly half as fat at the other one's

[Mel]

We had decided to go all the way up to Mata Mata to change our booking for the last night from Twee to Mata because we had the late flight booked from Upington to Johannesburg the day after that and wanted to be able to do a last long drive before leaving. Also, the stretch towards the north was much more active than anything south of Auchterlonie towards Twee Rivieren. Also, going over the dune road to the Nossob side was not an option because we had seen enough of the Nossob when staying in Grootkolk

I defnitely hadn't expected for the cheetahs to be still around, but Hanri and her pretty grown cub had hardly moved from the location that had been reported to us for the day before.

Looking at their bellies we decided that hunting as probably not an option, so we carried on after about an hour.

[Mel]

Coming down the dune passing Urikaruus Camp, where the road crosses the riverbed, we found quite a few cars parked down there,
some even halfway into the riverbed

It didn't take us long to understand what the commotion was about because there was a cheetah racing through the riverbed to chase
some springbok. We lost side of her, but since she returned empty mouthed at some point, it became clear that she failed.

But how on earth was I supposed to make an ID from these photos?

All I knew was that I had seen three cheetah, two clearly smaller than the third one, so most likely a mum with her two cubs. But I needed
mum to be able to find out who they were. Eventually the three of them vanished in the bush far off and only through my binocs mum became
visible again, now with a springbok lamb dangling from her mouth. We should learn later that it had been her second kill of the day. She was
busy teaching her offspring how to hunt.

We sat for a bit longer, but knowing that there was food on the table we didn't hold our breath for the cheetahs to come closer any time soon.
So we got on our way again.