predators large and small



We left Skukuza when the gates opened at 6am, fortified by some strong coffee sold by an enterprising guy at the gate in the predawn chill. It was Greg's first trip to Kruger, and I was really hoping that he'd get to see some lions so I was really pleased when we came across this group, right on the edge of the road. The biggest male (not in this picture) turned and looked right at Greg as he was taking his picture. The resultant shivery hands are the reason that the photo was too much of a blur to publish here! One becomes very aware that the car provides a very false sense of security, and the lions could break their way into them if they realised what tastey morsels were travelling inside!



Less than 100m down the road, we met this group of affectionate giraffe. We noticed during our stay that giraffe tend to travel in threes. Not sure why.




Greg's breakfast toasted sandwich at a picnic spot on the way to Satara was a great attraction to the yellow billed hornbill.




They remind me of velociraptors!




the starlings seem a lot more gentle, but are equally keen to help themselves to any crumbs that may fall. There are signs all over warning people not to feed the animals, but the birds obviously can't read.



we saw some cute vervet monkeys at Satara



and an African Scops owl, no bigger than my hand



some "wild cows," according to Greg, otherwise known as buffalo!



and a sign that was necessary to explain the very green water at Orpen dam where we saw a mother hippo lead her teeny tiny baby into the water. See? that small shape behind her?


We were so ready for bed when we arrived at Olifants that we went to sleep without supper at 6.30pm! Relaxing is exhausting!

Comments

Skoorby said…
Great photos! Makes me very envious.
14 August 2009 at 00:15
Lynne said…
Skoorby! I've missed you!!
14 August 2009 at 09:11
Meri said…
Love the photos, Lynne! I'll send a link to my brother and sister-in-law. They're heading back to S. Africa in a couple of weeks -- a week at a large cat rescue and rehab place plus some photo safari time. My sis-in-law is a feline vet, so the big cats are close to her heart.
14 August 2009 at 18:28
Polly said…
Amazing photos. I can't believe they are real. I've never been to Africa and have only seen lions on tv and at the zoo behind bars. It must be a real out of this world experience to see them in the wild...
14 August 2009 at 23:23
Lynne said…
Thanks Meri... hope your family enjoy their trip to Africa.

Polly, there is no comparison seeing animals in their natural state rather than in a zoo. It really is an experience worth having if you have a chance. I suppose in some ways Kruger park is a big zoo because the animals are constrained by fences... but the area that they have to roam in is 2 million hectares (bigger than Ireland!)so its the closest you can get to real wildlife!
15 August 2009 at 09:22
deryck vs said…
I am super jealous!

It's been far too long since I've been to the bush.
21 August 2009 at 18:32
Se'lah said…
cool shots...love the first bird.
27 August 2009 at 02:35
sequoiagardens said…
"relaxing is exhausting" - love it!

I will be in Kruger next weekend for an annual early September long weekend with Rotary friends. Looking forward to it immensely!

I've EVENTUALLY explored your blog and enjoyed it. Liked your 'blog about blogs' - I'm kinda weary of getting too hooked, especially as my connections are slow and expensive. And I'm a one-person operation trying to run a new business (actually a three-part new business: design, nursery and gardening journalism), a farm, a household, a life and a Rotary Club - as I'm the current president. Now wonder I seem to run out of time rather too often!
30 August 2009 at 10:10
sequoiagardens said…
"relaxing is exhausting" - love it!

I will be in Kruger next weekend for an annual early September long weekend with Rotary friends. Looking forward to it immensely!

I've EVENTUALLY explored your blog and enjoyed it. Liked your 'blog about blogs' - I'm kinda weary of getting too hooked, especially as my connections are slow and expensive. And I'm a one-person operation trying to run a new business (actually a three-part new business: design, nursery and gardening journalism), a farm, a household, a life and a Rotary Club - as I'm the current president. No wonder I seem to run out of time rather too often!
30 August 2009 at 10:12
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the writer formerly known as...

Twenty years after I was born a Brooks, I became a Wilson in one of those happy-ever-after fantasies that didn't quite work out the way I had planned. But Wilson was a nice name, and eminently preferable to Brooks (which in Afrikaans means underpants or knickers and led to horrible teasing at school) and I quite enjoyed it. It was one of those anonymous names that everyone could spell and I liked the fact that it was totally normal at first look, but had a secret history. The great grandfather of the Mr Wilson I married had emigrated from somewhere near Moscow to the US and like so many others with unpronouncable or "difficult" names (I think it was Tobinofsky) he was given another one. One of the legends is that Wilson was chosen from the phone book, another is that he particularly admired a Wilson (couldn't have been Harold). So, for the next 25 years or so, I built my name and reputation as the journalist Lynne Wilson ... until I met and married my new happy-ever-a
Read more

Like faded flowers, thrown away: Steve Biko and the Boer women

Image
A Boer woman with her dead child, the last of her children to die, photographed by Emily Hobhouse The women are wonderful. They cry very little and never complain. The very magnitude of their sufferings, their indignities, loss and anxiety seems to lift them beyond tears… only when it cuts afresh at them through their children do their feelings flash out. Some people in town still assert that the Camp is a haven of bliss. I was at the camp to-day, and just in one little corner this is the sort of thing I found – The nurse, underfed and overworked, just sinking on to her bed, hardly able to hold herself up, after coping with some thirty typhoid and other patients, with only the untrained help of two Boer girls–cooking as well as nursing to do herself. Next tent, a six months’ baby gasping its life out on is mother’s knee. Two or three others drooping sick in that tent. Next, a girl of twenty-one lay dying on a stretcher. The father, a big, gentle Boer kneeling beside her; while,
Read more

mind the gap

I'm suffering from an excess of velleity. Velleity is volition at its weakest. It's a mere wish or inclination, without any accompanying effort. My velleity is fed by an overactive imagination... I can see in my mind's eye exactly what my dream garden looks like, for example. So when I am outside, I'm imagining a tree there, a shrub here, a winding path and a bank of flowers. so the lack of all those things and the lack of effort on my part to make them happen don't worry me so much. It certainly makes things easier when you are living with a very large garden during our excessively hot and dry summers. I'd write more... but what can I say? Velleity strikes again.
Read more