Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
When you are on safari and see lots of antelope, giraffe, zebra and the like, many guides will say it’s been a good day for general game. I enjoy all the wonderful animals on safari, so decided to use that as a selection process for a few photos to share today.
This past trip was quite exceptional for the number of lion sightings that we had. And not just seeing lions doing what they do best, sleeping in the shade, but interesting interactions between the pride: playing, feeding, mating and a pride on the move towards the sounds of a nearby herd of buffalo.
On our last morning at Chobe Game Lodge, our group had the option to either have a short, early morning boat cruise, or sleep in (we didn’t have time for a full game drive because of our flight time to go to our next camp). I’m an early bird by nature, and try my best to never miss an activity when on safari, so the choice was easy for me. The people that slept in certainly missed out on a beautiful morning on the water.
It’s been a while since I have posted any images; between preparing for a trip, the time spent away and then the return to normal life, the blog fell by the wayside for a bit. I’m slowly working on cataloging and rating images from my time away; and while I have a long way to go before that is complete, I don’t want to wait to share images until all that background work is done.
Today I decided to pick one image from each location I stayed at. It seemed like as good a starting place as any.
Midday is generally not considered the best time for photos, with harsh glare and intense shadows. But a group of elephants, happily frolicking in a muddy puddle, is too good not to shoot, regardless of the conditions outside.
I know I’ve said it many times before, but spending time amongst elephants makes my heart happy.
While on a day trip to Chobe National Park, our group did both a game drive and a boat cruise, which was similar to my experience in Chobe 2013. In 2013, we saw multiple hippo pods in the river, most with huge numbers of members. On this trip, hippos were another animal that was a rarity, but we did get some good sightings while on our boat cruise of a few individuals, both in the water and on land feeding. Our cruise was in the afternoon and the light was quite harsh, but I still happily varied between snapping photos, watching the scenery, and sipping on a few local beers.
Hippos are impressive in their bulk, and if you have the opportunity to see them open their jaws fully, you can truly appreciate why they are such a dangerous animal. While we can laugh about it now, it really wasn’t a funny situation when our boat stalled in 2013 and drifted dangerously close to a hippo pod. Thankfully our guide got it started and us to a safe distance before anything bad happened.
Here are a few hippo images from my day in Chobe in November, 2022.
The majority of my time in southern Africa has been during the fall and into the winter (the dry season) which also happens to be the time for the impala rut. The dynamics at play during that period are very interesting to watch, and sometimes the result for the fighting males can be an untimely end (I shared some images taken during rutting season here, if you’re interested).
This time, while traveling through the bush, we saw many heavily pregnant impalas, and were hopeful of the chance to see some newly born lambs. Our group lucked out in two areas, Zambezi National Park and Chobe National Park, and had the chance to see two of the newest members of the herds. In both cases, these were our guides first lambs of the season. We were a bit early for the baby boom, but it was nice to see the couple that we did.
I was glad to start the new year working on my photography a bit, even if it was primarily behind the scenes, housekeeping type work, like finally finishing my first round of star rating my trip photos. When I came to the few photos I captured of the male violet backed starling, I smiled remembering how excited I was to finally have the opportunity to capture one of these birds in fairly decent light; that was enough to decide that this was the photo to edit if there was only going to be time to do one.
Our tour had a one-day trip into Chobe National Park in Botswana. It was a place I had visited on my first trip to Africa, and our group even had lunch at the same lodge I visited the first trip, so it really was a walk down memory lane. Being a different season, the experience was significantly different, but still very enjoyable. After border formalities and getting to the park, we were driving towards the river when our guide heard of some lions off of the main road about 20 minutes away. Our two guides chatted for a few minutes while slowly driving along, before making the choice to turn back to give people the chance to see some big cats. We spotted this starling just before making the decision to turn around, and it was only one of two that I saw on the trip (the other not offering any photo opportunities) so I am glad we carried on as far as we did before turning back for the lions.
As noted yesterday, my computer is dismantled for the time being while I work through some office reconfigurations, so today I’m sharing a few images that I have shared before. It’s just what caught my eye when looking through my media library, rather than a specific theme.
Enjoy, and have a great day!
