Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
I am optimistic that all of these beautiful creatures will have the opportunity to live out their lives in the way nature intended, without the influence of poacher’s or trophy hunter’s bullets. That is my hope, and if like minded people continue to join together, perhaps it will happen in my lifetime.
The experience on my last game drive of my previous holiday is something I have wanted to post about since I got home. I am glad I have finally had a chance to go through the photos, select my favourites, and relive the experience.
We spent the last two nights of our trip at Londolozi, where we had the pleasure of having the team of Dave and Judas guiding us through the bush. For anyone that missed it, I posted a few highlights from this trip previously: http://jennifersawicky.com/2015/06/29/londolozi-highlights/
On our last game drive, we had yet to see a leopard at Londolozi; and being that the property is known for amazing leopard sightings, our ranger was hoping we would see one before we set off for home. We started a leisurely morning drive with a group of three rhinos, and then moved on to a herd of elephants in the most gorgeous morning light. If that was all we saw that morning, I would have come home happy (me and elephants, everyone knows my love of them by now). Dave took a call about a leopard sighting quite some distance away, but a very unique one, a leopard that had been treed by a pride of lions. Dave put us on the sighting wait list, and we continued on with our drive. During a drive through a dry riverbed, we spotted an owl; while the light wasn’t favourable for photographs, I was still thrilled.
Still waiting our turn, we stopped for a coffee and watched a pair of giraffes grazing on acacia leaves. A hare hopped by and paused long enough for me to take a few photos before carrying on its way. Coffee finished, we took the call that our turn was coming up, and we made our way over to the area. As we drove into the area, two impala rams were facing off, rutting season being in full swing, and the noise they were making was absolutely incredible.
When we arrived, a female leopard called Mashaba was high in a tree, with the Tsalala lion pride lazing around near the base.
We weren’t there long though when the lions picked up the sounds of the nearby impala, and one by one, they slowly moved off.
As soon as the last lion was out of sight, Mashaba quickly made her way down the tree and disappeared, so we went to find out what had happened to the lions.
Viewer discretion is advised…
We found the lions a short distance away, and the impala rams were no longer. The pride of seven took down two impala at the same time, and devoured them in less than a quarter hour. I was concentrating more on still shots, but I did take a few video clips, which I have included more for the sound than anything. Mostly the lions fed relatively peacefully, without coming to blows with each other over the choice pieces.
It was a thrilling end to an amazing trip!
The first thing I thought of when I saw this weeks photo challenge was seeing all of the big five in a single game drive.
It was our first game drive leaving from Chitwa Chitwa, and the first of the big five we came across were the elephants. We ended up in fairly dense bush amongst a large herd, and I know some of the other people in the vehicle were a little nervous of the proximity! At some points, we were completely surrounded by them (I was thrilled!!!)
The second we came across was the leopard. She was only steps away after we started moving away from the elephants. We followed her through the trees as well, and spent some time with her as she rested atop a termite mound.
We stopped for a sundowner drink and spotted a group of 3 rhino in a mud wallow off in the distance. The light was fading, and the viewing was certainly better without the camera.
Just as we were getting back into the vehicle after our drinks and snacks, Surprise our ranger pointed out a couple buffalo crossing the road off in the distance. The photo is awful, I knew it would be when I snapped it, but I thought I should take it as evidence of seeing 4 of the big 5 in a single drive.
As we were heading back to camp for dinner, we followed the tracks of some lions, and came upon them resting quite close to the camp. And with that, it was the big 5 all within the space of 3.5 hours! An absolutely amazing time.
Of course, most people know by now that I am thrilled to view anything when on a game drive, from the smallest bird to the tallest giraffe and everything in between. Here are a few other interesting sights from that drive.
Have a great day everyone!
I did a quick scan through my last batch of travel photos to find a few mellow shots to share.
I hope you enjoy!
I was originally planning to combine the two areas of the Sabi Sands I stayed at into one highlights post, but I’ve been having such difficulty finding the time to work on my photos the last few weeks that it just wasn’t feasible. Fingers crossed I’ll be able to get to the final highlights post this weekend, so I can move on to the other editing projects that I want to do – and get out and do some more shooting too!
This time-lapse was one of my first attempts, and shows a mid afternoon at the dam in front of Chitwa lodge. Lots of waterbuck around that afternoon!
I hope you enjoy, and have a lovely day!
I spent an amazing few days at Phinda recently, and was lucky enough to not only have a fabulous ranger and tracker team to work with, but also got along brilliantly with the other guests on the vehicle. I have so many photos to go though when I get home; some of the highlights included some of the tiniest babies I have had the pleasure of seeing in the bush (elephant and rhino), spending time with two families of lions, a mother with 3 cheetah cubs, 3 older cheetah brothers, and some really cool eagle sightings. I’d still rather be outside than on the computer, so here are just a few of the special moments from Phinda.
The Kalahari was far, far greener than I anticipated. I had expected a dry and dusty, somewhat barren landscape. But we arrived at the end of the rainy season, and the desert had received rain only a day before we arrived, so everything was quite lush and green. As such, all the animals we saw were very well fed.
Here are a few images from my time at Kalahari Plains.
I’ve just finished a blog post for Londolozi’s guest blog page, and now it is time to get back to keeping up my own page. Except I’ve got a touch of writer’s block.
I’ve been trying to think of what angle to take, what animal to highlight, and right now, nothing is coming to me at all. But these past few weeks, I have been working on a photo book project with my Mom, so I thought I would post a few of the pictures we have selected to include so far.
I look forward each week to the Londolozi photo blog. It brings me back to a place I loved and whets my appetite for a return trip. This week James mentioned two things that got me thinking. The first was a computer problem causing photo access issues – a great reminder to hook up my portable harddrive and do another backup (plus a secondary backup in case of a serious meltdown). The second was a photo he included that he noted was a photographic failure, but the story of the sighting was amazing (check out the week in photos #80 on the Londolozi site). Had I not had the explanation, I wouldn’t have gotten the full impact of the photo. Which got me thinking about the lion cubs we saw while at Londolozi.
The photos I have of the cubs include some of the most shockingly poor photos I have taken. Out of focus, odd colour, motion blur when there shouldn’t be, depth of field that was inappropriate for the situation, highly grainy & filled with noise… Honestly without the story behind the photos, people would probably think one of two things:
1) “That is the first time this person held a camera… and it didn’t go well.”
2) “The photographer was drunk.”
I can assure you that this gem was taken by someone, who although is in perpetual learning mode when it comes to photography, has definitely held a camera before, and was also stone cold sober (in fact, I’m quite certain I have managed far more in focus photos than this after a glass or three of wine. (I have no idea how I managed to cut her feet off and make her float.)
So why, out of 98 photos, did only a handful turn out?
The weather was poor when we headed out for our afternoon game drive – the ponchos went on right away, and I actually took my iPhone with me in case I couldn’t get my Nikon out (note to self, I need to get rain gear for my camera for the next trip). We found tracks of a lion pride, and followed them up through the trees and a dried riverbed, and eventually found the pride – with four adults and 7 cubs. As we had been driving, the weather got steadily worse. Lead gray skies, pouring with rain as well as cold and windy. Perhaps Mother Nature just wanted to ensure that the people from BC felt right at home in South Africa! I finally extracted my camera from beneath my poncho and instead of trying to coordinate manual settings, I just put it on auto – and the camera couldn’t focus (the joyous “Subject too dark” message – and wanting to us the flash on a subject 20+ feet away). Back to manual mode, I found that to get a correctly exposed photo,I would need to use an exposure time of around 2 seconds. Long exposures are great – with stationary objects and a tripod. Playful lion cubs? Not so much. So I snapped away using the slowest time I thought I could manage, and mostly just watched. Because when Talley and Freddy started saying things like “This is special – we don’t see this everyday” it was all about the experience. The camera was definitely a secondary consideration, and not something that would take my focus off the scene.
The lion cubs played in the rain on a fallen tree – they climbed, wrestled a bit – they entertained us immensely, and the rain and cold didn’t matter at all. They stayed in the area a good 20-30 minutes before setting off. We were also lucky enough that day to see an old female lion, who has since passed on.
The lions gave us great viewing opportunities at Londolozi, from the mating pair on night one, to the beautiful male I wrote about earlier, to the playful cubs, and rounding out with a male and female stalking impala as we drove off in the transport on route to the airport (actually a male watching a female stalk impala). Not to mention the calls we heard throughout the night each night we spent at Londolozi.
Below are a couple of the shots I managed to salvage. The nice clear shots will have to live on only in my head – unless I’m lucky enough to see such a sight on my next trip, with far more favourable lighting conditions.
