Tag: South Africa

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2019-08-26: Monochrome Monday

It’s no secret that I love elephants, and that I love editing elephant images in black and white.  Here are a few from my most recent travels.  I hope they brighten up your Monday 🙂

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This little elephant was precocious and kept all of us laughing and smiling as he played with sticks and branches, tossing them over his head.
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A mama guiding her young calf across the road to join the rest of the herd.
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Another adorable youngster; this one was very inquisitive and spent lots of time near the vehicle, seeing what we were all about.
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A large bull elephant in musth.  Our guide was very cautious as this guy approached us on the road, but the elephant turned off into the bushes, after giving his head a dramatic shake at us.
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Drinks stop while Mom graves.
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2019-08-20: Monochrome Monday

Happy Monday!  I hope everyone had a relaxing weekend, and is ready for the week ahead.  I found a lion image from a previous trip that had been edited but never shared, so I found a couple of others to put together this grouping.

I hope you enjoy, and wishing you a fantastic week!

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This image was from 2017, when we had prolific lion sightings and had the pleasure of listening to their roars cutting through the night.  On this past trip, I didn’t hear a single lion roar, but the lion dynamics can change significantly on properties over a few years.
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This young male was seen in the late afternoon lounging next to a waterhole at Kings Camp in the Timbavati.  Doesn’t he look majestic?  You can find this image, along with lots of others, over in my gallery.
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This lion and his brother were moving at speed through the property that Chitwa Chitwa has traversing rights to.  We were fortunate to have an opportunity to view them before they crossed the boundary, and could no longer be followed by our vehicle.
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2019-08-18: Birds – The ones that are hard to get

Everyone that enjoys watching birds and photographing them knows that there are some species that are harder than others to get images of.  I love the challenge of trying to capture that elusive clear image of a bird that tends to hide in the densest part of the treetops.

Locally, we have beautiful birds like the Western Tanager; a bird that I have only seen a handful of times, and photographed only on a rare occasion.  The incredible yellow plumage on the males makes them targets for predatory birds, so sticking to dense areas makes a lot of sense.  I admired the beautiful song of the Hermit Thrush for years before I finally saw a small brown and white bird singing, and had my first clue to discover the identity I had wondered about for so long.

While traveling, I kept up with trying to ID and photograph birds hiding in treetops and thickets.  Some were deep amongst the leafy trees foraging for fruits, some were naturally shy and trying hard to stay out of sight, and sometimes, it was just unlucky positioning of the vehicle, and having to shoot through branches and grasses, before the bird flew away.

Here are a few of my shots of some of the more challenging birds spotted on my last trip.

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I’ve had success with images of African Hoopoes in the past, but this trip, I seemed to spot them only when they were behind a bunch of branches, or as they were flying away.
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A Purple-crested Turaco.  Such a stunning bird, which I was fortunate enough to see at two different camps, but only high in the treetops, feasting on tiny fruits.  This was the best shot I managed over a couple of days trying!
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A green pigeon devouring figs.  There were so many birds in this giant tree, and I had to stand underneath to take pictures.  It was a dangerous place to be, and I nearly got pooped on more than once.
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Another glimpse of a Purple-crested Turaco.
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A green pigeon pausing from its afternoon meal.
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A white-crested helmet shrike.  Sadly, I only saw this species once, and this is the best of the images I could get.  At least you can make out the yellow, wattled eye ring.
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A chinspot batis that I spotted outside of my room at Chitwa Chitwa.  I went out on the patio and was lucky to get this shot before the bird flew deeper into the trees.
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A black-backed puffback, also spotted from the deck at Chitwa Chitwa.  The late morning and early afternoon hours between game drives are great times for bird watching from the comfort of your room 🙂
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My views of adult bateleur eagles are usually of them flying away, and not managing any shots.  This is as good as it gets, so far.  There’s always next time!
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A different hoopoe, in a different tree, but still obscured by branches.
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2019-08-12: World Elephant Day 2019

Instead of my weekly monochrome Monday post, I decided to share some of my favourite elephant images, in honour of World Elephant Day.

May these beautiful animals roam in peace 🙂

My favourite baby elephant, testing to see if sand is good eating. 1/640sec, f9.0, ISO 2000
A herd of elephants in Amboseli.
A pair of elephants moving down a road.
Elephants galore in this multiple exposure image.
Elephants marching one by one.
An adorable baby elephant trying to make itself look big and threatening.

Elephants are my favourite animal to spend time with on safari, so feel free to search my site for elephants to find other posts about these majestic giants, or take a look at the gallery.

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2019-08-11: Birds in the dark

Last week, I featured hornbills for my topic of the month, and this week, it is birds in the dark.  I had started typing out birds at night, but one of the images was taken at daybreak, and I thought it best to try and be accurate 🙂

I was very fortunate to have several different owl sightings during my travels, as well as two nightjar sightings.  The nightjars were by far the easiest to photograph, as they tend to lay in the road after dark, and if you are lucky you can drive the vehicle fairly close to them and use a spotlight.  Owls are a more challenging one, unless you are lucky enough to find them very close to the road, and not spook them when driving up.

This past trip, the first owl sighting I had was on my first evening game drive, and it was rather exciting.  I spotted this owl far away on a tree, and as we watched for a few moments, we realized it had a kill it was working on.  The terrain made it impossible to drive any closer, so I had to do the best I could with a 400mm lens and a bit of cropping; the quality isn’t fantastic, but the moment was definitely memorable.

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A Verreaux’s eagle-owl on a scrub hare kill.  Lion Sands River Lodge, May, 2019

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I had one eagle sighting while in the Timbavati, of a pearl-spotted owlet, but unfortunately by the time I got the attention of our ranger to stop, the owl was in flight and all I got was a butt shot as it flew away.  And not even a decent butt shot; it’s completely blurry and not worth sharing.  There’s always next time though 🙂

The rest of the sightings of birds in the dark all came while staying at Chitwa Chitwa with Harley as our guide.  Harley really seemed to enjoy pointing out birds, and identifying the ones that I would randomly point at (generally small raptors which I still have a terrible time identifying).

The southern white-faced owl and the spotted eagle owl were seen within about 10 minutes of each other while heading back to camp for dinner; and then the pair of Verreaux’s eagle owls were spotted the following morning as we set off from camp.

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A southern white-faced owl.  I’ve been lucky enough to see this species a couple of times before.  Chitwa Chitwa, South Africa. May, 2019.

Nightjar’s are a common bird to see on game drives at night, but a lot of times they fly away before you have a chance to capture a picture.  This past trip, I was fortunate to have two sightings of different species that I could get decent images of.

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A fiery-necked nightjar.  I would have struggled to identify this on my bird app if the song hadn’t been described as “Good lord, deliver us” which was the description our ranger Harley used when talking about them.  Chitwa Chitwa, May, 2019.
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A rufous-cheeked nightjar.  Very similar to the fiery-necked nightjar from beak to wing, but this one has white patches on the end two tail feathers (thank you, Roberts Bird app!)
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A spotted eagle-owl.
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A group of Verreaux’s eagle-owls, spotted early morning on a drive at Chitwa Chitwa.  There were actually 3 in this group, but I couldn’t fit them all into one frame as one was in another tree, hidden behind the trunk until it took off.

I hope you enjoy my selections for the week.  Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead!

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2019-08-05: Monochrome Monday

This week I decided to work on some cheetah images for monochrome Monday.  I only had one cheetah sighting on my last trip, but as we had the opportunity to watch the female cheetah stationary under a tree, and in the beginning stages of a failed hunt, there were lots of opportunities for images.  I’m still waiting for the magic moment of seeing a cheetah moving at something faster than a saunter; but that’s just another reason to go on safari again someday!

I hope you enjoy my selections for the week.  Happy Monday, and wishing you a wonderful week ahead!

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Cheetahs are such slender animals, that when they lay on their sides with their heads on the ground, you can barely see them.  I think we might have driven past this female if she hadn’t lifted her head at an opportune moment.
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A stretch and a yawn, then she moved about 5 feet before laying down again.  
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Disappearing into the tall grass at the start of a failed hunting expedition.  The herd of impala spotted her as she moved through a clearing, ruining any element of surprise.  Here though, you can start to see how these animals become invisible in their environment.  If she had been slinking along through the grass in a more crouched position, she would have been invisible to any impala that glanced in her direction.

 

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