Africa - Fourth Afternoon Game Drive

After we said goodbye to the elephants, and finished lunch, we headed out into the bush for the drive back to camp - it was time for our siesta.  Then tea.  Mmmm.  Tea.  One of the really lovely things about a certain kind of traveling, (organized cruises, organized safaris, organized in general), is that you are encouraged to eat high tea every day, with scones and clotted cream and jam and tiny sandwiches.  Tea = Happiness.  Tiny Sandwiches = Happiness.  And whenever we get back from one of these trips I vow to myself that I will begin the practice of serving high tea myself daily, but I don't.  Which is very likely a good thing, at least if I want to continue to fit into my jeans.

I caught another Lilac Breasted Roller, this time in flight.  I carried on a short but intense love affair with this bird.  They're so beautiful...

I'm pretty sure they KNOW they're beautiful, too.  They do an awful lot of posing on artistically interesting dead tree branches.

On our way back to camp, we drove past a troop of baboons having a nosh in some trees on the side of the road.  Instant photo shoot!

Love the guy up top with the fruit...

He's not sharing.

Just outside of camp, we surprised a group of Banded Mongoose, but only got a picture of one.

Upon returning to camp, Sandy took some test shots of random things, to get better acquainted with The Baby...one of those things was a hornet or wasp building a nest inside the main tent structure on one of the ceiling beams during Tea.

After we'd rested and eaten, we got back into the vehicles for another drive.

A Crested Francolin.

A Reed Buck.

Gavin stopped and showed us some animal spoor. I'm pretty sure this is a Hyena's tracks.

A Coppery-Tailed Coucal.

A Fork-Tailed Drongo

A Fish Eagle (the closest thing South Africa has to an American Bald Eagle...)

A Squirrel.

What? Anticlimactic? Look they can't ALL be Lions or Elephants...

A Brindled Gnu, (LOVE his stylist...)

Cape Buffalo with Yellow Billed Oxpeckers aboard. The one on the left is a male, the one on the right is a female. You can tell by the horns.

And then we drove along for a bit, and Gavin got a call on the radio.  I noticed that usually the guides when speaking to one another on the radio use an African language to describe whatever animal they have found - possibly to keep folks from getting excited about an animal that they might not get to see, if it moves off before their vehicle reaches the location...

Around the same time, my sister-in-law Harley had been asking Gavin if we would see lions.  He asked her if she wanted to see lions...and she said she did, very much.  He told her then to close her eyes and say aloud, "I wish to see a lion!" and she did.

We drove for a bit more.  And then this happened.

Of course this was what the other guide had called him about.  Sneaky Gavin.

As he was lying there, he peeked one eye to see if we were still there, watching him. No one likes to have someone staring at them when they are trying to sleep...

When he established that we weren't going anywhere, he gave up his nap as a bad job, and sat up a bit and looked around himself.

Blinking to brace himself before he looked right at us. 

Here you can get a good idea of how far away we were.

And this is me valiantly trying not to make the Great Horned Owl face again.  Although the emotions at the time were similar.

After a while we all agreed that the Lion ought to be allowed to get some shut eye, and we left him.  

We drove around for a bit, spotting a bunch of birds. Gavin is going to yell at me for these next pictures, I just know it.  Because this guy below is a total Mystery Bird.  It MIGHT be a Squacco Heron, but I honestly can't tell.

This guy, on the other hand, I am reasonably sure is a Green Backed Heron.

Below, a Swainson's Francolin having a dust bath in the road.  Distinguished from the Red Necked Francolin by the dark beak, and by black legs, (which I have visible in another photo of the same bird).  

Below, a Bateleur's Eagle.  Gorgeous bird!

And then, too soon, it was time for Sundowners again.

 

Big Fish?

Crocodile Eyeballs in the Night!

We left after Sundowners and split up again for a Night Drive. And our vehicle hadn't gone very far at all before we heard a crunching in the bush to our right, and then suddenly this fine young gentleman came strolling out onto the road.

Seeing a leopard in the day is thrilling. Seeing one appear out of nowhere at night is a whole new kind of thrilling. The kind where maybe you'd like to change your pants, afterwards.

He crossed out in front of our car, and sauntered casually down the road, rubbing up against bushes and marking his territory with very brief leg lifts every 15 feet or so.

Gavin got on the horn and told our other vehicle where to find us, they were just in time to see him before he left the road again.

We lost him then, to the bush. While we were driving around trying to find him again, we met up with a Hyena on the prowl...

And an African Wild Cat...which is like a house cat, only African and Wild!

We also saw some Bush Babies, again the photos of which are impossible, and a Spring Hare, which looks just like a Chinchilla and a Bunny made sweet sweet love and had babies.

On our way back to camp, as the night was approaching twilight/navy, we spotted some giraffe browsing off to the right-hand side of the vehicle.  It was a fairly large group, all striding slowly along on their long legs.  Gavin stopped and turned the car off, and we sat in silence and the growing darkness, listening to them moving through the brush.  The sky changed rapidly, so that soon the darkness was complete.   The moon, waxing toward full, was sailing behind a thin, broken covering of clouds.  The sky looked like a crackled silver mirror, and it provided just enough illumination for us to see the silhouettes of the giraffe as they moved towards and around us on their impossible stilt-legs.  They seemed odd...disjointed...stalking about like giant wading birds.  

They browsed their way across the road, ahead of and behind us as we sat in the car. It is hard to explain the feeling of that moment - the silence of it, and the strangeness of it, and the majesty of it.  It was like being in the nighttime forest when the Ents woke and walked. 

No one tried to take pictures.  The darkness was near absolute, and anyway, the sound of the shutter clicking or a flash going off would have been sacrilegious, in all that stillness.  So close your eyes, and imagine sitting in the dark and the cool air while around you the peaceful forest walked. 

When they had all crossed the trail, and disappeared into the brush to our left, Gavin started the car again, and we returned to camp, and dinner.  More on this later!