Ok, longest day to the trip on day 4…they ended up far enough from our camp that by the time our leaders and drivers decided to head back we had an hour to get there and would need to leave for the afternoon drive 45 minutes after arrival so not even really enough time for lunch. Neil led a revolt among the paying customers and the 3 in our vehicle with Ellison voted to just stay out and snack on what they had…and the other vehicle agreed with them. He ended up with a bit over 6,000 frames for the day.

Nothing new on the home front…hot and summer…Neil is biking early…and we had date night and bingo at the lodge since my last post. 

That said…let’s dive in.

As I said before…they did not get any leopards on the trip. There was one in a rocky kopje surrounded by lions sleeping (who probably didn’t know the leopard was there)…but when we got there Rose got about 2 seconds of video of his face only. However…they did get (in addition to the lions) several other cats.

Today it was the serval…this is a medium sized cat a bit smaller than a cheetah…they’re rarer than leopard sightings so we were very happy to get one…it kinda makes up for the lack of leopard sightings.. It feeds on small rodents and the like and jumps up to 6 feet high to pounce down on top of its prey. It’s got the longest legs for its size of any cat in Africa. It’s pretty secretive and slinks through the grass a lot…these were actually taken just a bit before dawn…so they’re high ISO shots meaning noise reduction was necessary.

Our other cat find was the last evening of the trip…and it was a really rare one…stand by for that one in a few posts.

Superb starling…they saw these everywhere.

Then we stopped by the kopje with the lion pride with the cubs.

This one…and it was almost always this one…seemed to want to wrestle mom’s tail a lot.

You can see mom is still nursing…the cubs are about 3-4 months old and start generally being weaned at 3 months with some meat and are completely meat fed by 8-10 months old.

All 4 of the cubs staring intently at…something…

They spotted some wildebeest on the move…they like to go in a long line and have this loping gait more than a walk…they can keep it up for hours. This is part of a line of them that was at least a mile and a half long.

Hooded vulture.

Hyenas…and it’s amazing how cute the pups are…but then I guess all baby animals are cute…one wouldn’t think that something as ugly as a hyena would have cute babies.

Dad keeping an eye on the vehicles.

Mom closeup.

Cub nursing…

Wildebeest with his strange loping gait.

Zebra and colt. Despite their similarity to the way a horse looks they cannot be ridden as their spines aren’t strong enough to support the weight of a rider.

Female Impala.

Another mixed zebra/wildebeest herd…probably close to 1,000 individuals in it.

They found another lion pride sleeping out in the grass…and this lioness decided to use the shade provided by the vehicle.

When she yawned (before going over to the vehicle) you can see her left upper canine has been broken off.

And this is the male in the background of the shot above.

Hartebeest.

Leopard Tortoise.

Strange tree we saw at the airport location where we stopped for a bathroom break.

Pygmy Falcon.

More female Impala…these were within about 50 yards of the entrance to the airport above.

Impala buck.

Warthog.

Wire Tailed Swallow.

Spur Winged Lapwing…there are a bunch of species of lapwings in the country.

Hippos…and a Red Billed Oxpecker (as opposed to the yellow billed one from day 1 on the buffalo) hopping on the back of one of them. There were probably a hundred of them in this area.

Dik-Dik…this is a small member of the antelope family only about 15 inches tall to the shoulder. This is a female since it’s got no horns…but even the males are only 4 or 5 inches long…and she was actually in the same herd as the Impalas above near the airport.

This has been pretty long already (as will part 2 later)…so I’ll forego any funny images for this post.

Cyas.