And…he did it again.

Signed up for another trip to Africa next August with Steve Perry…this one will be down in Botswana in more southern Africa and will have different environments to see. So…he’s happy…and once again Connie sez she’s staying behind as it is too much money for something she doesn’t really care all that much about. Total of 12 spots over the 2 back to back workshops and less than 24 hours after being advertised to a limited number of potential people 4 of them are already filled. 

Around the home front…nothing really new to report there. It continues to be hot and humid…but Florida…summer…so what does one expect. It’s rained a lot more the past few weeks than we normally get in the summertime. Our typical pattern is afternoon thunderstorms coming in from the southwest which for some reason seem to divide as they approach the coast and pass north and south of our house. These have been coming more from the east and southeast…with the exception of the really big path that came over, went out into the Atlantic and then turned into a system that is sort of meandering up the coast and gradually out to sea. 

In the news…we continue to hear political BS from all sides no matter what the issue is…and one frequently wonders if the various opinionated “news” articles are even talking about the same situation.

He packed up some camera gear that wasn’t getting used and sent it off to the resale company over the weekend…no reason to keep things that aren’t being used at all and just sitting there with the resale value going down. Nikon introduced a new mid range body that inherited a lot of the autofocus goodies from his more expensive Z8 bodies in a smaller, lighter, and pretty capable wildlife/travel body so he’s thinking about spending part of the proceeds from the sale on one of those.

And…the Laubenthal Land and Timber Company, Inc founded by his ancestors back when sold off the land to another local timber company. The current management is getting towards retirement age and while some younger members stepped up and wanted to become new management…they had some radical ideas about what to do and in reality keeping the land for hunting rights was the biggest reason for them wanting to take over…and their ideas would have taken advantage of stockholders that were not hunters. They lost the vote to sell or not by a wide margin and the sale recently closed…and the company will be dissolved by the end of the year. Good news…we wont’ have to file an AL state income tax form any more. Bad news…we gotta pay some capital gains long term tax on the sale of the land. But…it is what it is ya know.

And one thing I read in the news last week…is that “boomers” are texting wrong. The article explained why they do what the author was complaining about and why it was a good thing…but then still insisted they are doing it wrong. The article is about the fact that boomers sue the ellipsis character…that’s the three dot thing you just saw…to separate ideas in a sentence or text. The original reason for that was that when texting was invented the phone company charged by the text so being thrifty boomers put multiple ideas that might not be completely related in a single text separated by ellipsis characters to delineate the different ideas. He agreed that it was a good idea…but because texts are now basically unlimited and included in your phone plan that boomers are thus wrong because he said so. Now in the first place…I ain’t no danged boomer, the definition of one is somebody born before 1964 and the smartalek known as Gunther didn’t come into existence until the late 1980s as best as Connie can recall. And in the second place…I writes the way I writes…and I use ellipsis whenever I like; and since Ima in charge of dis here blog I gets to make the rules…so there.

Ok, on to the next to last full day of Neil’s Serengeti trip…and early in the morning he and his cohorts witnessed a life and death struggle on the savannah.

Shortly after leaving camp they ran across this solitary wildebeest, it wasn’t really a baby but not adult either…so we’re gonna call it a calf. It was all by its lonesome…they did see a fairly large group of wildebeest about a mile off in the distance but this little guy was all on his own.

editors note so I won’t forget this later. Images in here were exported at 1025 wide but that cuts off the right side just a bit. I went back in and reduced them in the editor to 950 wide and that seemed to fix the problem. Next post I’ll export everything at 950.

They wondered (a) what it was doing all by itself and then (b) what might happen to it…the latter came about since it kept coming over real close to their vehicles, but then they spotted some predators.

Yep…three different hyenas all sort of stalking him from about half way around and the calf kept trying to essentially hide behind the vehicles. Once they saw this…the people in the vehicles quickly took sides. Most of them were on Team Wildebeest because the little fella looked so forlorn and scared that he was about to become breakfast. Neil OTOH…he was the leader and almost only member of Team Hyena because life and death on the savannah was one of the things he wanted to photo graph and he figured there would be a stalk, chase, and kill. Unfortunately…as will come clear in a couple minutes…Team Wildebeest won the day as the hyenas were obviously not hungry.

This last one sort of gave the victory to Team Wildebeest as since the hyena didn’t take off after the Kori Bustard in the foreground despite being maybe 10 feet away and it ignoring him indicated they weren’t really hungry.

The calf eventually headed off towards the distant herd and the hymns wandered off the other way so in the absence of anything better the vehicles followed the hyenas to see what they might do…and then came across the reason they weren’t hungry.

From looking at the carcass…they were pretty sure this was a female and since it wasn’t very far from where the calf was they surmised that it was likely the mother of the calf and the hyenas took her down as a bigger meal than the calf would have been. The hyenas came in for a little more breakfast and one of them…an obviously pregnant female…tore off a piece of the spine and ran off with it. Our guide/driver Ellison said that hyenas would tear off chunks and take them back to the kopje where young were staying and she headed off in the direction of a nearby kopje so that made perfect sense.

If this one is taking breakfast back for her cubs…obviously the male hyenas believe in keeping their women barefoot and pregnant…which would make hyenas the good ol’ boys of the Serengeti I guess.

Heading off…he spotted this Hooded Vulture which obligingly took wing for him.

They were looking for the hyena cubs as they thought this was the kopje the mother headed too before they lost sight of her. Did not find the hyenas but did see this Barn Owl nestled in the crevice of the kopje. It actually looks pretty similar to the barn owl in the US.

They spotted this male Cape Buffalo.

And his friend with a pack of Yellow Billed Oxpeckers…not sure whether the bloody spot was pecked by the bird or whether the pulled a tick out of it or whether it is unrelated to the birds.

Rosy Starling.

Cape Crow.

Grant’s Gazelle…he’s the big gazelle here.

Spotted Eagle Owl.

Panthera Leo. Neil didn’t notice the flying insect next to his head until he was doing the processing of the image…and this one uses the new capability in Lightroom to digitally simulate a narrow depth of field by blurring the background and foreground and it getting less blurry as you approach the distance to the subject. It isn’t quite as good as a real f2.8 telephoto lens but then it doesn’t weigh 7 pounds and cost $15,000 either.

Ima gonna stop here even though I’m not quite halfway through the images from day 8 because the next ones are of cheetahs after lunch so this seems like a good place to break.

Interesting things found on the net.

Cyas.