Ok, we’re on to the last full day of Neil’s trip to Africa and Africa decided to go out with a bang as they got the highlight photos of the entire trip the last full day right before sunset…in fact it rained some on the way 20 miles back to the camp and it was definitely a headlights on situation before they returned for the farewell dinner of the workshop.

Here at home though…we haven’t really done anything since the other day. Date night happened on schedule on Tuesday and Wednesday there was an issue with our A/C unit…essentially the drain pipe got full which lifts the safety float which keeps it from running. And did I mention that your A/C unit not running when it’s 93 degrees and 60something percent humidity in Fl sucks? Just in case I forgot though…(and only those of you alive in the 60s will recognize this reference from the famous Harry Chapin song “30,000 Pounds of Bananas”)…the reaction of the band was best summed up by my brother John who said in deep, deep baritone voice…”Harry, it sucks”. Anyways…we called in and asked for an emergency call because happy wife happy life ya know. The on call tech called to do some phone troubleshooting before he had to dress and go back to work. Neil relayed all the stuff he had already tried…breakers checked, drain line sucked out with the shop vac, but he hadn’t realized the float switch is a separate pipe from the drain line and sucking out the drain doesn’t suck out the float switch pipe. Once he did that it started right back up. The tech did suggest he do his cleanup with white vinegar instead of bleach and to do it monthly or so instead of every 3-4 months to prevent the problem from recurring and Connie scheduled a routine checkup a couple of weeks down the road, back in the Navy days those are known as clean and inspect maintenance items.

Date night was up at the Tamiami Tavern and Connie was glad she wore a sleeveless dress as their A/C wasn’t working. Neil had a pint o’ Guinness…it is the world’s finest beverage after all…and Connie had wine then they each had another glass of wine. Connie ate a salad as it was too hot for the lobster bisque which was what she really wanted and Neil had a Tavern Steak Sandwich which was about the best cheese steak he has ever had so he’ll definitely be having that again.

They’ve started their preps for their upcoming trip to Costa Rica; Neil’s got a long checklist of items to make sure they don’t forget to pack something important or charge batteries for cameras or fix things around the house or car. Still a bit to go before the trip but he always starts the checklist early to ensure nothing gets forgotten.

It looks like our Elks Lodge has a new home…management has selected a new location and at the meeting in July we’ll vote on allowing them to proceed with a new lease. It will need some construction before move in and permits for anything take forever down here in FL (at least in this county)…and seeing as we need to vacate the current premises by the end of the year they need to get busy. Neil’s got some opinions about the decisions of management, but they’re probably not appropriate to go into here…suffice it to say he’s glad he’s not management at all because they would butt heads over some of the decisions they make which don’t make sense to him.

First image up…here’s a shot of the kids and them during their visit a couple of weeks back…Jen, Bryan, Alex, Connie, and Neil but then ya prolly coulda figgered that one out on your own. He stuck the camera on a tripod out on the lanai…you can see the pond in the background…and shot a half dozen frames. He’s glad he pulled out his flash unit for a little fill light on the faces.

Ok, on to images from Serengeti.

After the lion shot ending my previous post the vehicles headed back to the camp for lunch and then set off again in the mid afternoon for the final afternoon game drive…and Cheetahs were on the attraction list first. 

This is actually a family of 3 cheetahs…there’s a mother and two cubs that haven’t been kicked out of the house yet as she’s not done learning them how to hunt. They’re all about the same size and he doesn’t remember whether the one above is the mom or one of the teenagers…it’s really hard to tell unless they’re all together and even then it’s not a size thing but a what are they doing thing.

Mom is staying in the background and sent the two kids off to hunt…they’re obviously going over to the Thompson’s Gazelles in the distance…Thompson’s are the small ones about 24-28 inches high and weight 60-70 pounds (males) and 35-50 (females). The kids stalked out aways but haven’t learned to stalk close enough to catch them on the spring. Cheetahs can run 60 mph and gazelles only about 50…but the latter have a lot more endurance and can run several miles at top speed whereas the cheetahs overheat and slow down after 20 to 30 seconds. These two sprinted way too early and lunch just ran away from them.

The kids came back and sat around with mom looking for more opportunities…but nothing was close and it was too hot for them to wander aimlessly across the savannah looking…in general the prey has to come close enough first to make the stalk and then the chase worthwhile.

The headed off and spotted these zebras resting their heads on each other’s back…zebras do this a lot.

Wildebeest.

White browed coucal…I have no idea what a coucal is so I googled it for ya…they are members of the Cuckoo family and there are about 30 different species of them about the Old World (Europe basically) and Africa.

At that point the group headed pretty far from camp…they had tried to go that direction the day before but rain and flooding prevented them from getting there but it was a clearer day and the water was down a bit so they headed out.

Neil doesn’t remember exactly what they were going there to look for but no matter…they heard another vehicle talking about a caracal so that seemed a good idea. Neil spotted it off in the distance about the same time our guides did so it was another ‘race through the woods’ to get there.

So…what’s a caracal. There are a lot of cats in Africa from large to medium to small…the largest are all in the Panthera genus and include the lion and leopard. Cheetahs are completely different in the Acinonyx genus and he’s got no clue what the difference between the various genus’s are but no matter. Then there’s the Caracal genus which are smaller than the other two…this genus includes three species…the caracal as seen in this post, the serval with the long legs seen previously which they saw previously, and the African Golden Cat which is spotted like the serval but shorter legged like the caracal is and is the rarest of the three species. All three are much rarer than the big cats and among the rarest of cats in the continent…there are also a bunch of small house cat sized cats in still another genus that are also pretty rare and Neil found various web pages that claimed differing species in both the Caracal genus and the small cat genus were the rarest…so he can’t and won’t claim that this is the rarest cat in the continent but it’s mighty darned rare.

How rare you say? Well…our driver Ellison has been driving safaris for 19 years and he’s seen a caracal less than 10 times total, never two of them together, and his total observation time he estimates as under 2 minutes. Our workshop leader Steve has spent somewhere around 6 months total in Africa and had never seen one at all…so yeah, pretty rare.

 However…despite the relative scarceness…they had 2 of them in their sights for about 25 minutes. The pictures below are a mix of the two individuals which Ellison thought were probably a mating pair as they’re mostly seen solo and only get together to breed. The cat itself is about 16-20 inches high to the shoulder and weigh up to 40 pounds for males and mid 30s for females. The early images in this sequence are of the first one which they thought was the male as it appeared to eventually go over to the second one…the only one he’s sure is of the second likely female is the last one and that’s only because he remembers what they were eating. They eat just about anything they can catch…including birds that they snatch out of the air. One thing to note…each ear has about 30 muscles and they move them quite a bunch to help them hear and home in on prey they can’t see yet…and the ears have the pointy furry tips much like the lynx we have in the USA. Other than size…the sexes are identical and these medium sized cats don’t have the dangly bits that allow identification of the male.  You can see the ear muscles doing their thing throughout these shots.

First individual eating a bird…he got a good enough shot of the prey to see what it was but not detail was visible and all you could see of the cat was butt and the back of the head so he didn’t post that one. This one was taken when it turned from dinner to look at the vehicle…they were about 40 feet away at that point.

He thinks but isn’t sure this is the second one…things sort of got confusing as they had to keep repositioning the vehicles around trees and bushes and frequently lost sight of them temporarily.

Stalking prey…again he thinks this is the second one as it’s more in a grassy area as opposed to the area with open dirt areas in some of the above shots.

And this is definitely the second one…again they thought it is the female as they’re slightly smaller. She’s eating some sort of small furry creature…so not a bird this time.

Aren’t this just stunningly beautiful creatures? Even guide Ellison was pumped up to have seen these for such a long time.

After watching the meal in the last image which took about 2 minutes and there was nothing left…they started heading back towards the camp since it was getting on to sunset and it was 20ish miles back or at least an hour given the condition of the roads. On the way they stopped by a river crossing where they spotted some Greater Flamingos…which in a group are known as a flamboyance. Although similar in characteristics and coloring to the Pink Flamingo’s in the USA…these are not the same birds and are mostly found in Africa, the Indian subcontinent area, and parts of Europe.

This one was accommodating enough to flap its wings so Neil could get a nice sequence of the wings opened…definitely different from the Pink Flamingo here.

Shortly after leaving the river crossing (which actually had a bridge and didn’t require the vehicles to ford the water) they spotted  this Common Buzzard. However…it’s not a buzzard as most US citizens think of them. Over here buzzard is a term usually applied to the two vulture species we have in the US…the Turkey vulture and the Black Vulture. The former is the one with the red head as an adult but juveniles are black and the latter always has a black head…but the body shape and underwing coloring is different so that they’re easily identified if flying over head. Over in Europe…just about all birds in the “Birds of Prey” category are called buzzards except for the ones with specific other names like owls, hawks, and eagles. As you can see…this one is clearly not a carrion eater but hunts for a living and was about the size of a Red Shouldered Hawk or Osprey so somewhat smaller than a Bald Eagle.

Common Buzzard.

With that…it started to rain and was getting dark…and since they had to exit and reenter the park gates to get back to the camp and they don’t like you to be out after dark…they sped back bouncing through the puddles and ruts in the road. Did not make it back before dark and the guards at the gate had a discussion with Ellison about that I guess…but then Neil didn’t speak Swahili so maybe he was just blaming it on the gringos…dunno.

Ima gonna skip interesting things this time…it’s already been a long post. One more post to go on Africa remaining…but it was just a short game drive that ended up at the airport to fly out to the city to head home.

Cyas.