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More Autumn skies.

Observatory begins to settle into winter.

Why yes. We are those kinds of childless cat owners.

We popped into The World of Birds the other day. I was remembering that I first went there in 1983 and have found it fascinating ever since. Apart from the rehabilitation they do (there are a huge whack of pied crows and spotted eagle owls no doubt mostly brought in injured) you get a chance to see birds up close in real life that you’d seldom or never get to see - like this handsome Amazonian Blue and Yellow Macaw. ...

A truer love you’ll seldom see. The weather is beginning to turn in Cape Town. And Skitten is far more tolerant of this kind of thing than she was a few weeks ago. It’s my birthday which, for symbolic reasons, means it’s Skitten’s birthday too. It’s 14 now. A venerable creature. It still doesn’t know anything. A little less feisty and not quite as adventuresome. But otherwise very much the same strange little animal that @withoutaleaf sent me from Maatjiesfontein back in 2007.

I can’t remember if I posted one of these pics from Punda Maria restcamp in Kruger in Jan 2018. It’s far in the tropical North of the park. The waterhole you can watch from inside the camp is full of amazing visitors. Without having to be worried about gate-closing times, you can also catch them in the best evening light.

Trinket likes secret places for her daytime summer naps.

When Mr. Crumb first met Skitten, he was a smitten kitten. It’s happened to many. Four years on, his love for Skitten is still deep, pure, and a regular source of annoyance to Skitten.

Trinket enjoying a rainy sunday.

It’s not hard to love the warthog. Knee-high to most of the things you see on the savannahs and deserts of sub-Saharan Africa. Tough as nails. Trotting along with their maned and whiskered piglets in a train, their tails up like flags. Or down on their wrists nosing in the dirt. Unlovely but loveable - they’re jaunty endurance in the face of powerful challenges. This, like the last one, was taken in 2012.