Antelope

Sunset Impalas. We’re on our way home and have been having some patchy wifi. It was a really good time in the park. We finally saw a pack of painted wolves about half an hour before we drove out of Malelane Gate.

Tiny critters in a big landscape. Almost every pile of boulders (ancient magma chambers exposed by erosion and then crumbled by weather, plants, and time) has a pair of resident klipspringers (rock-hoppers) - an adorable, agile, and feisty little antelope. These plaques on the rocks are the kind of memorialising that used to be de rigueur in the old days. Now such things are usually confined to camps and gates rather than forced onto the landscape.

I’ve been struggling a little with my photographic workflow since this 20 year old Nikon D200 uses the old compact flash cards and my card reader no longer reads them. One bit of emergency photo recovery and some new software later, I’m back in business. I should be posting more regularly on this trip. There’s been a lot of talk about the qualities of old CCD sensors like this one. But really the sensors before this generation (the last) were rather terrible. ...

I found a few pics on cards from our 2019/2020 trip to Kruger. That was summer and the impalas were giving birth to huge numbers of lambs - most of which are destined to be dinner rather than grown up impalas. But they are delightful little creatures.

The delicate little Steenbok that lives a very nervous life all by itself in the Southern African bushveld.

The Bushbuck is a solid little beast. He won’t mind you but they have a nasty reputation for responding violently to harassment.

The very beautiful Impala. While the lowveld is thick with these, I never get tired of them. One of the most beautiful and graceful antelope you’ll ever see. In full panic they make astonishing leaps during their dashes for safety - taking to the air like 75kg swallows. Impala is one of the all-time most beautiful animal names. But I also like the Afrikaans, “rooibok,” - which means simply red buck. ...

Klipspringers. Look at the little ballet hooflets. Found this as well, while scrolling through Lightroom. I got some great footage of Klipspringers over Christmas. Now I just have to bring myself to face Davinci and edit that stuff. In the meanwhile, here’s a pic I took in 2012 at about the same place in the Karoo National Park - Klipspringerpas. These are basically the Southern African equivalent of mountain goats. The name means ‘rockjumper.’ Those dainty little hooves do great work for leaping about cliffs and boulders.

Eland are pretty spectacular. The second-largest antelope (after the Giant Eland of West Africa). They’re recovering their numbers in South Africa after being nearly wiped out through hunting by the end of the 19th century. Gotta say, I found the operation and layout of my Fuji XE1 much more understandable from the get-go than the Nikon Z50. It’s really great for us olds who grew up on film gear that Fujifilm makes cameras that use film-camera control layouts as a starting point. Very lucky.

A waterbuck bull. It has big horns and a ring around its butt. What’s not to like?