Lovely morning at Intaka Island with my dad and my dear cousin @joydemillar Waiting proved worthwhile and this living jewel of South Africa’s rivers and lakes eventually settled close enough. It had a ring on its tiny leg. These little Malachite Kingfishers are about the size of a large hen’s egg. This one is, I think, a sub-adult with traces of black still on its bill.
Not too much call for mowing the lawn in camp at The Karoo National Park. This is a big old Mountain Tortoise about the size of a medicine ball. It let me take a few pics before it started to feel it was infra dig, hissed at me and then trundled off to continue harvesting.
Another hopefully atmospheric bushveld scene. Buffalo and a Sabie River wild fig tree. I like this kind of pic to remind me of the experience of being on that river road when it’s very far away.
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.
Scratching post.
Kruger is about landscape as well as beasts, birds, and trees.
There’s a certain type of wildlife picture that I just really enjoy even if it’s not very clever. 1960s/1970s style wildlife portraiture. Thinking about my dear cousins @joydemillar and @timdrmillar today.
The prettiest kitty. Dozing on a branch over the Sabie just like her ancestors have probably done for thousands of years.
Yesterday evening on the Sabie - for my money the most beautiful river in South Africa. And that has a lot to with the huge wild fig trees that line its banks.