I’d guess a lot of South Africans would be surprised to know we have indigenous parrots. This busy, curious little bird is the Brown-Headed Parrot. In some cities you can see Rose-Ringed Parakeets. But they’re the descendants of escaped pets. And they thrive in urban environments as they have for thousands of years in their native India. But this is a true Southern African parrot.
Two cheetah brothers. In the second pic you can see the one brother calling the other down from his pedestal in his surprising cat-like high meow.
A Burchell’s Coucal. The “rain bird.” Here drenched in rain. @withoutaleaf and I were laughing so hard at the Robert’s Birds description of its habits. This species is an absolute hot mess. Pure chaos.
The sportiest and slinkiest. The African Cheetah. Two brothers using the way markers outside Orpen rest camp as viewpoints and scent marking them. Seeing cheetahs in Kruger is special. Seeing them clearly and close is magic.
Monkeys. Genuinely fun. Especially when they come in different sizes.
Dawn impala. I’m trying some new camera settings and they take a bit of getting used to. Quite a bit of noise on this one. Correctible with care. But I didn’t need a very high shutter-speed for this kind of thing.
Dawn in the African bushveld style.
Oh hai! Guess where we are again.
Looking through some pics to make some prints and I discovered this lion pic from 2018. They really are strange-looking cats. Very long and lean. I guess they’re built for more endurance than Tigers and most other cats that are ambush hunters. Lions have to keep up with prey for longer periods of time, I think.
More experiments with retro wildlife photography. These are plains zebras - the more common of the two species of zebra in South Africa. This one is widespread throughout the continent South of the Sahara. There is one more species that is deeply endangered that survives only in small, protected enclaves in Kenya and Sudan.