Tanzania Blog - Part 1

Hello once again. I had a great time in Tanzania and for the first time had a lion leap at me...pretty scary stuff. I'm just pleased that it didn't drag me out through the window and eat me...but I was so shocked when it happened that I forgot to hit my shutter button...had I the presence of mind to do so, I would have gotten some pretty awesome images of a very upset lioness.

I just returned to the US of A after 31 hours or airports and airlines...the flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta is 16 hours alone...which is so long that even after I watched four movies, I still had 5 hours to go. Bottom line...it's a brutal flight and a brutal trip. I'll have to think long-and-hard before doing it again.

While in Tanzania I went to Tarangire Nat'l Park and Lake Manyara. Tarangire is known for its numerous elephant herds and Lake Manyara is known for the lions that climb trees. As this was most likely my last trip to Tanzania, I tried to enjoy it to its fullest.

I ended up with 3,600 images and after a day of deleting photos have ended up with about 1,500 keepers...of these I've chosen the following for this blog.  In fact, I ended up with so many nice images that I've decided to do two blogs from Tanzania...Part 1 on birds and Part 2 on everything else.

So first I'm going to share some bird images with you because Tanzania has some absolutely beautiful birds. Unfortunately many of the Tanzania birds are new to me so I'm just hoping that I got all the names right. If some of you birders like Leon or Marcia see that I've made a mistake with an identification, just let me know what it is...I'd appreciate it. So here we go:

 This is a Western Red-billed Hornbill

 This is a Superb Starling...check out those colors...awesome blues and purples.

 This I believe is a Von Decker's Hornbill

 ...and this is a female Von Decker's Hornbill

 White-headed Buffalo Weaver

 For months I've been trying to get a decent image of a Helmeted Guineafowl...and I finally got one.

 This is a Yellow-necked Spurfowl

 I've sent other images of a Lilac-breasted Roller...but I really liked this one as it was a cold morning and he fluffed-up which shows all of his beautiful feathers.

 I'm not sure what this bird is...do one of you birders know?

 I included this Southern Ground Hornbill because I liked watching him as he caught grasshoppers and stacked them in his bill.

 I'm thinking that this is an immature Crowned Eagle

 Nesting Yellow-billed Storks...in this and surrounding trees there must have been 3-4,000 birds.

 Grey Crowned Crane

 I think these are Silvery-cheeked Hornbills...I only saw them is the dense forests and only in the mornings. I would guess that this is a male and a female.

 This is an African Grey Hornbill

I think this is a Ring-necked Dove

 ...at first when saw this bird I thought it was another type of guineafowl, but now I'm thinking that it's a female Helmeted Guineafowl.

 This was a tough one. I decided that it was one of the many "weavers"...and in particular, a Lesser Masked Weaver...but now I'm not so sure. What do you birders think?

Our driver told me that this particular bird is only found in Tarangire Nat'l Park...but I've forgotten the name. Birders...what do you think?

 Bateleur Eagle

African Fish Eagle

And those are just some of the birds I saw while in Tanzania. I actually saw quite a few more...but they are so quick that it was tough trying to get shots of them...or if I did, the images weren't sharp enough for me to add to this blog. So tomorrow I'm going to try and get Tanzania Part 2 out...so watch for it as I have some pretty nice images of elephants, lions, and a few animals that I hadn't seen while in South Africa. Thanks for taking a look...it's good to be back home.



South Africa - Week 4

Good morning to you all.  My last week in South Africa…and what a week it was.  In just a few short days I was able to see the “Big 5” and numerous other animals.  I’ve enjoyed my time here, especially being able to spend 8 weeks of adventures with Pat, but am ready to move on. I just wished that I could have talked Pat into going to Tanzania with me. He's been great fun to be with. I guess I'll just have to convince him to join me on another trip in some other foreign land.

Next I travel to Tanzania and lions that climb trees…that should be interesting.  My brother who lives in Tanzania retires in September so I would suspect that this will be my last trip there. I’d still like to spend some time in Botswana and Namibia as they are supposed to be excellent countries for taking wildlife images…but whether-or-not it will happen is yet to be seen.
 

We had another week of very hot weather and no rain…but in Africa you sort of get used to “very hot and sunny”…which is nice in some ways but makes it somewhat difficult to get good images.  This is true especially between 11am-5pm when most of the animals just want to hide in the shade and wait until it cools off.

So today I need to  wash clothes, pack, fill out my Tanzania Visa application, and make copies of images.  I would have liked to have been able to spend more time with this blog but there's just too much left to do before I take off tomorrow.  However, I was able to put together a few images that I'm sure you'll like. 

You can probably tell that this elephant isn't too happy. This is one of two elephants that became upset when we drove near them. They shook their heads, bugled at us, and let us know that they weren't going to allow us any closer...so we just waited there until the elephants got tired and left.

This week we were lucky as we saw 14  Cape Buffalo. This is the big bull that was watching over his herd.

We saw these two leopard (mother and cub) a few days ago, but the grass was so tall that it made for some interesting images.

The cub was frightened by our vehicle and left but the mother just sat down in the grass and didn't seem to mind us being there.

Eventually the mother decided to go find her cub but kept a weary eye on us to make sure we didn't pose any danger to them.

This little guy is one of four rhinoceros we saw grazing together. It's so unfortunate that poachers are killing these great beast at such alarming numbers. Unless something is done, and soon, I think rhinoceros will become extinct in South Africa as has already happened in several other African countries.

Baby rhinos are just so cute. It saddens me to think that someone would kill this small rhino just for his horn.

 Here's Pat taking photos of the rhinoceros...you can't do that in Austin.

This elephant walked in front of our vehicle to let us know that she didn't want us going any further...which we didn't.

We had three elephants come to the water trough near our camp and once they had quenched their thirst, they decided to take a quick shower. 

As one of the elephant herds was walking past, I spotted this baby playing with a stick.

However...soon one of the older elephants pushed him across the road because he was lagging behind the herd.

 I was getting ready to go on a drive and laid two apples on the table for Pat and I to take with us. But no sooner had I put them down when this Verbet monkey jumped down and stole Pat's apple.  I thought it was pretty funny and took some photos of it eating Pat's apple...and it was all well and good until it jumped back down and quickly stole my apple from my daypack. I didn't even have time to stop it before it had grabbed my apple and was gone.

Pat spotted this Southern Ground Hornbill just as she was running away.

 I saw these African Monark butterflies mating and thought I'd include this image for my brother, Bart.

I had a chance to take this image of the moon after Pat explained to me how to do it. I think I'll try this more often.

 This is a Giant Plated lizard...who hung around long enough for me to get a few images.

Red-billed Oxpeckers de-ticking a Cape Buffalo.

...and did we find the lions. Last night we happened on a pride of 17 lions, most of which were cubs. It was a most special sighting and one I hadn't seen before. We spent about three hours watching them play and I ended up taking more than 1,000 images.  It's just a shame that I can't put more of them in this blog.

Lion cubs everywhere.

They were constantly playing with each other...or ganging up on each other. There were several ages of cubs but they all played well together.

This little guy was worn out from all the playing and just had to sit down and rest.

These two quit playing long enough to watch us for a few moments.

These two lionesses were watching their cubs to make sure everything was alright. It unfortunately started getting dark which made it difficult to take good images. This is one time that I wished I had brought my f/2.8 lens to have been able to get the darker images.

So that's it for this blog...and of course I hope you enjoyed it. I will try to put out another blog next week from Tanzania. Until then, I'm wishing all of you well.  John

Makalali Game Reserve - Week 3

It's hard to believe but week three at Makalali Game Reserve has come-and-gone. The good news is that I finally saw a leopard...actually three leopards...a momma and her two cubs. The bad news is that I got almost no clear/clean images of them. This was do partly because of my mistakes and partly because of external factors, like people in the vehicle moving around so much that it was close to impossible to hold the camera steady. But I did manage to get a few good shots like this one: 

If you're a leopard fan, you should see some of Pat's great leopard shots (at patgower.blogspot.com). Now if we can just find a leopard-in-a-tree this last week.

Two days before we saw the leopard we had four lions walk right by the vehicle. What made this interesting is that the vehicle's started quit working and once the lions had passed, we had to get out and push it to get it started again. One thing that you don't want to do here is be outside of your vehicle when lions are around. Here's one of the images I took when this happened:

This week was filled with excitement...even though it's still quite hot here during the day, we were still able to see numerous animals. So here goes:

White-faced Ducks

Leopard Tortoise

Blacksmith Lapwing

 Every day this female warthog brings her babies to eat grass in our front yard

Giraffes in the sun

Purple-crested Turaco - I've been trying to get a decent image of this gorgeous bird for weeks now...unfortunately this is as close as I've gotten so far. Maybe next week I'll be lucky and see him close-up...at least enough to get an image that does him justice. 

Crested Barbet

European Bee-eater

We saw a few bull elephants this past week...which is always exciting.

Giraffes at sundown

Foam-nest Frog

 Whitebacked Vulture

Redbilled Oxpecker hitching a ride on a giraffe 

One of the many river crossings at Makalali

I saw this lizard by the truck and took his image...but what type it is, I have no idea.

Bateleur

 This is an immature Red-billed Oxpecker. When he's older his bill will turn red.

Steenbok

If you ever find yourself in the African bush and happen to see this...it's time you make some quick excape plans...

...because of the "Big 5" (leopard, lion, cape buffalo, rhinoceros, and elephant), Cape Buffalo are responsible for more deaths and/or serious injury than all the others.

Yellow-billed Hornbills showing a display that basically is saying to other hornbills..."Listen bub, this is my tree so don't try to come and sit here". 

 

...and my Favorite of the Week:

I took this image of this 3' Boomslang as he was climbing through the trees. At first we thought it was a Black Mamba...but decided that it was indeed a Boomslang...the most venomous snake in South Africa.  As I'm sure you can imagine, we gave it a wide berth.

So that's it for this week's blog. Did you find an image-or-two that you liked? It's hard for me to imagine that I'm down to my final week in South Africa...I guess it's that old adage, "...how time flies when you're having a good time". Until next time, be safe and take plenty of images.