Cheetah

 



  Six of a kind
  by
  Wayne Holt



 



  Cheetah BW
  by
  Wayne Holt

Unhappy Lion

 



  Unhappy
  by
  Wayne Holt

The law of the bush

I was out on a game drive when we came across the following scene. The sequence of images to the left show a typically scenario in the bush.The first tel tale sign was a number of vultures in the trees. It was a rather wet day and overcast which typically means two things with vultures in trees. 

Either they were just nesting or there was a fresh kill that they were waiting to take their turn on. Most of the vultures were White Backed vultures, who nest in tree ( not good)  but there were a couple of Lappet-Faced vultures mixed in with the White backs which helped in  leaning the argument in favour of the latter scenario. Our misery was ended when while circling the area a Hyena made his appearance and ended our search for a carcass as with his superior sense of smell he simply led us straight to the wildebeest kill, The hyena was very nervous and constantly checked the surrounding bush giving a clue to the fact that the lioness had probably not gone far and was still in the vicinity. Showing the shrewd tact hyenas are know for the male dragged the carcass out into the open which was a major bonus for us. 

Time was not on his side though as after wolfing down a couple of chunks of meat the lioness made her return. I was quite surprised how see focused she was on the Hyena and locked onto the Hyena as if she was hunting. I would have thought that she would have simply roared or made a noise to scare off the hyena. 





 Fortunately it did not take long until the Hyena spotted the approaching Lioness and bolted like an Olympic sprinter.

The Lioness feeling I assume a little uneasy about the presence of the Hyena showed immense strength and simple disappeared with the carcass into the tickets. Ending our mornings excitement.

Boomslang

Boomslang, originally uploaded by holtphoto.

We came across this boomslang just outside of camp. He had been trying to get to a Lilac Breasted Roller atop of the telephone pole and got caught in a wire loop on the pole. The poor guy had been there for a couple of days. You can actually see in the image where his body was caught in the wire loop on the pole. Protocol requires that the section ranger in the Kruger National Park be notified of any animals in distress and any actions needs to be taken by the section ranger. I have to admit that it seems a bit daft and is certainly not the most effective means of management as two days after the snake was reported to the section ranger nobody for SANparks had arrived to assist. You can see in the image that there is a drop of blood on the bottom of the snake. Thankfully the weather was cool and overcast with some rain which would have helped the snake. I am happy to report that eventually staff took matters into their own hands and freed the snake. Snakes have pretty remarkable powers of recovery so I am sure that this guy made a full recovery