Dawie Shares his Notes and Photographs while on the Elephant Plains Photo Safari:
Our afternoon drive started with no sign of a predator. But that ended when we visited a pack of Wild Dogs that was beginning to get moving. An wow! They gave us a challenge as they sprinted through grassy areas while we tried our best to keep up while trying, sometimes vainly, to focus on their running, frenetic dashing around. The excitement of the sighting was well worth the effort of keeping up.
A short while later we found a herd of elephants and then buffalo.
And then … !
We heard a leopard calling and when we went to see why, we found her way up in a tree. It was Ndzutini, and she looked down for a while from her lofty perch. When she decided to come down from the tree we’re able to photograph her from different angles.
And we thought, great! Super sighting, great, clear shots, who could ask for more. So let us move on again.
But what was that?
There was a commotion! What was going on? And seconds later there was Ndzutini, up in another tree. She peered down. Why? Then we saw … Tiyane, her mother, was chasing her around, branch to branch, tree to tee. It was a fabulous sighting, and simply wonderful to see this interaction between the two leopards.
After coffee and rusks before dawn we set out for our morning experience. We found hyenas close to the Lodge, but as they were quite lazy in the early cold, we left them to doze.
Lion tracks attracted our attention, and before long we found a male lion relaxing in some long grass. It was an excellent opportunity for some unique close-up portrait photography.
We left the lion sighting to give another vehicle an opportunity to move in and went to check on reports of a leopard very close by. Soon after we arrived on the scene the cat jumped up into a Boer-bean tree where she had a Steenbok kill. She fed for a short while, then jumped down from the tree, and disappeared into the tall grass.
Just before we reached the Lodge in time for breakfast we stopped to photograph more elephants …
