WILDLIFE BLOG

I enjoyed watching this small family of elephants as they trudged through the dry bush towards the river. As they got closer, their pace picked up as they smelled the water and they celebrated with huge trunkfuls!

These large carnivorous birds are something of a speciality in the Luangwa, given that they are very scarce in other areas of Southern Africa. Here, they occur in good numbers although they are certainly not common. I found a pair stalking across an open plain yesterday and decided to try some portrait photos.

I've been going through a lot of old images that are stored on my system but have never seen the light of day, and came across these images which were taken over the last few months and show the growing up of a young leopard cub. She's been wonderful to watch and I have many more memories than I have images to back them up. Here she prowls down a track towards me in the gloaming [...]

I was out in the last light of evening yesterday and caught this image of an elephant cow feeding in the Leadwood forests. The sun was being masked by a cloud and gave this beautiful, moody effect.

In the last light of evening, this Lilac-breasted Roller held its ground on a nearby mopane trunk, before turning its gaze to the ground to check for one last hunting opportunity before dusk.

Wild Dogs are well known for their highly efficient hunting methods. Rather than relying on stealth and ambush (as do the cats) they employ the chaos and confusion method with astonishing success. It's estimated that around 90% of Wild Dog hunts end in a meal for the predator, compared to around 5-10% for cats. I'd seen several Wild Dog hunts in the past, but the one I watched on Sunday evening was perhaps the most spectacular [...]

.....is not normally recommended, but it can produce some nice effects.

When fleeing from predators (and sometimes even just for fun) antelope make giant exaggerated leaps to put distance between themselves and the hunter, and to display how fit and healthy they are. We call this behaviour "stotting", and it's well known across African species and some from elsewhere, such as sheep and deer. This impala's bouncing leaps were so graceful and balletic, that at one point, he closed his eyes and appears to have got lost [...]

As the rains come to an end, and the grass dies off in the back-country, elephant herds which have been living in the grasslands begin to move towards the riverine strip. The increased access to water and fresher vegetation draws them from the protein-rich dambos to the riverbanks where they will spend the majority of the coming months. It's a great time to photograph them as they file slowly across the open plains, adult females leading [...]

They're not the most inspiring of our antelope, and they've got a bad rep for being a bit smelly (German sausage-like if you can get the wind right), but there's more to Waterbuck than meets the eye. Dominant bulls employ the services of younger bulls as Generals, defending (on their behalf) areas of their range which are further from the core territory. This arrangement of shared territorial behaviour leads to very interesting interactions between males within [...]

It must be tough to be a young elephant bull watching as your larger companions effortlessly reach into the branches of Tamarind, Winterthorn and Acacia trees. We watched this pair of bulls as they gently made their way from the grasslands back towards the river in the evening, stopping regularly to feed on the abundant vegetation available at the end of the rains. As the sun dropped lower in the sky, the bulls started to head [...]

It's been a while since I updated my blog, but it doesn't mean it's been quiet in the National Park. We spent a lovely morning watching a small herd of giraffes in an open dambo recently. The youngsters were quietly sitting on the ground, legs folded underneath, but the older males remained standing - perhaps their old joints make it harder to get up and down! As males get older, specialised skin cells deposit more bone [...]