WILDLIFE BLOG

The Carmine Bee-eaters have been here in force for the last couple of months. I went to spend some time at the colony yesterday morning and took many photos which I'm still wading through. However, this one appealed to me because the flying bird just caught the light as it returned to its nest hole. Almost doesn't look real but this is the image from the camera with only a crop applied! And here a couple [...]

Two lionesses had been hanging around a particular stretch of river for a couple of days and not having much hunting success. Eventually one afternoon, they managed to kill a male Waterbuck which would have sustained them for a couple of days. However, as darkness fell, scavenging crocodiles had other ideas and began emerging from the water to share the lions' feast. One lioness moved off quickly, apparently spooked by the crocs, but the other lioness [...]

....it's tiring for a lioness. Hardly surprising though, as this lioness had a very busy day. Early in the morning, she was lying out on the grass with the rest of the pride, when she spotted a group of Puku coming out onto the grass in the distance. Identifying a Puku calf among the herd, and seeing that the antelopes were dropping down into a little hollow, she ran towards them. Keeping her body low to [...]

Not many people's favourites but nevertheless an important member of the bush - Vultures are doing very well at this time of year because many of the large herbivores are struggling to find food, and the weakest are dying off. This White-backed Vulture's crop was so full that it struggled to fly to a roosting tree as darkness fell.

The striking side-lighting on this giraffe's head caught my eye the other day. I've always found giraffe a hard photo subject so seek new ways to capture them.

My series of images of a brawl between rival lions has made it into the UK's national press. Have a look here for a (slightly inaccurate) write-up of what happened! No I did not say that I went out to see if I "could spot the pride eating breakfast"!! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2462878/Lion-sent-packing-trying-muscle-rival-prides-buffalo-kill.html?login&createduser_email=#readerCommentsCommand-message-field Here's a reminder of the title photo when the brawl was at its climax.

We've had some fantastic sightings of these creatures over the last few days. I was even lucky and caught an African Civet in the act of adding to his dung midden (known as a civetry) - apparently nothing escapes the gaze of a camera!

I recently took a safari to the Nsefu Sector of the South Luangwa National Park. We were searching for Wild Dogs which are regularly seen in that area but they evaded us that day - such is life in the bush. Nevertheless, there was plenty else to see and the recent cloudy days had removed much of the haze from the atmosphere making the plains areas into a vast vista that we normally can't enjoy. In [...]

... and not very regal. But so would you on a 40 degree day if you'd just recently killed a baby hippo. Forgiven.

It was almost dark when I found these three cubs suckling from their mother. I pushed all the settings on my camera to eke out the last available light and managed to get some nice shots of the three. As it was getting dark, they were very active so rarely paused long enough for me to compose an image. Even so, seeing 2-month-old lion cubs is always a treat, so I thought I'd share what I [...]

As the lagoons dry up, hippos are squeezed into ever-decreasing sized pools of water and tempers fray. One way for a male to show dominance over another hippo is to display his massive canines by yawning ostentatiously.

It's not often that we see a sunset such as this in October. A cold front has cleared away all the dust and left us with October game viewing and April weather - astonishing.