WILDLIFE BLOG

This lovely small family of elephants appeared in the road ahead of us as we were driving slowly along. They seemed agitated to be exposed on the road, so bunched together as a tight group. After a short time, they relaxed and began to show us a full range of greetings and tactile communication. Here, a youngster places his trunk behind an adult female's ear, and she raises her trunk to place it in his mouth [...]

It's an easy sound to miss, but if you stop and listen carefully, you'll always hear the "tink...tink...tink...tink" of a Lesser Honeyguide calling from a favourite tree-top perch. Fairly drab to look at, the Honeyguides are a group of birds which are famous for leading certain animals, including man, to beehives, where the predator breaks open the nest to take the honey, and the bird benefits by feeding on wax, honey and larvae after the main [...]

Beautiful evening sky this evening as a group of Cattle Egrets flew past me, lit up as a golden splash against the blue-grey sky.

After a long night of heavy rain, we found this Slender Mongoose sunbathing on a log at the side of the road. Instead of heading for the nearest thicket with its tail high in the air, this one just continued to bask in the sunshine. Eventually, after scratching various body parts, it moved off to the shade of a bush.

We were out yesterday and heard baboons shouting loudly while I was watching a couple of storks feeding. I drove on to see what was bothering them, knowing that the alarm call they were making was to warn of a leopard. As we drove up, I found the centre of the commotion and quickly found a pair of leopards resting in a sausage tree out in the middle of the plain. At this time of year, [...]

I found this huge Golden Orb Spider or Golden Orb Weaver out in the park yesterday. It had built a huge orb web, stretching about 5m across and about 3m tall. The spider itself was over 15cms long and was sitting, alert, at the middle of the web. It had position a leg on each of the main strands of the web waiting to feel if an insect became caught in the sticky strands. While not [...]

I've been watching a pair of Crowned Cranes nesting in the long grasses of a swampy area over the last few weeks. When I drove past yesterday, I was a bit surprised not to find them there. I thought that perhaps they were nestled down in the grass, or perhaps had been chased off by a predator. What I had not considered was that they had reared the chicks and they were out foraging together! The [...]

I first noticed this baboon because he was staring intently in one direction for some time. If you can spot this behaviour, it can tell you more about what's going on than we can see or hear. Baboons have fantastic eyesight and rely on it more than any other sense. So if they tell you there's danger, it possible that we can see it too. In this case, he had sensed something and was assessing whether [...]

And particularly when watching baboons! I spent about half an hour enjoying watching a troop of baboons as they slowly congregated at the base of the huge ebony which they use as a roosting site. Females and males groomed each other, the youngsters played and even the youngest babies let go of their mothers and explored their immediate surroundings. These two were playing on top of a termite mound, wrestling gently with each other. As I [...]

.....not quite as inspiring as African wildlife! I spent some time in the UK recently, at home in Dorset, and tried a couple of times to photograph some of the local inhabitants. A combination of poor light, almost continuous rain and nervous animals led to some slightly disappointing results! Looking at this washed out image of a young sika stag-calf made me realise (again) how lucky we are to live in this beautiful place.