WILDLIFE BLOG

We are lucky to have a very relaxed female leopard living in the nearby area. She has a huge range, so we're never too sure where she's going to turn up, but when she does, it's regularly with her two cubs! Now almost 6 months old, we've been watching them grow up and feed alongside her. I found them one morning recently, and both cubs were on the lowest branch of a tall tree, although only [...]

Giraffes spar by using their long necks and massive heads to inflict heavy blows on the body and legs of their adversary. We rarely see this fighting 'for real', as most animals prefer to settle their differences in other ways. But we often see sub-adult males practicing on each other so they learn the skills that they will need in later life to fight for dominance and the right to mate. When performed 'gently' this activity [...]

I've encountered some of Nature's less adorable creatures in the last couple of days. First, I was walking in long grass on a flood plain and found that there were hundreds of Blister beetles sunning themselves on the tops of the tall elephant grasses. At first, I thought it might be their mating time, but there were singles and doubles and triples in equal number, so I'm not sure whether they were competing for females or [...]

These Greater Blue-eared Starlings are ant and termite specialists, often found on the ground in short grass areas. Their iridescent blue/green colouration comes not from a pigment but from the micro-structure of the keratin in the feathers.

Sometimes the teeth of hippos don't form in the normal way, and the canine pierces the lip as it grows. While it looks horrific, there are several hippos in a similar situation in the Luangwa and they don't seem to be affected by it.

There's something soothing about watching an elephant feeding calmly nearby. I'm fascinated by the textures of the ears, trunk and eyes, and have many photos similar to this one in my albums.

It always pays to take care where you tread out here. Quite apart from being a shame to squash this baby Boomslang, it might bite back. Boomslangs are readily identifiable by the enormous eye and the way in which the boundary between the upper and lower body colours always passes straight through that eye. While highly venomous, they are usually placid and rarely attempt to bite, preferring to slip away and up into the trees.

We spent a lovely afternoon at a nearby salt spring on Sunday. The area is used by various wildlife species who come to drink and make use of the coarse grasses that grow there. At this time of year, hundreds of Crowned Cranes congregate to conduct their ritual breeding dance. At this stage, the birds are still massing and there is little mating behaviour, but the sight of 150 Cranes on the lush green grass is [...]

I caught these baboons as the last rays of sunlight were bathing the plains with that golden glow. This troop were happy rooting for tubers and dung-dwelling insects until darkness fell as they were just a few metres from their roosting site in a grove of Ebony trees.

As it dries up in the Luangwa Valley, the dusty evenings give us beautiful scenes against which to capture wildlife going about its business. We are lucky to have a pack of Wild Dogs which have decided to den close by so we should have good sightings over the next couple of months while the adults and yearlings hunt and feed the female and her pups. I was watching them yesterday afternoon and took some photos [...]

It's estimated that the blood vessels in elephants' ears contain between 3 and 5% of their total blood volume. As the blood passes through these vessels, a few flaps of the ears cools it considerably before it returns to the body once again. Nature's radiator.