It’s a great pleasure to post some of Ken and Sandra’s images on my blog. They are seasoned travellers, great photographers and good fun to take on safari. We spent 5 days together in October, and this is their report of the trip, through their words and images. Hope you enjoy – it’s a good read!
Africa keeps calling us back, but of all our trips to wildlife destinations, it was only the combination of the Jackalberry treehouse at Flatdogs and the photographic expertise of Ed Selfe that lured us back to the same place, Zambia, for a second visit. The decision was a good one – with amazing sightings both by day and by night – so it has been difficult for us to choose just a few shots from the trip.
Of the many different lions we encountered during the trip, some of the most memorable moments involved cubs of various sizes.
During an unsuccessful search for an aardvark, we came across this honey badger and managed to get a shot before it disappeared into the night.
As Ed is known for his success with leopard sightings, we have many shots of these beautiful felines, and had trouble to narrow the choice to just one.
Animal behaviour is often fascinating, as with these elephants.
We had to laugh at the inquisitive expression of this giraffe!
Ed took us to the best places to find owls – we were fortunate to be able to capture this one in flight.
As we entered the park at sunrise one morning, Ed stopped us on the bridge just as a hippo was about to enter the all-too-shallow water at the end of the dry season. Well seen!
Among the many interesting birds were several different species of kingfisher – this is a hovering pied kingfisher looking for a meal.
Of course giraffes are tall, but note that the zebras do not even reach the top of its leg!!
This is a (fortunately) rare sight. This warthog had obviously reversed into a burrow without checking it first and had ended up with a porcupine quill in the most painful place. Ouch!
These are just a few of the moments we captured on our fantastic trip – some of the more graphic have not been included, such as the nine hyenas scrapping over an impala stolen from a leopard immediately after the kill. However, there were baboons with white babies, elegant raptors including several species of owl, flocks of colourful lovebirds, kudus and eland, fighting impala, a hyena carrying a buffalo head, bush babies and genets, and three lions up a tree. And so much more. You can find more of these images on our website here.
We are grateful to Ed for ensuring that we were well positioned to make the most of the sightings, especially in the amazing early morning/late evening light, but also finding us a great variety of nocturnal species. What a fantastic trip!
Ken MacLennan-Brown & Sandra Rossi
