I am catching up with the sorting of all my images from the last 12 days! It has been an amazing couple of weeks in the bush and it’s taking time to select the best images to share here.
For now, here are the best from my time with Roger and Vicky, now on their 4th safari with me in Luangwa!!
We enjoyed some really interesting hyaena behaviour on our first evening. Sniffing of genitals is a standard greeting among hyaenas from the same clan. Here a female sniffs a male, and vice versa.
We paid a visit to the seasonal spectacle that is the Carmine bee-eaters colony. We tried all sorts of angles and zoom and in the end, Roger and Vicky took some nice video which seems to be a very good way of capturing the drama.
A giraffe who stood motionless by the side of the road gave us a chance to consider the callouses on his knees and enjoy the oxpecker making his living amongst the short hair.
Animals in their environment is the key to good photos in my opinion and this puku gave us a good opportunity to slide out of the vehicle, sit on the ground and see the world from his height.
Playing with the light from another vehicle’s spotlight, we managed to get some nice shots of this lionness feeding her cubs. The key to these silhouette shots is that they must be instantly recognisable and I think this just falls short, but I would love to hear your views!
During the week, a hippo died in the middle of the one of the large herds in the river, and began to float upside down. Initially, no one took any notice, but after a while, both hippos and crocs began playing with it, treating it like a large beach ball!
In my book, Crowned Hornbills are one of the most beautiful of birds, even when it has a muddy beak from probing in the mud for insects.
A large lion, lit by the light from a nearby vehicle allowed us some nice shots. The grass in front adds to the image I think, but would have blocked the subject if it had been lit from our spotlight or with flash. All these options are explored on a photo safari.
Returning from the lion sighting, we bumped into this guy! Many safari-goers travel for years and never catch up with an aardvark, so we felt very lucky to have seen him. He even hung around long enough to let us take some photos!
The beautiful morning light gave us great opportunities to photograph this saddle-billed stork as he hunted for insects and fish. Spreading the wings to shade the water is a behaviour most commonly seen in yellow-billed storks but this fish-attracting technique is also practiced by Black Egrets and other storks.
A second visit to the Carmines gave us better light than before.
Impalas descending the bank to reach water paused to wonder why there was so much clicking coming from our vehicle!
No such pausing from these guys – two young bulls continued sparring while we watched. Even in play, it’s hard to consider the forces being exerted here!
And finally, we embarked on one of my more stupid schemes! To try to get shots of the setting sun behind this puku, we lay down on the ground and crawled. I hadn’t considered how hard the ground is, and also how widespread are the rhino thistles at this time of year! We got shredded and emerged with only a couple of half-decent photos. Roger, wisely, remained on board the vehicle and simply rolled his eyes!
Roger and Vicky have been great supporters of Luangwa and I have loved taking them on safari. This is their 4th time with me, and there is already talk of “Oh, I guess we’ll be back next year”. If anyone would like to experience some of the shenanigans that we get involved with, please get in touch and I’d be happy to help.
