Africa 2006 Elephant Plains Notes: At Elephant Plains you get up at 5:30am, grab a cup of coffee and head out for the morning safari at 6am. You stop for tea and coffee half way through the morning. Then after some more game driving we head back to camp for breakfast. The big 5 are the five most dangerous animals in Africa to hunt. They are the elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo and rhino. Prince also let us know there is a small 5 – elephant shrew, lion ant, leopard tortoise, buffalo weevil and the rhino beetle. What we saw:
|
|
|
|
Above, impala are a little skittish. While they stop to stare, they quickly decide to move farther into the brush where we can't easily see them. Left, yellow-billed oxpecker sit on the back of a rhino. They eat the ticks off several large animals. |
 |
This is a white rhino. He has a flat lip for easy grazing on grass. The black rhino is just about the same gray color as the white rhino, but has more of a beak-shaped mouth for grazing on shrubs and bushes. Rhinos don't see very well and are considered one of the big five. Below, the yellow-billed oxpecker cleans out the rhino's ear. The bird actually disappeared as he reached all the way in. |
|
|
 |
Left, cape buffalo usually travel in herds. Older males, like this one, often travel alone.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
We were fortunate to come across a mating pair of leopards. Normally leopards live and hunt alone. Once a year they spend 2-4 days together and mate every 15 to 30 minutes. We came across this pair a few times during the course of the day. There will be more images of these two after we take our morning break! |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Wayne and Prince set up the morning coffee and biscuits on this great site with a beautiful view of the bushveld landscape. Upper right, Prince explains some of the finer points of tracking to Jeff and Scott. Bottom, Jeff, Donna and Karl are enjoying the day and are ready for more game viewing. | |
Some of the images to come are rated R I'm sure that you want to see all that!! |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
You can feel the tension as these two dangerous animals get close to each other. The actual mating is very fast and then they growl and snarl at each other like one of them is about to become lunch. On the left you can see how close we were to the leopards. They really didn't seem to be too aware that we were there. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Back to: Africa 2006 Page Links• Nature Gallery Page • Wild Woman Design Home Page Back up one page • Go forward one page ©2006 Wild Woman Design, all rights reserved |
|
