The rangers always email me through the daily sightings, and while there is often something that really sticks out, it is nice sometimes to just post all animals they have seen on game drive. This will give you a good impression of what one sees on a typical safari game drive outing with us. Of course one gets luckier on some drives than on others, but from what I can see, there is usually something very exciting that was seen every day, and often more than one!

So let’s take a look at what Jonathan saw yesterday with his guests:

First off a beautiful rhino bull. What a sighting!! Probably the most impressive of all Big 5 animals, right after elephants. It is hard to imagine the sheer size of these animals before one has seen one in real life. They weigh easily over 2 tons (think pickup truck weight!), and yet they move about very silently. See the “dented” ears of this rhino: that’s a sign of it being a male, and the dents are injuries from fighting. Many thanks for the impressive shot of this highly endangered animal.

Our guests then saw a lot of wildebeest (also called gnus), which is a typical African animal. One sees them often on TV programs, as they are, along with the zebra, the main animals going on the great migration by their thousands (in fact hundreds of thousands). Not the cleverest of all animals, that’s for sure, but always impressive in large herds. This animal, by the way, is so stupid that when it sees a predator it runs away (so far so good), and then a short while later (having forgotten already what happened), it will come back to the very spot where they were ambushed earlier on, for it to happen again! Incredible. They survive by means of sheer numbers, but definitely not for their intelligence.

Then a maybe less spectacular sighting for guests, but from an ecologist’s point of view a very exciting sighting indeed: the super rare Southern Ground Hornbill! This bird is highly endangered, so it is great to see them do so well on our large reserve. They have a very long life expectancy (over 40 years) and only rear one chick every 2-3 years, so this makes it hard for them to survive if there isn’t enough habitat for them. The ground hornbills on our reserve have been successful at breeding however, so they are safe here.

By now darkness was setting in, when Jonathan found the two young lionesses that have split from the main pride for the time being. We are not sure why that is, maybe they just want to be left alone by the male (which is a good reason, I suppose). They have become very good hunters already, if you remember my previous story showing them making a warthog kill. They were sleeping in an area that we call the “cotton fields” as it is very open there, quite close to the lodge. We have had the entire pride sleep literally 10 yards from the lodge (right behind the swimming pool) a few times now this year, so they have become very relaxed to our presence.

All in all an amazing safari, no doubt there, and by now it was time to head back to the lodge for a delicious dinner. Lots to talk about!