My goldfish pond

[haver79]

Yes bring on the pics Keith!

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks! We went two three countries; Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe and went on safaris in two of them, Botswana and South Africa. The striking thing to all of us was seeing how animals, birds, insects, and vegetation were all so integral to each other and seeing the wildlife exhibit their natural behaviors . This is something that would be difficult to understand just watching animals in a zoo just like it would be difficult to understand goldfish behavior by looking at one in a fish bowl. I'm going to start with things we saw in the road. This is a picture of dung beetle rolling along dung from an elephant. The male does all the work and the female goes for a ride! If it wasn't for these little guys there would be elephant dung all over the place. There were over 200,000 elephants in Chobe National park in Botswana which is about 10,000 sq meters. There are a little over 15,000 elephants in Kruger National Park and the connecting private game reserves.We were on one of the private reserves in the Sabi Sands area. This entire area is over 5,000,000 sq meters. Amazingly the issue of overcrowding in Chobe was not an issue but in Kruger there were too many elephants because they were destroying the large trees by eating their bark. About 10 years ago they were removing elephants because the land would not support them. There was so much opposition to this the government is trying other things like digging ponds so all the elephants don't migrate to the same spot in the winter when there is less rain. There is still the issue of losing all the large trees because they are worried that by losing the trees if will affect the biodiversity. The next pictures are some elephants crossing the road. Elephants are emotionally attached to each other and we kept seeing this over and over with the mothers protecting their young. The last picture is of a 15 year old male elephant that charged at our vehicle. It was in must and was just plain angry at everything. Our guide recognized

he was in must and was ready to do something fast if something like this happened. He backed up the vehicle really fast and the elephant gave up chasing us!

 

[CometKeith]

It Kruger we had a tracker and a guide. It was the trackers job to scan the area and also watch for prints int he road. The picture is a print of a leopard dragging it's kill.We were able to see quite a few leopards while we were there. The most popular prey for them are the Impala which are everywhere. Our guide in Chobe said they are like McDonalds because they are everywhere and easy for the big cats to catch. Usually one Impala will feed one leopard or lion for about 3 days on average. after that they need to go hunting for food again.The next pictures are

another instance right after a leopard caught an impala.

 

[addy1]

So darn neat and great shots

 

[j.w]

Nice pictures and information. I enjoy learning about all the creatures from other lands and how they act. That female dung beetle has the right idea
Amazing how nature has it all worked out how everything fits together to work perfectly. We come along and try to fix everything and uh oh!

 

[haver79]

Very cool! What an exciting trip that must of been!

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks. It was a really great trip. Here a a few pictures from Victoria Falls and Cape Town. I shot the first pic of Victoria Falls from a helicopter. The third picture is where the Indian Ocean and Atlantic meet.

 

[haver79]

Beautiful

 

[haver79]

I wonder how many fish tumble over those falls!

 

[CometKeith]

Giraffe everywhere in Botswana. The females are not as maternal as most of the other animals. The adults sometimes wander away from their babies which then get caught by lions and leopards.

 

[addy1]

Brings back memories, what a neat trip

 

[CometKeith]

Haver There is actually something called Devil's pool that is on the Zambian side of Victoria Falls. You can sit in it and it's right on the edge of the falls. Here are a few more shots from the air. it looks like a crack in the earth from high up but it's actually pretty wide across.

 

[CountryEscape]

Wow, those pics are absolutely amazing, Keith! Thanks so much for not only sharing the pics, but giving descriptions as you did. That takes time, but I sure appreciated it. Loved the pics of the falls in the set way above on this page. It was like that one road fell off into the crevice. And, not sure, but looks as if that water flows over the edge, into never never land. Does it continue on as a river, I assume?

 

[CometKeith]

A tortoise in the road.

Baboons all over the park in Botswana. Also there were a lot of them at our hotel in Zimbabwe eating fresh mangos from the trees.

 

[CometKeith]

Hi CE, Yes it starts the Zambezi

River. It's the 4th longest in Africa. We took a

boat down it and saw crocodiles and hippos. Here a few pics of it. First one is just the eyes of the hippo sticking up.

A couple sunset pics.