Okavango Photo Safari: Day 9: Variety at 4 Rivers

Setting out early, as usual, we soon found leopard tracks. While searching for the leopard, we accidentally surprised a family of elephants, who then decided to chase us off. Clifford had to know his driving to get away from them. They stood staring after us through the dust, checking that we were not going to return and bother them again.

Some promising clouds were on the horizon, but unfortunately soon disappeared, resulting in another scorching hot day

With the riches of predators to photograph, one can easily forget the beauty of the “ordinary and common” like Kudu, Impala and Tsessebe

We saw a beautiful Lappet-faced vulture, another species unfortunately listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, sitting at the water

Soon we spotted a leopard, fast asleep in a tree.

We spent the rest of the morning waiting for him to come down from the tree. He did wake up a few times to change position and look at the Zebra, Red Lechwe and Impala, but after waiting more than 2 hours, we had to accept that he was not interested in coming down. The Zebras seemed oblivious to his presence.

In the afternoon, we set of for one last search for Painted Wolves, not finding any, but seeing the most beautiful landscapes with green flood plains interspersed with woodlands. Waterbuck, Elephants and many other animals were grazing on the flood plains

We were fascinated, watching Kestrels hunt, hovering and then swooping down on their prey in the grass, flying up and eating in flight. Their main prey on this day seemed to be some juicy caterpillars

Finally, we stopped to have our sundowners, watched by a Kingfisher

Okavango Photography Safari: Day 7: Splash to 4 Rivers

With a feeling of great satisfaction and gratitude, after spending two full days with the Painted Wolves, we departed Splash, taking a short game drive on our way to the airstrip. At the airstrip, while waiting in the “VIP lounge”, we saw two Wild Dogs running across the runway just as the plane came in to land.

A 10 minute flight to 4 Rivers with a 20 minute drive to camp, saw us arrive just in time for brunch, after which we settled into our luxury tents. In the afternoon, our guide, Clifford and tracker James picked us up for a game drive. Soon they spotted two male lions, fast asleep in the shade of a tree.

Moving along, we saw a beautiful Bateleur, which unfortunately turned away from us when taking off, as a result we could not get any in-flight photos of it.

A kite flew up out of the long grass with a snake clutched in its talons

A small herd of Roan Antelope, unusually, stayed still long enough for us to get some nice photos.

By this time the sun was low above the horizon

We decided to return to the sleeping lion brothers, finding them waking up and starting to move around

Look at the video with sound on. These guys roared ferociously.

With the lions’ roaring shaking the ground, Liana still getting great video of them, but the light becoming too low for photographing them, I turned to the sunset for one last photo of the day.