Tag: Leopard

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Okavango Photo Safari: Final goodbye and Reflection

On our last morning, we went for a short game drive before returning to 4 Rivers camp to pack for our flight home.

The young male leopard we had seen on a previous day, was lying out in the open on a termite mound, watching the passing giraffes, giving us ample photo opportunities, before disappearing into the trees

There was some smoke in the air from grass fires, resulting in a hazy photo of the Southern Ground Hornbill in flight.

Thus came to an end our amazing 10 days in the Okavango Delta, having achieved our main objective of seeing and photographing the Painted Wolves, but also so much more, truly an awe inspiring experience of God’s wonderful creation. It is so sad that so many of the wonderful animals we saw, are on the Vulnerable, Endangered or even Critically Endangered lists. As humans, we really should take our responsibility towards the world we live in more seriously and work harder towards protection and conservation of these wonderful animals that we are privileged to share the earth with.

Many thanks to Grant Atkinson for the invaluable input, both in the planning phase and during the trip itself. Without your input, many of the great photos and videos we got, would not have been possible.

Joanne at Biggestleaf Travel, who did our bookings, ensured that we had smooth sailing all the way with no drama and hitches.

Kwando Safaris camps where we stayed, Pom Pom, Splash and 4 Rivers, certainly lived up to their promise of delivering a “a high-quality wildlife experience”.

Our guides and trackers were awesome, going out of their way to get us the sightings and then patiently positioning and repositioning the vehicles to get us the best angles for our photos. I remain amazed at their ability to spot the animals at a distance, when often all I could see was bushes.

Ryder and Zuma at Pom Pom
ST and SB at Splash
Clifford and James at 4 Rivers

Finally, a few tips for those who may be planning a similar trip:

The Okavango is a magical place and absolutely worth a visit. If you just want to get the sightings and not really interested in photography, I am sure you will get as many sightings as we did, if not more, by simply booking a trip to these awesome destinations which we visited. However, if you want to get the photos, you really should book a dedicated photography safari with someone like Grant Atkinson who knows the area, animal behaviour and photographic technique and will assist you to get the best shots possible. This will also allow you to spend enough time with the animals in order to give you the best photo opportunities. Many times we saw other vehicles arrive at a sighting, stay 10-15 minutes and then depart, while we stayed for the photos.

In order to keep the trip somewhat affordable, we went in the “Low Season” but from a photographer’s perspective this might actually be preferable because the grass is shorter, there is less water, so certain areas which are not accessible in flood season, were accessible to us, there are fewer vehicles around to ruin your shots and the occasional clouds in the sky did assist with better light for photography.

On this trip I used two Sony A1 camera bodies with respectively a 600mm f/4 lens (44% of my shots) and a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens (55%). I also had along a 24-105mm lens which I used for about 1%, mainly a few sunset photos.

For her video, Liana had two Sony A7IV camera bodies with Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 lens and Tamron 150-500mm f/5-6.7 as well as a GoPro Hero 11

For low angle shots we both used Insta360 selfie sticks for lowering the cameras from the vehicles and I used a Sony RMT-P1BT Wireless Remote Commander for remote shutter release, as recommended to us by Grant.

With the weight of the camera gear, we had to book a “freight seat” on all our internal flights in Botswana in small planes.

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To see the posts detailing the rest of our trip, please visit my Archives page and follow the links from there.

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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

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Okavango Photo Safari: Looking for Painted Wolves and an elusive Leopard: Day 8 : 4 Rivers

After our usual light breakfast, we headed out to the west, soon encountering fresh leopard tracks, apparently belonging to a young male, usually still seen in the company of his mother. This led to a prolonged search for him, with a second vehicle eventually joining in the search, but with no success.

We tried photographing birds, but also with limited success, since the wind direction was not favourable. I did manage to get a nice shot of a Broad-billed Roller in flight.

Eventually we decided to head back to camp a little earlier than usual. Along the way, James spotted the elusive young male leopard lying at the base of a tree. The leopard was quite curious, giving us ample opportunity to photograph him and eventually approaching and inspecting the vehicle, before moving into a bush where we could no longer see him well enough to photograph.

Back at camp we went through our usual routine of brunch, followed by downloading photos and videos, backing up, clearing memory cards and charging camera batteries. By this time we were exhausted from lack of sleep and extreme daytime heat and tried to get a brief afternoon nap, before setting out for our afternoon drive. I did find that the advice given to us, to lie under the fan under a wet kikoi, was quite an effective way of cooling down in the extreme heat.

In the afternoon we headed out in the direction where a group of lionesses had been spotted the previous day, two of them with cubs. We had been informed that they had left their cubs somewhere they considered safe, in order to go hunting. This was also the direction where we could possibly expect to find Wild Dogs, but these had not been seen at 4 Rivers for quite some time.

Along the way, we spotted two Red Lechwe males, having a bit of a tussle, but soon deciding to go their different ways.

A lone lioness was seen approaching in our direction. Clifford was of the opinion that she was part of the group previously seen, but this was obviously not one of those with cubs.

She was clearly feeling the heat, since she was walking from one shady spot to the next, eventually approaching our vehicle and lying down in the shade, looking quite aggrieved when we decided to drive off, taking our shade with us.

One of the other vehicles had found the cubs and we drove to their location, where we found some forlorn looking cubs, clearly pining for their mothers to return.

The sun was setting and we left the cubs to drive back to camp, the end of another stunning day in the Okavango.

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Okavango Photo Safari: Looking for the Painted Wolves: Day 4: Pom Pom to Splash

On this morning we again went out early, looking for the Painted Dogs in the region where another guide had told Ryder that he had seen their tracks recently. I had stopped taking malaria prophylaxis and was starting to recover from the side effects.

Although I am not a true “birder”, more of an occasional opportunistic bird photographer, I did enjoy photographing this beautiful African Hawk Eagle in flight.

Soon we came upon two beautiful cheetahs, who were rather shy and not overly keen to be photographed. We managed to get some long range photos of them, but when we tried to approach closer, they moved away and we decided not to disturb them further.

Moving further in our search of the Wild Dogs, we found a leopard cub in a tree, happily eating a young impala. The cub’s mother was nearby, eyeing an adult impala for the kill, possibly even the mother of the one being eaten by her cub. One is reminded that nature, in all its beauty, can be harsh.

We returned to camp, still not having found the Wild Dogs. After brunch, it was time to depart Pom Pom, on our way to Splash camp. We flew across Moremi Game Reserve, from South-west to North-east, landing at Kwara landing strip. Flying across the Okavango delta, one cannot help but to be impressed by the beauty of the flood plains below. At this time of year, there is very little water and the areas which are covered by water in the flood season, are seen as large green, grass covered plains.

Landing at Kwara, we saw an elephant next to the landing strip and were later told that the guides had to chase it away from the landing strip just before our arrival.

We were met by our guide ST (who jokingly told me that ST stands for “Serious Trouble”) and tracker SB.

After settling in to our accommodation, we went for an afternoon drive. ST told us that the large pack of Wild Dogs had moved to neighboring Khwai around 4 or 5 days earlier, but could be expected back in the Kwara concession soon. We explored in the direction of Khwai, up to the boundary between the concessions, without finding their tracks. ST indicated that he thought they could be on an island, to which the only vehicle access was a crossing in the Kwara concession, close to the Khwai boundary. Due to the distance from our camp, we could not explore this in the late afternoon, but would return in the morning.

On our way back to camp, we stopped for sundowners and to appreciate another beautiful sunset.

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Okavango Photography Safari: Looking for Painted Wolves, finding another leopard: Day 3: Pom Pom

By now we were into our routine of an early wake-up, light breakfast and being out of camp before any of the other guests. On this, our last full day at Pom Pom we traveled a long way in search of the wild dogs, spending little time on other sightings. This was also the day on which I realised that my system was not reacting well to the malaria prophylaxis I was taking, resulting in a hard day for me.

Our first sighting of the day, was a hyena in the long grass.

We did spend some time with a leopard along the way. This one had a few wounds, possibly having been in a fight. Since the light quickly became very harsh, I decided to experiment with some black and white photos.

I also managed to photograph my nemesis, the Lilac-breasted Roller. One day, I will get the perfect shot of this bird, but until then, I have to keep trying.

Having found no Wild Dogs, we returned to camp for brunch and a siesta. In the afternoon, we again went all out in search of the Wild Dogs, once more without success. We did not have too many photo opportunities either on this afternoon. However, when we stopped for sundowners, we did get some surprise visitors joining us for a drink.

This was perhaps our least successful day of the trip from a photographic perspective and also a very hard day for me personally due to side effects from the malaria prophylaxis, but still an excellent day spent in the beautiful nature of the Okavango region.

Liana managed to get some beautiful video while at Pom Pom. Look at them on YouTube and also subscribe to her channel to see when she posts new content from our travels.

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Okavango Photography Safari: Looking for Painted Wolves: Day 2: Pom Pom Leopards, Lions and more.

Our first full day at Pom Pom started with a thunderstorm and rain, which passed quickly and did not delay our planned early start, with a 5am wake-up call, quick light breakfast and out on our game drive by 5:45am.

Very soon our excellent guiding team found a male leopard, who seemed to be sniffing around for something. He had a deformed tail, possibly previously injured and healed with a deformity, but this did not seem to bother him too much. He did interrupt his sniffing to pose for a few quick photos.

We followed him until he eventually reached a tree in which there was a half eaten impala, possibly a kill left behind by another leopard. This one may have been sniffing around because he had gotten the scent and was looking for it. He proceeded to jump into the tree and enjoy the leftovers.

We received information that lions had killed a wildebeest nearby and proceeded to that site, where we found two lions, shortly joined by a third. The beautiful morning light after the rain, offered more opportunity for low angle photos.

Moving along, almost unbelievably, we found a female leopard and her cub. We had been informed of their presence in the vicinity and that hyenas had stolen their food. Mom was resting on a tree stump and junior was lying in a nearby tree.

When the mom started stirring, she offered excellent photo opportunities with the partly cloudy skies in the background.

When she got up, she called her cub down from the tree and they strolled along to where a dead impala was lying under a bush, presumably another kill she had made after losing her first one to they hyenas. She looked like she had already eaten and the cub started to eat.

With the day just a few hours old, we had already had the most amazing sightings and in between, a few other photo opportunities with Warthog, Red-billed Oxpecker, Lilac-breasted Roller, Striped Kingfisher, Fish Eagle and others.

By 11am we returned to camp for brunch, then settling into the usual rhythm of these photography trips: download and backup photos and video, charge camera batteries and clear memory cards to get ready for the next session. “Siesta time” was spent processing photos instead of resting.

At 4pm we went for “high tea” before starting out at 4:30pm for our afternoon drive. We spent some time trying (wholly unsuccessfully in my case) to photograph Carmine Bee-eaters in flight. After spending a while watching Pied Kingfishers hover, fish and fight, we proceeded to find a beautiful male lion, lying in the grass, looking interested.

Soon, he got up and started walking with intent. When we looked around, we saw a lioness approaching enthusiastically from behind. They met up and he started following her.

She made him work hard for it, but eventually he caught up and the relationship was consummated.

Returning back to camp after sunset, we stopped briefly to watch hippo’s emerge from their pool.

Reflecting on the day, even though we did not find the Painted Wolves, it had been almost too good to be true, an amazing experience. Throughout the day, Ryder and Zuma had managed to get us the most amazing sightings and Grant had made the occasional invaluable comment, helping us to get great photos and video.

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Kruger National Park Day 10

Link to Day 9

Our last morning in the Park brought relief after the previous day’s heat. This clearly revived the predators, who were out and about.

Our first sighting of the morning was a Hyena family

While we sat watching them, Hennie got word of a pack of Wild Dogs nearby. We immediately abandoned the hyenas and set course for the Wild Dogs. We arrived to find a pack of thirteen of them jogging along the road and fooling around with one another.

Clearly someone had lost a cap and they were using it for a game of tug.

Things soon turned serious and they started hunting.

Their first attempt was unsuccessful, but this did not deter them. It was fascinating to see the teamwork involved, some flushing the impala out, while others did the takedown. Their second attempt was successfull, but due to the gruesome nature of the photos, covered in a separate post, linked here, not for sensitive viewers.

The impala was devoured within three minutes. Even the dog with a sore leg, who had surely not been of great value in the hunt, managed to eat its fill.

In the meantime, vultures started arriving to see whether there would be anything left for them.

While all of this was taking place, a Tawny Eagle also arrived on the scene

A Drongo took exception to the Eagle’s presence

After leaving the Wild Dogs, I had another opportunity to photograph an Oxpecker, this time cleaning a rhino’s nose

A stop at Lake Panic gave us opportunity to watch a Malachite Kingfisher and a Squacco Heron fishing.

Then it was time to pack up and leave for the airport.

On the way there, we still had one last surprise: a leopard trying (unsuccessfully in the time we had there) to crack a tortoise’s shell

Thus ended our week in Kruger National Park with our excellent hosts and guides, Bernhard and Hennie of B1 Photo Safaris

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Kruger National Park – Day 2

Kruger National Park Day 1 can be found here

Hennie and Bernhard of B1 Photo Safaris picked us up at 06h30, to go looking for Wild Dogs, but we only found vultures in the location where the Wild Dogs had been seen earlier.

Along the way we also saw some Hornbills

and Nyala

The bird sightings continued with a Brown Hooded Kingfisher and a rare sighting of a Verreaux Eagle-Owl sitting out in the open.

Then it was time to move on from Skukuza to Satara, with some great sightings along the way. First was a Giant Plated Lizard and a few metres away a Rock Monitor.

We also found a lion sleeping in the middle of the road, some giraffes, elephants, steenbok and many impala

But the most exciting of the day, was a leopard which we nearly missed because it was lying partially hidden under a bush. When we stopped, it got up and crossed the road right in front of us.

Just before arriving at Satara, Bernhard got news that the unique white lion, which lives in the area, had been seen just north of the camp. Arriving at the sighting, there was the expected traffic jam, everybody wanting to see the lion, with the lion fast asleep next to its brother, ignoring the cars and people.

We decided to check in to our accommodation first and then went back for a second look. He was still quite lazy, but at least lifted his head, yawned and then got up to move a few metres before lying down again, giving us some opportunities for photos.

The day ended with a beautiful sunset.