Thanks Ken!

Hi Ken - thanks for putting these photos on, they're fantastic.

In case the rest of you are wondering, these are from Ken Boddington's (MSc IS) safari holiday in January 2009. Beats Leicester.

Hipp Hipp o ray at Madikwe

Through the middle of Madikwe runs the Limpopo river and in the Limpopo there are Hippos. You can hear them several hundred yards before reaching the river. These animals are not fish eaters but herbivores leaving the river to feed at night. More people are killed by hippos than any other animal in Africa.

Some of the best Pictures are in the older posts

Some of the best photos are in the older posts section - Meer cats, wild dogs and elephants

Leopards at Phinda Kwazulu Natal South Africa

I was treated to a very special viewing of a leopard whilst at Phinda. The Phinda game reserve until fairly recently was farmland in private ownership. Farmers saw leopards as animals which attacked their stock and would kill them given the opportunity. Indeed outside the reserve that is still the case. Kwazulu natal is has been divided into 5 areas and the government issues one permit for each area to allow leopards to be shot by big game hunters so the leopards are still much under threat. I was told last year one farmer killed to 1 year old cubs and their mother because he thought they were a threat to his live stock. All this has taught leopards to be very wary of man. They are very nervous creatures and are very rarely sighted and when they are the sightings are of a fleeting nature – certainly not long enough to get a photograph.

I was very privileged to go out with a ranger who knew his leopards and he found a leopard in a tree for me which was very unusual. I watched it from the 4 X 4 for about 45 minutes. Since all the Phinda leopards are tagged for the research program here and this leopard was not, it must have broken into the reserve. The ranger believed it was a young female about 18 months old who was about to be allowed to lead a separate life to its mother.

The ranger told me it was the best leopard sighting of his life. I was so fortunate to be there. Whilst at Phinda we saw a leopard every single day which we were told was exceptional.

Lions at Madikwe

Here are some pictures of lions from the largest pride on Madikwe. Madikwe is South Africa’s second largest game reserve and is constantly growing because of the government’s policy of buying up the land of private game reserves and incorporating it into the Madikwe reserve. The lodge operators continue to own and operate the lodges but free from the responsibility of vthe upkeep of animals and the environment they live in. Madikwe is totally malaria free and when I go there I stay at http://madikwe.safari.co.za/mateya-safari-lodge.html which is one of the best in South Africa with a maximum of 10 guests at any one time. The best time to go is either in January when there are plenty of new born animals or September after the rainy season when there are few leaves on the trees and the animals can be seen easily. A visit in September can be combined with a visit to Hermanus to watch the whales.

Back to the lions – Up until the end of 2008 Madikwe had two prides of lions living 40 miles apart. Both prides had cubs and the females of the larger pride saw the cubs of the smaller pride as a threat to their own cubs, The females of the larger pride attacked the smaller pride with the intention of killing the cubs. The female of the smaller pride fiercely defended her cubs and ended up being killed herself. A few weeks later the two young motherless cubs were killed by the females. Here are some photos of the larger pride. The pictures were taken from a 4 x 4 less than 10 m from the animals

Cheetahs at Phinda Game Reserve Kwazulu Natal South Africa

Some more pictures, this time of cheetahs. These show a mother and two cubs.
I watched them attempt to kill a Ngala but they failed. The mother does all the work and cubs stroll around getting into the spirit of the thing but contributing nothing to the kill. Unlike lions cheetahs do not park the kids when hunting. Cheetahs are the fastest of the predators, they do not retract their claws when but use them for walking or running to gain extra leverage on the ground hence their speed. The claws get worn down and so cheetahs cannot climb trees.

Only one in five cubs survive to adulthood. Cheetahs are preyed upon by other predators especially at the time of a kill. The alarm calls of prey being hunted and killed attract them particularly lions and leopards. As a result when a kill is made the cheetah has to eat quickly to avoid becoming a target. That means they only eat the hind quarters, liver and heart.

They are truly beautiful animals.

I took these pictures at a game reserve in Kwazulu Natal called Phinda from a 4 x 4 from about 25 m away.

A Dung beetle's dream come true!

White Rhinos at Tswalu

White rhinos can run many times faster than humans. We thought we might find out if this was the case by attempting to photograph them on foot from behind a tree at a distance of 12m. The results are sown above. We did have a ranger with a rather large gun hiding behind another tree but whether he could have successfully killed all three rhinos is open to doubt.

Lions feasting in the Kalahari

We spotted a lone male lion who had been rejected by a much larger pride and followed him for some time. The ranger informed us a single lion would find it very difficult to survive alone by killing prey and this one had been turned into a scavenger relying on eating from the kills of the main pride when he could. Sure enough the lion knew the pride had made a recent kill and all we had to do was to follow him to find it.

The last photo shows the ejected lion and the one above it him scavenging. Shortly after this the main pride arrived and you can see them feasting on what looks to be an eland. The fourth photo up shows the male of the pride on his way to confront the scavenger. The last photo is one of two cubs playing.

Tswalu Kalahari Cheetahs

The photo above is of a real live cheetah which I photographed from about 4 metres away standing on the ground. It was a really scary experience which required complete trust in the game ranger who said we would probably be OK!

South African Kalahari Desert Meer cats at Tswalu game reserve
I was very privileged to watch some meer cats in the Kalahari desert. We had to be up before dawn and find the meer cat burrows before the sun came up and wait down wind of them. As the sun came up they sniffed the air but did not seem to pay any attention to us even though we were only 3 – 5 meters away. We watched them for about an hour and then had to leave because they have a set foraging routine which we would have disturbed if we had stayed any longer. They are fascinating animals and this particular group are the ones which starred in the BBC programme Meercat Manor

Black Rhinos at Tswalu Game reserve in the Kalahari Desert, South Africa

There are two kinds of rhino called white and black but they are both
coloured white. The white rhinos lived further south than the black and were
discovered first and were called wide rhino on account of the width of their
mouth. Over the years this degraded into white rhino. Then the black rhino
was discovered. It is smaller than the white rhino but has a larger
head. People wanted to distinguish it from the white rhino so they called
it the black rhino even though it was white.

There are about 3000 black rhino's left in the world and are a very
endangered species. Their main predator is man. Poachers ply an
ellicit trade in their horns. A poacher could sell a horn for as much as $250,000.
The black rhino is very agressive and unpradictable.From a stading start it
can move 30m in two seconds. The first two images, one of which features a
rhino calf, were captured on foot by telephoto lens from 400m or roughly
13 seconds from possible death.

The third and fourth photos are of a separate sighting from a land rover
travelling at 25km/hr. The top speed of a rhino is 40 k/hr.

On the Tswalu where these photos were taken they have a very successful
black rhino breeding program. However they have lost a lot of young rhinos
at an early age. The reason was found to be that they were killed by
older bulls who saw them as possible rivals. The number of bulls have been
reduced now and this year they have not lost any young rhinos. Whilst
poaching is not a problem at the moment it is expected to
become one in the future. Twsalu are doubling their security team this
year to combat this problem.

Hi

There are only 500 wild dogs left in the world – down from 3000 a few years ago when distemper struck and reduced the population to its current level. From previously an endangered species it is now a very, very endangered species with a slender chance of survival due to the diminution of their gene pool.

Madikwe Game reserve has two packs of wild dogs one of four dogs and the other of twelve. Last year it was one pack of 16. Last year I followed the 16 dog pack for two hours watching them hunt. They never stop running. This year I was lucky to find the pack of 4 dogs and followed them four about an hour and saw one attempted kill of an impala. Wild dogs have an 85% success rate when it comes to killing against 40% for lions. A pack of 16 would need to kill twice a day because they are so active.

One trick that the larger pack has is to get the prey running really fast and to guide it towards the perimeter fence which it cannot see. The prey runs at top speed into the fence and breaks its neck ready to be eaten by the dogs.

These dogs are seen as vermin by local farmers. A second Madikwe pack of 16 was shot by a farmer who said that they were endangering his livestock (they had yet to kill anything). A call to the reserve would have meant the dogs would have been returned to a part of the reserve remote from the farmer’s land. Instead the farmer chose to shoot all 16 dogs and lay them out on his lawn for the park rangers to collect. How sick are some people! However under South African farmers have the right to shoot anything that might endanger their livestock. One exception is in Kwazulu-natal where farmers have to show a leopard has killed three times before shooting it. Leopard conservationist in that state tag all the leopards they can so they can show whether or not the leopard was at the place stated by the farmer and farmers are now cooperating with the conservationists to check they have identified the right leopard before acting.

Back to the wild dogs – they are beautiful animals as the pictures show.

Hi

Here are some pictures of elephants taken at Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa which is in the Nort of the country close to Botswana. Elephants are a real problem at Madikwe. They have gone from being endangered to being very successful. The reserve can sustain about 600 animals and they have 900. Elephants eat about 2 tonnes of food a day in the form of grass, plants and trees. They uproot whole trees but only uproot part of them. At Kruger Park where they have the same overstocking problem they have carried out a study over 7 years which shows that overstocking has a negative impact on other animals in the park. They have been given permission to cull their stock each year. The effect of culling is being studied over a 5 year period and if it is non detrimental on the environment, culling will be allowed at other parks. Having seen the havoc caused by elephants on tree life I believe overstocking of elephants is not sustainable.

I often have come across elephants caked in mud as some of these are. The elephants do this to control parasites. The parasites are trapped and suffocated by the mud as it dries on the elephant’s skin. The then rubs itself against a tree to get rid of the parasites.