The Cape to the Kalahari - Part 1 The Mammals

There's not a lot to photograph in Normanby at the moment and even if there was we have had such strong southerly winds it has been difficult to stand upright - roll on winter!  So its time to delve in the archives again with a trip to South Africa which we made in 2007.  The trip fell into roughly 3 areas; the Cape including a pelagic trip, the Karoo and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park - it was  fabulous and once again as is usually the case in Africa the mammals knocked the birds into second place.  So lets start with the cats - in 3 days we had 53 Lions and videoed 3 kills which were definitely very gruesome and not the quick kill I thought they would be.  In each case Kudus or Eland were brought down by female adult Lions but then handed over to usually 5-6 youngsters who were not adept in killing and in one case played with their victim for half an hour before feeding.
A young male Lion

A female handing over an Eland to a youngster

Youngsters awaiting their turn to feed
The mother
Adult male

Black backed Jackals scavenging



The Kalagadi is the best place I have ever been for Lions - far better than Etosha or Kruger and it also gave us our best views of Leopard 



Without these Jackals we would never have seen the Leopard - they were howling and acting very agitated in the middle of the road, we stopped and watched knowing that something was about to happen when the Leopard strolled out in front of our car.

Wildebeests
Brown Hyena -  the evilest  looking creatureGemsbokEland