A selection of images from my safari to the Cape
Below are a few pix from the Cape area of South Africa. They were all taken in mid-September (Springtime).
Strangely,
they are mostly of animals and plants.
Click on a thumbnail to browse, or just scroll through the whole lot. There are 23 images
altogether in this gallery.
I did see other wildlife, such as jackals, springbok, blessbok, giraffes, wildebeest, oryx and a mongoose,
but (to put it delicately) they weren't as "pleasing" as these.
Images 4 to 11 were taken on trips with GRS Tours and images 12 to 23 were taken at
the Shamwari Game Reserve
near Port Elizabeth. Sorry, but they do take a while to download.
Scroll down from here for the full Cape safari
Our first day in Cape Town was very sunny and we took the revolving cable car up to the top of Table Mountain.
There we saw some rock hyraxes also known as dassies.
It was very windy. Several of the dassies were huddled together on the exposed rocks, very close to the observation platform below the restaurant.
Rock hyraxes are usually very friendly, especially when food is around
(but feeding them is prohibited on Table Mountain).
Strangely, their closest living relative is the elephant
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Here is a sunny shot of Table Mountain from the gardens of the very pleasant Villa Belmonte, which is in the Oranjezicht district, not far from the lower cable car station.
The upper cable car station can be seen stcking up to the right of centre.
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This is an unusual view of the Tablecloth. It is taken from the same spot as above on a sunny day when clouds were covering the summit
Normally, photgraphs of the Tablecloth show the entire vista of Table Mountain as viewed from the waterfront area.
Although these two views are rather remiss in that they do not show all of the table/cloth,
I do like the trees which frame the edges.
The top of the mountain is about 3,500 feet above sea-level
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It is unusual to see an ostrich near to the sea,
as they are normally creatures of desert or semi arid areas. This one was near (but not near enough) to the Cape of Good Hope carpark
I took this through the coach window so it isn't brilliantly sharp but, unfortunately,that was my only option.
There were several females and one male in the vicinity.
Ostriches have only two toes and are the fastest creature on two legs. Luckily, these ones were busy feeding and didn't need to demonstate their speed.
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There were many red-winged starlings at both Table Mountain and here at Cape Point, especially around the restaurants.
Their red wings show up well as they fly, but aren't very conspicuous when they settle.
This one had parked itself on a car bonnet and allowed me to walk up to within 5 feet of it.
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Penguins thrive along the coast of South Africa because of the cold currents sweeping up from the Antarctic.
These african penguns are sometimes called jackass penguins due to their noisy braying.
I believe that penguns have only nested here at Boulders Beach near Simon's Town since 1983.
Since then, they have become an enormous tourist attraction.
The one on the right looks to me as though he/she is making use of a natural walking stick or skiing pole...but that's just an illusion.
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This yellow pincushion protea bush is part of the
unique fynbos (literally meaning finebush) flora of the Cape, which constitutes a separate Kingdom of its own.
The yellow really shines out when the sun is behind it.
The only disappointment here,
was that we didn't see very many of the extremely colourful sunbirds that feed on the nectar...and those we did see were generally the duller females
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The King Protea is a very beautiful flower and the national flower of South Africa.
We saw this one at the Harold Porter Botanic Gardens between Cape Town and Hermanus.
These gardens were much smaller than the famous Kirstenbosch, but they were very impressively laid out.
I used fill-in flah for this shot,which is why the background comes out so dark
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This is another protea from the Harold Porter Botanic Gardens.
It is the same basic variety as the yellow pincushion protea bush further up this page. I again used flash for this photo.
The Harold Porter Gardens were well worth at least an hour's visit.
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Whilst driving back from Hermanus we stopped in a layby along the Sir Lowry Pass. Here there were a small family group of chacma baboons.
They were waitng around there for "suitable opportunities".
The young ones tried to explore, whilst their parents feigned an interest in finding food from the grass verge.
However, when an unwary driver pulled into the lay-by, they reverted to hunting mode. A couple of them would sneak up to back door of the vehicle and when nobody was watching,
they would (quite effortlessly)open the door, grab any food from the back seat and retreat at great speed, before the occupant could intervene...
indeed, several occupants fled the other way when they realised that their car was being invaded.
Baboons are extremely dangerous animals, when food is at stake. Their canine teeth are enormous; making them much like lions with hands.
Sometimes a stone was thrown in the direction of the fleeing miscreants, but it rarely came close!
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We visited Spier Wine Village near Stellenbosch to see the Outreach programme run by the Cheetah Conservation Fund
All the cheetahs at CCF were orphans. This one is "Shadow" and he was about 9 years old.
None could be released back into the wild as their mothers had been killed before the cubs had been old enough to learn
the basics of hunting. They would have, therefore, ended up hunting easy targets, like domestic animals...and would have quickly been shot.
For a small donation, we could go into the pens and stroke one of the cheetahs... but only whilst it was sprawled out, digesting its dinner.
Cheetahs are not particulary dangerous to humans, unless cornered. They are built for running down their prey (mainly small gazelles and antelope) in short, high speed sprints.
Any injuries caused during a fight, could seriously hamper their sprinting ability, so their first instinct is to run away if they can.
Wild cheetahs are the fastest land animals, reaching speeds of around 60mph, but they can only sprint for a few hundred yards.
Unlike other cats, they cannot retract their claws, which help them to maintain their footing during high speed chases.
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The remaining photos are from the Shamwari Private Game Reserve.
Animals and plants have been introduced onto former farmland so that it now loosely resembles the flora and fauna of the Cape before the settlers arrived in the 1820's.
This shot was taken with a wide angle lens,
so the lion looks a lot smaller and a lot further away than it really appeared at the time. The rest of the pride are behind the green bushes on the right.
There were some occasions when a lion came so close and with such a determined look in its eyes that we really thought that it was going to jump up into the back seat of our Land Rover.
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The lions had come from Etosha, in Namibia, and were amongst the biggest that I have ever seen.
This old male was still in charge of one of the prides, but was thought to be nearing the end of his reign.
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It was late afternoon and the pride decided to go and eye-up prospective lunch items.
They were a bit half-hearted about it and didn't ever look as though they were going to catch anything...
but we followed for a while.
It is quite difficult to take photos whilst the Land Rover is bumping along over the rough terrain,
so this shot was snapped when we stopped for a few moments, to give the lions time to move on.
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The next morning, we came across a family of white rhinos.
These are the same colour a black rhinos (often "muddy"), the difference being in their diet.
White rhinos graze the grass and have a wide lip, like a lawnmower ("white" was in fact a misunderstanding of the afrikaans word for wide).
Black rhinos, on the other hand, browse on bushes and have a pointed lip.
Rhinos, like elephants,are pachyderms or "thick skinned" animals.
However, their skin is still very sensitive to parasites and sunburn, which is why they regularly wallow in mud and also coat themselves with dust.
These three rhinos pottered about around our vehicle, hardly noticing that we were there.
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Here is a better shot of the calf.
Rhinos are relatively rare outside of protected game parks because their horns have been ruthlessly poached. Although, only made of something similar to matted hair, the horns are more valuable than gold in some parts of the world.
Note also the black angular blob, in the grass between the two rhinos. This is a fork-tailed drongo.
Drongos hunt the insects that are disturbed by large grazing animals, like rhinos.
If the rhino stops moving for too long, these birds get very impatient and start a very screeching song.
This irritates the rhino sufficiently so that it moves on just to keep the bird quiet.
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This version of Burchell's zebra is alternatively known as Chapman's zebra. Note the shadow stripes, particularly at the rear.
These look much browner than the main markings. In fact, about 10% of Chapman's zebras actually have brown and white stripes all over.
This one was part of a small family group, although we did see larger herds in other parts of the reserve. Zebras look very spectacular in bright sunlight, alas not here...
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There were several small herds of red hartebeest in Shamwari.
This male remained on guard at the rear, whilst his smaller females retreated into the bushes.
The lighting is rather flat, but we can see the distinctive heart-shaped horns.
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Just to prove that I don't always produce simple record shots....
There aren't many hippos in Shamwari, unless you go on the walking trails. This was the only one that we saw...and for over half an hour all we did see was his nostrils rising just above and then sinking back below the water's surface.
Then he became aware of our presence and, to demonstrate his annoyance and his ownership of the waterhole, he hurled his huge body up out of the water...
and then Splash!...
Huge ripples around his head.
The original photo was a very flat, monotonic grey, so I converted it to a litho 2-bit black and white, which looks a little more dramatic.
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Leopards and cheetahs haven't done very well in Shamwari,
as the lions dominate and have largely killed off anything that might be a competitor.
There were only two leopards remaining. This female was known to be unconcerned by humans in Land Rovers, unlike the larger male, who was hardly ever seen.
We spent the whole game drive finding and following this friendly female. For much of the time she hid amongst the bushes. However, as sunset approached, she came out, down to the river to drink
and then wandered purposefully along the dirt tracks and into the bushes.
Our excellent guide, Frans, seemed to be in telepathic communication with her, even though he had not seen her for some weeks. Whenever she disappeared into the vegetation,
he drove us further down the track and placed the Land Rover within yards of where she next appeared.
I couldn't avoid the out of focus car parts eclipsing her foot.
It was by now twilight and I needed to rest my elbows on the vehicle,
as the exposure was 1/13 th second, aperture f3.5
.
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Leopards are always very elusive, so it's nice to get the opportunity of seeing and photgraphing one at all...
let alone one so close, especially as she was thought to be pregnant.
I tried panning this shot as she moved off. I quite like the moving effect and yet some of the "spots" or blotches on her coat are still reasonably sharp.
The exposure was one tenth of a second at f3.5.
I have lightened the head section a little, which has reduced the dramatic lighting, compared to the image above
.
However, it has shifted the centre of attention more towards the head end of the animal, rather than to her more than shapely posterior
!
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We came across a small family of elephants late in the afternoon.
The lighting was very low-level and flat. We stopped amongst them as they browsed on the very prickly acacia bushes, mostly giving us wonderful views of the rear ends.
After a while, they began to move off towards the denser forest. Our driver positioned us so that the elephants had to walk close by our vehicle, but photography was difficult due to the subject movement.
I took this shot when these two stopped for a few moments on the track. Baby elephants are usually small enough to fit under their mothers whilst they are suckling, so perhaps this one was a bit beyond that, or else this is his auntie.
The exposure was 1/30 th second at f3.5
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The next day we encountered a large herd of over 50 elephants by the hippo waterhole, including a couple of very young calves.
Splash, the resident hippo kept well out of the way whilst the elephants were there.
At one stage we were nearly surrounded and had to retreat at speed and in reverse, but after most had finished drinking we returned.
This youngish female was the rearguard and wasn't quite sure whether she should see us off or just stand there, snort and flap her ears at us.
Luckily she settled for the latter.
Female elephants have a pointed or pyramidal bump on their heads, whereas males have a domed or rounded head. (Indian elephants by contrast have a double-domed head)
I hope that you have enjoyed this selection of my holiday snaps.
You may be interested in seeing some more South African photos at my most recent pix site (no narrative, but the highlights include some hunting dogs and the rarely seen aardwolf!) at
pbase.com. Alternatively, why not
look at some of the other Ealing and Hampshire House PhotoSoc website galleries?
Please note that all images displayed on this site are ©Robbie Hildred 2005. All rights reseved.
Please refer to the very boring bits on my my home page.
Thank you.
