Last day in Kruger

Day Twelve

Our last day in the Kruger national park and we were very brave choosing to go north.
We would stay in the mopane forest knowing that it would be difficult to see animals there but the background is amazing for images with the green and orange.

Elephants are a guaranteed in the mopane thickets they love the stuff but seem to be the only animals there, i know this to not be true and there is just as much to be seen here as other area's plus some special species.

A large bull elephant was the first to animal to appear in the park and he was a bit full of himself

As he approached with a strut we stood our ground and i had a chat with him to let him know we were not afraid (which we were)

our next subject was a buffalo bull who was covered in flies! but he still showed some interest and stood in front of the orange mopane for us.

Curious bull with a face full of flies

Mopane, mopane, mopane!

We stuck to the dirt roads for most of the day trying to get a nice sighting of anything to use with this lovely background. The going was slow but we did find some animals.
Some of the more rare species to see was the Tsesebe, Litchenstein's hartebeest and Eland.

Impala ram with some nice light

Zebras spooked again! probably just the wind. The youngsters are Cute thoug

 decided to take breakfast at a nice picnic spot called mooiplaas.
And had a nice time surrounded by hornbills and arrow marked bablers.

The path leading up to the picnic area

Tom and the guys tucking in

A nice view and some birds hanging around what more do you want

In the Afternoon i lost the guests in the game viewer but again they had all the luck with some baby hyena's at the den and 5 lions! i am happy they got some great sightings.

Some of the stuff i saw.

Rare southern ground hornbill

Beautiful Lilac breasted roller

Sad looking Grey heron

The massive Kori bustard or heaviest flying bird

And the heaviest bird in the world! some ostrich

Now for some mammals.
The Elephants where showing some interesting behavior as where the Hippo's.

Hippo looking a bit intimidating

Bull hippo looking at me

Youngster showing his gums haha

Young bull elephants playing with eachother

Using the concrete slab as a stepping stone! clever boy

Finally a drink!

Large bull with the one large tusk

Bull in the mopane

Large bull with a huge right tusk he broke the left one off

And finally our last sighting with a massive herd of buffalo.
there was around 300 in this herd next to the road and they where swamped with yellow billed ox peckers.

Some bulls fighting behind bushes as usual!

Catching a ride

And these poor buffalo's where getting irritated by their cleaning services. the ox peckers go for any hole and i mean any HOLE!

Voetsek!!(bugger off in Afrikaans )

Get off my face!!

Wildlife photography is all about getting the eye, Thanks Birds

Blocked road

Waiting for the herd to pass

And this was the day of funny looking faces and floppy ears, have a look at some of the images from that as all the animals seemed to shake their heads.

Giraffe shaking his head

Tsesebe shaking as he runs

And the large bull with a ear flop

Well what can i say it was another great day and it feels over all to soon, But we have one more day tomorrow at the rehab centre to see some of the creatures they have there.

I will really miss this group they have been brilliant.
Myself and Tom still have another week left to get some images and working on a project.