A mother's devotion

Here we go: my first photographic story after my return to blogging!

In January of 2018, we headed to one of our favourite safari destinations: The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. This is where a great deal of our time in the bush is spent, and we have been making a tradition of returning every summer for the past few years.

This specific sighting unfolded in the perennial Auob riverbed, not too far south of the Mata-Mata campsite. After spending the better part of the morning with a large pride of lions who had occupied the Craig Lockhart waterhole, we came across this sight:

A springbok ewe had given birth, one of the first fawns dropping in this year's summer! Still frail and weak, the fawn was not able to get up yet. The mother was grazing close by, and eventually moved in closer to give some encouragement to get up. My little daughter of nearly 7 years old, who was in the vehicle with us, was very excited by seeing this for the very first time.

The little fawn did not even seem to want to try to get up. There were a couple of black-backed jackals milling about, and they are very opportunistic, eager to grab any easy meal. The next few minutes would determine whether this little springbok had a chance to live.

Mom would meander away and graze to divert attention away from the fawn when she saw the jackals watching from a distance. Every so often she would return to try and nudge it into action.

It did not take long for the jackals to notice that the little fawn was not making much effort to get up and start walking...and so the game of cat and mouse began...

The first jackal approached from behind the mother, and she turned to face him!

She was not going to let these scoundrels take her baby without a valiant fight...

The jackals were very sneaky, though, and it was apparent that they had a strategy to "outfox" (excuse the pun) the mother of the little one. While she was fending off once jackal, another would come from behind and grab the fawn.

But mom was doing her best to fight for her little fawn. She charged in again, and forced this jackal to also drop his bounty and scoot away...

The drama kept unfolding. With mom's attention now on the newest attacker, another subversive scavenger could sneak in from a different angle and try its luck...

Mom noticed, and gave a valiant chase...but alas, this was the end of the line. Just as she was catching up on the newest thief, the jackal dove into a thorny shrub to start consuming his prize. We surmised the fawn had succumbed at the bite of the first jackal already.

Needless to say the vehicle was silent for a while, and then my daughter burst into tears. She is not a fan of black-backed jackals to this day!

Let me know what you think. Not the nicest story, but part of the drama of being on safari for sure.

Morkel Erasmus

The Nutcracker Badger

It's 6 January 2016...early in the morning.

The sun has just risen, and we spent its rising with a lioness close to the Rooiputs waterhole in the Kalahari desert, more specifically, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park that straddles the borders of South Africa and Botswana.

South Africa is experiencing a heat wave of sweaty proportions - normal summer temperatures here average around 45C, and this week it's been up to 54C most days...in the shade. As we drove out of camp it was already 26C, pre-dawn.

Suddenly I spot a dark shape moving purposefully along the dry Nossob riverbed.

Honey Badger!! If you don't know what honey badgers are, they are pretty much the roughest, toughest buggers in the African bush.

This video might enlighten you...

Anyhow, finding a honey badger on a trip to the Kalahari is a special treat, and this early in the morning! We follow him as he scrounges around, digging for grub in the loose Kalahari sand.

"Nothing here..."

"How about here? I smell something!"

Promptly the badger dug up a small leopard tortoise! Right next to our vehicle (and we were the only people there).

The prey in itself brought its own set of challenges - how to break through the shell?

A tough nut to crack...

What followed is a lengthy process of the dexterous badger working his prey until he was able to pierce the shell of the tortoise, and get to the good stuff inside. Yes, it's sad for the tortoise, but it's the circle of life and it was fascinating to get to watch this "nutcracker" at work.

Suffice to say that the badger eventually got through the carapace of the tortoise.

That wasn't the end of the morning's activity, though!
As we are watching the badger feeding, my wife notices that there are two lionesses and two lion cubs walking by behind the badger...talk about a Kalahari double whammy!

Let's leave the lions for another day - as they kept us busy for the rest of the morning.
I hope you enjoyed seeing these photos!
We have some video too - might edit and release it soon.

Keep well...

Morkel Erasmus

A day spent with a Lion Creche

Every now and again, you find yourself having a day on safari that seems hard to top.

The 11th of December, 2014, was one such a day. My wife and I were on a quick safari to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park that straddles South Africa and Botswana. If you've been following my photography for a while, you'd know it's a destination that's on my travel list most years.

After having a fairly quiet trip thus far when it came to big cat sightings (yet a trip to the Kalahari is always special and unique in its own right), we struck gold that day. It was all lions for us on this day.

It started with us being roared from our sleep at 3am in the morning while staying in the Urikaruus Wilderness Camp, and seeing those same lions drink from the camp waterhole later as the sun rose (see the photo HERE).


When it looked like this pride of 8 lions was going to flop down for the rest of the day like lions do, we headed north to the 13th Borehole waterhole to see what was going on there.

There then found a gorgeous-looking male lion and a lioness, having just drunk their fill from the waterhole, mating right next to our vehicle! To see images of that sighting, and that particular male, check out THIS POST.

This post, however, is about the other members of this particular pride. When the male and female had mated for another round, and their throws of passion died out, I looked across the Auob riverbed and saw this bunch approaching!

This lioness was guarding a creche of 7 cubs of varying ages (we later saw that she was the mother of the eldest bunch of cubs), and she was marching them to the water at a pace!

The cubs spent quite some time drinking and playing around the waterhole...

Nikon D810  |  Nikkor 400mm f2.8 VR  |  f8.0  |  1/1000 SS  |  ISO-360

After about 15 minutes the whole bunch moved across the road where we were parked and up into the dunes. We decided to proceed north to Mata Mata as we needed to refuel.

Seeing as we needed to return to Urikaruus anyway, we decided to check up on whether the lions had returned to the waterhole at 13th Borehole when we came back down at around 11am. Sure enough, the whole creche was lying up under a bush right by the waterhole again!

They were going to be there for a while, given the heat and the proximity of water, so we headed back to our camp (about 10km from there) to have some lunch and a quick rest. The plan was to get back to this spot by around 14h00 and see what they would do for the afternoon.

Upon our return they were still lazing about - but the incoming storm caused the temperatures to drop and the light to go nice and soft, which turned out great from a photographic point of view.

Nikon D810  |  Nikkor 400mm f2.8 VR  |  f6.3  |  1/1000 SS  |  ISO-720

The lions had some shade - we didn't!

At one point the smaller cubs began playing around in one of the camelthorn trees close to the waterhole...

Nikon D810  |  Nikkor 400mm f2.8 VR  |  f4.0  |  1/1000 SS  |  ISO-1100

Afterwards, a couple of the cubs tucked into the female for a bit of milk - and she certainly wasn't having a great time between their sharp claws and fangs!

The weather was turning ominous pretty fast, and I had a feeling the lion creche would be on the move soon...

Nikon D3s  |  Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8  |  f5.6  |  1/400 SS  |  ISO-360

Sure enough, all of them got up and moved down to the waterhole again...

Nikon D810  |  Nikkor 400mm f2.8 VR  |  f5.6  |  1/1000 SS  |  ISO-640

...filling their bellies with life-giving water...

The lioness then moved back across the Auob. Seeing that they seemed to have come down from the dunes on the Namibian side I concluded that they would head back there (their place of shelter) when the storm came in.

The cubs played around for a few more moments, and then followed after her.

Nikon D810  |  Nikkor 400mm f2.8 VR  |  f5.6  |  1/800 SS  |  ISO-560

We drove around to the main road leading over the Auob riverbank heading back north to intercept their approach as they made their way back up the dunes.

Nikon D800  |  Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 VR-II @ 180mm  |  f5.6  |  1/1250 SS  |  ISO-1800

As they moved away, we reflected on the special time we had with these 7 cubs and the lioness that took care of them. For the most part of the day, except for the morning session which was shared by about 10 vehicles, we had them all to ourselves because we stuck it out in the heat and spent time with them when everyone else was trying to relax in the uncomfortable hours of the afternoon.

It's worth putting the time in with wildlife photography! I always say - keep what you have.
Too often people see an animal, decide that it's too static for them, and move on in search of the next sighting...when much can be achieved by simply sitting, observing, waiting, and merely enjoying it for what it is - a privilege!

Morkel Erasmus

The leopard photo that was 7 years in the making

Leopards and I have a funny relationship.
I've had to exert quite some patience to obtain photos of them - like on THIS occasion in the Kruger National Park.

But this post is not about a Kruger leopard.

Ever since visiting the Kalahari for the first time in 14 years back in 2009, I had a strong desire to see and photograph the elusive leopards living in this harsh environment.

For some people, these leopard sightings in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park come like flies to dung...you see them posting trip reports on forums or sightings photos on social media and it's just leopards left, right and centre...but not for me.

It took me 8 trips in 6 years to even SEE my first leopard. And that was a very fleeting sighting of a male leopard drinking from the camp waterhole at Urikaruus under the floodlight in December 2014. We narrowly missed a good sighting of a mother and cub the following day (arriving at that specific waterhole literally 5 minutes too late).

So you can imagine that it became quite the photographic obsession for me.

On our recent safari to the Kalahari, the "streak" was firmly broken as we had 4 good leopard sightings. The photos were not spectacular, but being able to at least spend time with the felines that had eluded me successfully over 9 separate trips to this place (in 7 years), was very satisfying and fulfilling in the end.

This was the first one - the one that broke the drought for me.
I had seen that a leopard sighting was pinned on the sightings board at Twee Rivieren rest camp, quite some distance up the Auob river. We decided to go scan that area for our afternoon drive. Seeing as the temperature was upwards of 50 degrees Celcius, leaving early on an afternoon drive to take advantage of the vehicle air-conditioning needed no motivation within my family...

Don't believe me on the temperature?
Check this out (note the time on the clock!):

Getting back to the story...

We drove up towards the Montrose waterhole where the leopard had been spotted in the morning. We hadn't spoken to anyone who'd physically seen it so we just looked into every nook and cranny of the calcrete ridge on the left and in the trees and riverbed on the right.

Suddenly, as we drove into a small loop road there she was! She scuttled out of a small shrub (where I would have never thought to look as it was so dense and thorny) as my vehicle came around the shrub.

Nikon D4s  |  Nikkor 400mm f2.8G VR  |  f4.5  |  1/1250 SS  |  ISO-640

I was able to create a few frames as she lay down in the shade of the tree, before crossing the road and climbing up to the calcrete ridges.

Once she lay down among the calcrete, the camouflage was amazing. If you are ambling along on a game drive, even at a low speed of say 20km/h, would you spot her here??

Even when she started walking along against the backdrop of this rocky ridge - she was pretty well camouflaged! How many people have driven right past leopards on these ridges so distinct to the Kalahari? Many, and I'm sure I have on my past trips as well. Even while we were sitting watching the leopard (with only her head visible), another vehicle came past us, gave a quick look, and drove off before we could tell them that there was a leopard!

What's the take-home message for all you avid nature photographers?

Everyone's got that one elusive shot or species that haunts you - your Achilles' heel.
The only way to get the monkey off your back - is to go back time and time again to the place where you have the highest probability of getting the sighting and/or the shot, and have patience to sit it out when you're there, and the fortitude of mind to resolve yourself to the next time if it doesn't work out at that particular time. Don't give up!!

This leopard photo was 7 years in the making!

Until next time...

Morkel Erasmus

Close Call

Well folks, to say it's been a hectic busy month would be an understatement. Just look at the time span between this post and my previous post? The outrage!

Anyway - this is a quick recap of our last morning in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in December 2013...

Since we would be leaving the park on this day, I left Twee Rivieren early for a quick drive up the Nossob river towards Kij Kij and back, while my wife and kids slept in a bit and packed the rest of the small stuff in the chalet.

I found lions at Rooiputs waterhole - a small pride consisting of a lioness and 4 juveniles (males and a female). The lioness looked like she was nurturing a few wounds, no doubt picked up in a recent scrap. They looked fairly relaxed at the outset...but it was about to change...

Just as they were about to drink again, I spotted a big male lion approaching from further up the Nossob riverbed. 

I initially thought he might be this pride's male returning from his nightly patrol...but as soon as these lions at the waterhole caught scent/sound of the approaching male - they went into panic mode!

The lioness sprang to her feet and rushed up and scooted south in the riverbed (in the direction I came from), running at brisk pace to get away before being noticed by the approaching male. 

The cubs followed suit...and I could somewhat piece together what had probably happened that night. He was definitly not their pride male!

This male must have been on their tracks for a while, he might even have been responsible for the gash on the lioness hind leg...why? Who knows - perhaps because it's his region and they are not his cubs? The lion family disappeared from view just as the male caught their scent - he knew something was up...

He moved around the area for a while before finally having the drink he came for, and moving into the dunes...

This was one of those sightings that didn't deliver any outstanding photographs, but it was a very memorable moment of natural history and lion behaviour that I was able to witness. The dynamics between different prids of lions is always full of tension and drama, and this morning I think the lioness and her family came off the better for it. It also leaves some questions...

Why were they alone and without a pride male?
Why were they afraid of this specific male?
Why was the large male alone, was he a nomad that had been dethroned from his pride?

Nature is fascinating.
The Kalahari is fascinating.
You should make a plan to visit it!

Morkel Erasmus