SAFFAscapes: Kruger: December 2009 (Part 1)

It's time to catch up on my backlogged trip reports again...

Back in December of 2009, my wife and I took a short break to visit the Kruger National Park. We wanted to avoid the crowds so we opted to head to the far North. With it being rainy season, we knew we were in for lush green bush and migratory birds galore...

Let the photographic journey begin.

We arrived in Orpen (actually we were staying in the Tamboti Tented Camp nearby) late on the Friday afternoon and were just in time to check in and go to Tamboti. The next morning our trip was officially underway.

It was a rainy, overcast day...so I prepared myself to battle for light that morning. After our first sighting of one of my favourite birds, the Woodland Kingfisher, we came across a birding "lifer" for me - a Steppe Buzzard. He was perched so nicely out in the open and posed wonderfully.

We were driving up to Shingwedzi today, which will be our base for the next 2 nights. The road from Orpen to Satara was rather quiet, but it seemed to be a morning for Oxpeckers to strut their stuff.

It wasn't long before I ticked off another "lifer" - a Steppe Eagle this time!

By now the weather had gloomed up even more...and this European Roller wasn't too happy about it...

Shortly before we reached Satara we came across a small dazzle of Zebras. This youngster was quite cute.

He huddled up close to his mother, and I was able to capture some interesting monochrome images using their combined coat patterns as motifs - check these out!

A lone elephant bull was also keen to pose for some portfolio snaps...

We pushed on past Satara and took the popular S100 dirt road, in the hope of finding some big cats...but that was not to be. We did find some young Waterbuck...