Monday, July 4, 2016

7/4 -- Lions Eat Dinner, We Fly to Johannesburg

We had our last Thornybush adventure today. We headed out to an area of the preserve we hadn't seen yet, and there weren't that many animals to see though we did encounter a lot of birds as well as a hyena den, and a group of hippos. I was thinking that Liam would not be able to top yesterday's adventures when we got word that several lions had brought down a wildebeast and were enjoying the result, so we took off to watch. The photos are pretty graphic and I will only post a few to avoid upsetting viewer sensitivities, and will alert you to when they start (at the end) so you can choose to skip them.

After our morning drive, it was time for breakfast and leaving Thornybush. We flew back to Johannesburg and tomorrow, we will start the main part of our trip. It is likely that we will be without internet access until 7/17, so look for a massive update then.

The road to the hyena den was pretty challenging, and I have to say I am impressed with Liam's ability to backup safely on narrow, twisty roads with steep drop offs. It was another of our E-Ticket rides. (You older folks will remember the Disney A thru E tickets. Please explain to the rest...) Most of the serious-looking dens have been built by aardvarks (South African anteaters) who are such fast diggers, they have been known to escape predators by digging a deep hole in a hurry. These dens are later taken over by others, like wart hogs and hyenas. We did not see any hyenas at all, and no one seemed too keen to throw in a rock or two to see if they were home.

Hyena den -- built by an aardvark
Above and below: African Eagles (sort of appropo considering
this was July 4...)


Storks

Vulture

African Eagle with nearby mountains in the background.
Hippos are especially threatened during the drought because so many of the watering holes are getting too shallow for them to use. An enclosure was built to allow the rangers to capture and hold hippos safely until they could be transported to a place with water where the hippos had previously died out.



As we have been driving around the last few days, we occasionally saw small animals darting across the road and were told they were dwarf mongooses -- they are snake hunters. Remember Rikki-Tikki-Tavi? They were so fast, however, that there was no hope of actually photographing one, until today. Three of them appeared and then dived into their burrows. While we watched, one ran back out again. A few moment later, a more timid fellow peaked out and Jim got a couple shots of him, below.



Yellow-billed egret

Two sleepy hippos

Some sort of stork, we think

Nile crocodile
Three photos of white rhinos. Liam explained the differences between black and white rhinos, but we only saw white ones. Black ones are smaller, have smaller heads, and carry their heads higher. Rhino poaching is a big problem. In fact a road we had planned to take today was blocked by the investigation of a poached rhino. One theory was that rangers would cut off the horns, which are all the poachers are after, but then they discovered that the poachers kill the hornless ones too so that they don't waste their time tracking one that no longer has a horn.


Some of the lion photos do not show them feeding on their kill.


The rest of the photos on this page are more graphic. There are no more photos or text on other topics past this point.
Initially, all four lions took part in eating, but after they started
to get full, they backed off. This apparently is a lower-ranking
female making up for lost opportunities.

Mostly, her eyes were closed as she pulled off pieces of the
wildebeast.

One of the other lions joined this female. At first, it looked like they would fight over it, but then the newcomer  laid  her head down on the carcass.











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