Ticks on the hoof

With the onset of summer and after the good rains the ticks at Addo started to flourish and it did not take long for the game to be invested with these parasites. But one animal's misery is another's opportunity. 

This warthog stood around contentedly for ages, while the Cape Glossy Starlings picked away at the ticks that covered his body. They provided a feast for these enterprising birds.

Skywatch Friday - Bleak skies and hadedas

It was a bleak afternoon at Addo, when I came across this hadeda ibis sitting on the branch of a dead tree. They are very common in this part of the world and very noisy when they take off and let rip with their raucous cry.

Visit Skywatch for more great skies from around the world.

Flower power - Gazania

Gazanias occur naturally throughout the Eastern Cape and put on a glorious show at this time of the year - when the sun is shining.

Felis leo - the king

Coming across lions in the wild is always a thrill. I don't know what it is. Maybe its their size or their raw power, or the fact that they are just plain dangerous. But whatever it is these big cats do have a certain aura about them.

There are nine of them in the Addo Elephant National Park and if you know more or less where they hang out, you may just see them. But they spend about sixteen hours of the day sleeping or just lying about and if they are in the thick bush you will never find them.

This is one of two young males that lives in the Southern part of the Park that happened to be walking along the road we were driving along. On this occassion he was on a mission. The sighting was a fleeting before he and his brother disappeared into the thick bush.

Flower power - Morning glory

I arrived at the conclusion a while back that I needed to change the way I photographed flowers, because I felt I was missing something. Flower pictures are good and I will still capture them in the conventional way, when I want a botanical record. But what do you have to do to capture the essence or soul of a flower?  How do you bring in the wow factor - this is what I will be exploring in my latest series "Flower power."