January 6, 2013

Horsing around!

These Zebras entertained us for nearly an hour yesterday in the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park.

We stopped next to a small pond in the quarry to photograph birds.

It wasn't long before the Zebras made an entrance. They did not mind us at all.

They were running in circles chasing, biting and occasionally kicking one another.

After a relaxed drink of water from the pond  next to our car, the fun would start all over again!

I doubt that it was serious - it really looked as if they were fooling around.

I have often watched Zebras, but never seen them at play.

If you click on the first photo, a slide show will open. 

This will allow you to view all the other photos by using your right arrow key. 

Unfortunately I had to reduce the size of the photos quite drastically because there are so many.

 The one on the left is asking whether you enjoyed the photos as much as I did taking them!?

January 5, 2013

  Today was our first visit to the Hluhluwe Imfolozi Park for this year.

Although the grass is very tall, we had a wonderful day - stopping for ages in one 

spot to watch nature 'crawl out of the woodwork'

I just love Giraffe faces, and while trying to get a nice shot of this one

 it lowered its head and picked a photo prop in the form of a string of hearts!

This first week of 2013 has been a very 'hearty' week indeed.

It would have been a lot more hearty if we had been able to see the mating Lion couple.

Apparently we missed them by 20 minutes. They moved off the road and into the long grass. 

All we could see through the grass was the occasional scuffle, the whip of a tail or the lift of a head,

but the spine-chilling sounds will never be forgotten!

As I mentioned before, after fires ripped through the park, I decided to take a photo at this spot on every visit - to mark not only the recovery but also the changes during the seasons.

The scene has not changed much since my last photo posted on 27 December 2012.

The grass is quite tall and we have difficulty spotting animals from the Kia Picanto (my little SUV as I call it!) 

The main road in the Park runs just behind this tree. 

(Click on a photo to enlarge)

If you would like to see the series of photos of this changing scene, 

type atmaggieztree into the "search this blog" facility on the top right corner of this page.

January 4, 2013

Yesterday we picked up beautiful gossamer wings. By co-incidence I later opened a garden magazine an much to my surprise, found an article about Ant Lions. 

The wings were identical to those we had found!

I meant to take photos of the wings today, but I cannot find them ;) 

Last night I saw an Ant Lion high up on the wall in the kitchen, but found it dead this morning.

Although I do not like to take photos of dead creatures, I wanted to take a closer look through 

the lens at the markings on its head. Much to my surprise I found it had a heart between the eyes!

(My post on January 2 was of a Butterfly with a border of hearts on its wings.)

It is hard to associate this beautiful insect with the larva that digs little funnels in sand to trap ants.

As children we used to see who could collect the most by digging in the sand with a twig to get them out. Ugly but intriguing little critters called 'Doodle-bugs' 

Obviously that was looooong before TV, XBox, Wii and Cellphones - we used to play outside ;)