Our Last Day at Kruger National Park...

Our Kruger National Park visit is winding down here...

 I'm not much of a birder...

 so I'm not going to wow you with the name and history of this gorgeous bird...

...but I did do my best to capture thise beautiful creature in flight!!!

TheChief told me it is a Lilac Breasted Roller...which is what I thought it was...
but when I googled it, the pic was pretty different!

Again, most all of my photos of birds and animals have been cropped in significantly

so you won't be able to enlarge them much...

These lovely flowers were along the walk way back up to our common area for the lodge...

...of course...they were on bushes with all kinds of thorns...

Mother Nature protecting these lovely flowers from the animals no doubt!!!

We saw almost as many Zebra as we did the McDonald's Antelopes!!!

We saw a lot of giraffe...

generally in small groups or singles like this one.

The Wildebeast tended to be a bit shy.

We didn't see very many at a time, usually one or a very small group.

This was the biggest herd of Elephants that we saw...

These little Antelope were usually with a fairly large herd...

This one was bravely enjoying her afternoon solitude!

 Oh!  Excuse me!!!  I didn't mean to disturb you having your afternoon snack!!!

Again...I have no clue what kind of bird this was...but so wonderful to catch them in mid flight!!!

Maybe some of my birder blog friends might know???

Our tracker spotted this Kudu under the tree and had to check it out.

Looking to see what caused the death; actually, looking for evidence of poachers.

If they suspect a poacher has killed an animal, they contact the Park Rangers.

It appeared that this one had eaten something that turned out to be poisonous.

They did not suspect poachers were involved.

African sunsets are pretty darned spectacular...

The lodge knew that it was TheChief's birthday...

so they planned a fabulous surprise!!!

We had invited our game drive mates to join us for dinner, and when we got to the common area

we were surprised with this lovely setting!!!

Nice way to celebrate a birthday and the end of our beautiful visit here in Singita, 

at Kruger National Park!!!

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and Wild Bird Wednesday!!!

Our Little Corner of the World...with More of Kruger!!!

Ohhh...the animals!!!

We saw so many...

I can't stop posting!!!

Notice the wound on this guy's right haunch?

He was attacked by a lion...

...yep...

...he's a SURVIVOR!!!

Apparently, the lions will attack the rear of the Zebra...

...and the Zebra will kick both legs back repeatedly to fend the lion off.

Zebras often succumb to these attacks...

...but not this guy!  He's a tough one!

 

We came up on this small pond of water...

the guide pointed out this big guy...

and mentioned that there was a crocodile in the pond with him!

We weren't very close to the pond...

so the guide offered to take my camera up closer to the water...

The hippo saw him and started to move toward the edge of the water...

...never saw that guide scramble so fast back to the jeep!!!

Kudu are pretty impressive animals!

The guide told us that these antelope are like McDonald's in the US.

They're on every corner and everybody eats them...

...yep...

he really said that!!!

I had to remark that not everyone eats McDonald's  (as in me!)!!!

A Female Kudu...

Does anyone else hear the Baby Elephant Walk theme from Hatari?

Where're Red Buttons and Elsa Martinelli???

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Our Little Corner of the World...Still Visiting Kruger National Park!!!

We saw a fair number of these guys...

but since they kind of give me the willys...I wasn't all that keen on 

recording them for all eternity!!!

 Now this next shot is of the lagoon just below our lodge room...

 ...it's pretty isn't it?

Lot's of rocks...

...or are they???

 Notice anything a little different about the "rocks" in the middle of the lagoon and towards the back???

If this was a video...you might see their ears twitching!!!

Yep!!!

Hippos!!!

I'm sorry to say, if you try to enlarge the pics to see them more clearly, 

I've already cropped in so you won't get much magnification.

I only saw one out of the water, and it was in silhouette, at the tail end of twilight
just entering the water on the left side of the lagoon.

But we heard them!!!

They make an odd sound...it was really quite nice hearing them!

Our Tracker Daniel spotted this lady resting in a tree above the road we were on...

...she got down and ambled along...

...not too concerned that we were there!

This is where my lens envy over that guy's lens in the previous post came into play!!!

He had a 600mm lens...I had a 24-120mm lens...(but it's a nice one!)

...so yeah...I cropped in again!!!

This is where a good quality camera and lens shine...

I may not have been able to get a close photo of this beauty...

...but I could really crop in tight and maintain the quality!!!

Isn't she regal???

Unfortunately...the only lions we saw were on the road back to our plane on the way out of Kruger.

But I'll save that story for the end of our Kruger experience!!!

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Our Little Corner of the World...visiting Kruger National Park!!!

Sooo...in my last post I mentioned that our granddaughter Addison

asked Grandpa to take lots of pictures of giraffe...

...remember?

While in the wilds of Africa, TheChief Grandpa got this in his email...

(for some reason the video isn't working...gotta work on that!

In the meantime, she said...."Send more el-phant pictures"!)

...sooo...

guess what we shot a lot of!!!

Notice the structure on the side of the hill behind the elephant twins?

That's our lodge!

I loved how they drank their water in tandem!!!

Our guide would often stop the vehicle and turn and talk to us

about what we've just seen, or a bit of history!

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