Well our last morning has suddenly come round really quickly and luckily Ian is feeling a lot better. Our plane back to Jo'burg isn't until around 1400 and with an hour drive to the airstrip we have plenty of time to enjoy the usual morning drive, brunch and finish our packing before we have to leave.
African Fish Eagle but unfortunately as you can see the sky was flat grey.
Clearly a leg man (or woman)
We checked the Flap Neck Chameleon bush as we drove past but he'd definitely gone. Never mind, it was lovely to have seen it.
Small herd of elephant
Crested Barbet surrounded by twigs
Meve's Starling (I know, another one, but they are so beautiful)
We drove back up the rocky outcrop and found the the shy male leopard with ease, but he was just lolling around.
As before going down was a different matter and I seriously thought Daniel had done something terminal to the truck when he drove straight over a large tree stump trying to do a 45 point turn.
A couple of, almost sharp, Helmeted Guinea Fowl
And a lovely portrait of a beautiful Red-billed Hornbill, without any twigs for once!
Tree squirrel
I think Daniel was heading for the tall grass area in the hope of finding the lion cubs, all assuming we hadn't run over them the other day, when we came to an elephant herd. There were just a few to start with.
It was just like our last morning at Kicheche Bush in January; seemingly the elephants had come to say "goodbye" and we spent another precious half hour or so with them as they all trooped past us, then we drove ahead and they came past once more.
Practising his disco moves.
At one point there were 20 or so of them (taken on a different camera as you can tell - I think I need to do a sky replacement on a few of these next ones)
Next up, another favourite saying goodbye - LBR
I'm sure it meant to do a fly past for me but went off the wrong way!
Daniel had obviously done a lot of work on the "bush telephone" this morning, as next to put in an appearance was this female leopard who was clearly on a mission.
We followed her for a good while along the river bed.
Bit gutted I chopped off her lower whiskers, but then again she came so close to the truck (that's what's giving the shade at the bottom) I'm lucky I got anything really using a 100-500mm lens.
We thought for a moment that despite it's wonderful camouflage this Sandgrouse might have been her target.
Not new sightings I know, but as we won't see them for a couple of days I couldn't pass up beautifully posed birds.
Grey Lourie (Go Away Bird)
Another LBR - I wish for once it'd fly towards me but obviously it never will as it's trying to get away from me.
In the tall grass area we came upon the lioness with 3 cubs who weren't particularly active as it was 0930 by now and starting to warm up.
They were more interested in feeding from her (they're not fully weaned until 6/7 months old) before settling down to sleep. Still at least we were able to see them again and satisfy ourselves that we hadn't run over them the other day.
Incidentally have you noticed just how often a perfect lump of elephant dung features in my photos!
A few minutes later we bumped into the leopard again, still on her hunt.
Leopard aren't generally fast enough to chase prey the way other big cats do so they rely very much on the element of surprise, but in this instance she'd already been spotted so had no chance whatsoever. We left her to it and made our way slowly back to camp. A few other animals en route.
This is Ian's favourite marker, the broken tree, from here to camp is a 15 min drive.
