Day 9 Selous

Fantastic to hear all the noises last light, and especially the birds this morning.  Biggest surprise is we are on the elephant highway down here at our far away tent #12.  We saw 6 elephants pass in front of our tent after their visit to the lake, amazing.  Of course it is 530 am and cameras are not ready at that time, but hopefully Andre managed to get one picture. 

This guy is right in front of our tent for a visit, right off our little deck!  5:30AM visit

From our deck, on their way to get some water

 

We are off after breakfast for a full day game drive with a bush lunch. We have repacked our luggage so our move of tents will be done while we are out today. Lots more elephants to see right from where we have breakfast in the main tent as they go by the lake.   Surprise this morning as Shaun has found us a bench jeep so we have also switched drivers.  So Zacharia is still our guide, but our driver is Kamkumba . 

Today turns out to be an absolutely amazing day.  So many baby impala, adorable baby warthogs, and giraffes everywhere you turn.  We also are very lucky to find a lion pride of 10, including some cubs that are finishing off a warthog for breakfast.  A few wildebeest as well which is a first for us, including a bunch running. 

Diederik Cuckoo

southern cordon bleu

Hadada Ibis

Baby Warthogs - Cute!

Baby Impala, more cuteness

Giraffe attempting mating

Not successful...too many people watching?

Spotted Flycatcher

Palm Nut Vulture

Giraffes running, they cover ground quickly!

Black-winged Stilt

White-crowned lapwing

Circling Yellow Billed Storks

 

Wood Sandpiper

White-browed sparrow weaver

White-throated Bee-Eater

So many giraffes - Selous is the park for you if you like giraffes!

Spotted Flycatcher

Scarlet Chested Sunbird

Relative of the toothbrush tree, our guide only knew the Latin name

Hippo Tracks

Black Egret with African Spoonbill (love how the black egret fishes!)

Tawny Eagle

Martial Eagle

Martial Eagle Kill, amazing that an eagle can take this down

Beautiful fireball lily

Monkey puzzle tree- so smooth the monkeys can't climb it

Little bee-eater sharing a snack

Hooded Vulture with African White-backed vulture watching

Finishing up a warthog



Hooded Vulture hoping for leftovers 

Lunch today was at Tadalala Lake

Egyptian Geese family

African Emigrant Butterflies

The biggest surprise was a leopard, which we hadn’t counted on seeing here.  This was an amazing sighting as we had just stopped for a talk about a baobab tree and our guides saw a tail hanging out of a hole in the tree.  So we drove around to the other side of this huge tree and a leopard is peeking out getting some sun.  Very cute and very high up in the air.

From very high up in the baobab tree our guide spotted this!

We drove around to the other side of the tree and look who was here!  I am sure they will never drive by this tree again without having a look to see if anyone is visiting

Monitor Lizard

Kittlitz's Plover

Baby African Jacana

African Open-billed Stork

To top this off the end of the day we returned to the pride of 11 lions to see if they were up and about and they got up shortly after we arrived to go for a drink of water.  This was amazing how they worked together, 2 stayed behind to keep an eye on the kill as there was a hyena and some vultures lurking about.  Once the rest came back from their drink of water the other 2 headed out.  So 11 lions found today and 1 leopard, quite a cat day for a park that I didn’t think would have so many cats. 

Yes, the lions do walk this close to the jeeps, it's like they don't even see us, on their way for a drink of water

Hyena watching lions very closely

I adore these 2 lion photos, one of our favourite memories watching this interaction between the lions

On our way back to camp, another beauty

One other cool thing is we saw giraffes first thing this morning, and last thing tonight trying to mate.  This morning Zacharia told us this can take a long time, we asked him more about this tonight and he told us it can take 2 days, wow, that is a lot of foreplay and we decided to move on from the giraffe porn.

 We get back very late tonight as we had stayed to watch the cats for so long, and our driver is an extremely slow driver, especially in comparison to our driver at our last camp in Ruaha.  We arrive back and I am very tired and very hot and really need a shower but we can’t get to our tent as there are so many elephants around tonight.  It is dark so the Masai have a really fun job of getting us back to our tents as a few of us are waiting now.  After about 10 minutes we are allowed to leave but part way along the trial we get off the path to travel along the front of the tents as we were too close to the elephants. 

Getting ready for supper/showers in the candlelight again tonight!

 

Time for quick showers and we are off with our escort again to get to supper.  Not only is it dark to get ready, we also need to unpack and find our stuff since we have changed tents today.  The elephants have moved on so we did not have to wait long for our escort to go back to the main area for supper.  Off to bed just after 9 again.  We have decided to do a bush walk tomorrow morning for a couple of hours, it will be nice to stretch our legs a bit.  This is not a walk to look for big animals we have heard, it is a walk to look at the little things around, sounds like we may be dung experts by the end of the walk.  Looking forward to it, we leave at 7AM so hopefully will be a little cooler.