Africa Wild

BluTuna wrote: ↑Sun Jan 24, 2016 4:09 pm

We entered the Park at Malelane, stopping on the bridge for a while. There was plenty of bird activity and the bridge is a wonderful vantage point.

There was a host of Kingfishers - at least five Pied and a couple of Giants.






There were several other species, including Spoonbills and Yellowbilled Storks, present but most of them were too far away for photos. I did get a Greenbacked Heron and a Little Egret.

Pumbaa wrote: ↑Sun Mar 20, 2016 12:00 pm



During the couple of wet last years we always missed these storks which seemed to be a more regular sighting in the drier years as I can remember that during our first years when we started to visit Kruger it was far drier than the past years and then this bird came across regularly. At that stage I could not know how often we will see that stork during that trip.....Also never saw that much hippos outside the water grazing also during the hottest time of the day and some of them in fact did look extreme skinny



but I could already tick my first lifer as right where we stood a lesser jacana was searching for food in the river. I really love its footprints which it left in the sand under the water.



A white egret was also on hunting mode



and in a confluence from a feeder river a bit farer away we could see a grey, a goliath heron, a white egret and a cormorant.



We already noticed the activities of a couple of pied kingfishers in flight and finally one of them landed extreme close to where we stood on the bridge.



After a year of absence in Kruger it is always such a pleasure to watch all the animals from the bridge and we could not take our eyes from the Lesser Jacana



or the grazing hippo. We were so excited to be back that we could have stayed on that bridge for the rest of the day only to watch around and soak everything in



and although we were already on the go we could not move as everything had to be observed carefully and what it better than only one pied kingfisher, yes two