Africa Wild

Hi Flutts,

If you look at BB's pic and enlarge it, you can clearly see the hook-lip and the pinkish colour around the hook. Head shape is also clearly a Black Rhino.

Black Rhino also have a clearly concave back whereas White Rhino have a flat back. The underside of the head from the ear to the jaw is distincltly curved in Black Rhino, but "flatter" in White.

These points are clearer in the pic on BB's TT, but can be seen on your pics here as well Flutts.

Here's another pic but he wouldn't come out from behind the bushes!!

And Sprocky...yes he was alone.

He is! (You can see it's a he....)

Those wounds behind the shoulder are also pretty diagnostic...some fly infestation common to the Blackies!

Also the front/back horns/ears very close together on the smaller skull!

A pic off the internet:




Don't know if he's eating grass or weeds, though!

(They do eat grass sometimes)

I also veer toward Hook-Lip. In the other shot you can see the lack of the neck hump that the White Rhino has.

In the first pic that you have posted, there would have been visible a piece of the underlip, if it was a white rhino and also the expression of the face (feminine intuition ) tells me that it is a blackie. Believe it or don't believe it

Also look at the eye position relative to the horn. White Rhino is slightly behind the back horn and Black is 'below' the rear horn.

2 October Skukuza cont.

We got to Sunset Dam and were entertained by the birds.

Whitecrowned Lapwing



Common Sandpiper?



Some impies came down to drink.



White Storks and Grey Herons



The Egyptian Geese were interrupting the peace and quiet as usual! They may look graceful, but this was all accompanied by much loud honking and squawking!!

Take-off!



Fly-by!





Landing!



We turned around and headed back down the H4-1 towards Skukuza and came across a small herd of ellies enjoying the local spa.

Applying the mud mask.



Deep tissue massage.



These ones were waiting patiently in the waiting room.



Mud facial.

2 October Skukuza cont.

We left the ellies and found this boon jumping to get the juiciest bits! Unfortunately I had too much lens but couldn’t be bothered to change it.



Next up was this fellow crossing the road. We stopped and made sure he made it safely across.



This Bateleur was interested in something on the road, but of course as soon as I got my camera it flew off.



We got onto the S21 and found this Greenshank ‘wallowing’ in some mud.



The rest of the road was dead. On the S114 we came across some cars and a Landie with “Defender of Wild Dogs” printed on the side and an aerial out the window. It was here that we met Ossendryver and he told us that some wild dogs had crossed the road but they couldn’t see them anymore. We also spoke to the “Defender” who was a really nice guy. He said the dogs were about 30 metres in but the bush was too thick to see anything. He told us about various packs in the park and confirmed that we had gone on a wild “dog” chase the previous day when we went to Pretoriuskop, as the dogs had left the den the previous week!

We headed back to camp feeling quite fed up as the morning had not yielded much, and there had been long stretches where we saw nothing! I was so grumpy, I did something I’ve never done in Kruger before...I had an afternoon nap!!

A video of the Sunset Drive taken by the Brat.

View My Video

3 October Skukuza – Lower Sabie

We were moving to Lower Sabie today, but had to do a route that would take a suitably long time to get there, so we decided to go via Croc Bridge. On the H1-1 we had 2 sightings of hyena, a total of 10 in all.



On the H3 we had our first and only sighting of a duiker!





This ellie got the Brat edging towards the floor again! -O



On the S113 I finally managed a pic of a squirrel for Lis.



These 3 crocs were tiny....not even a metre long.





This Three-banded Plover kept us entertained for a while at the Biyamiti Weir.