Gorgeous Bush Shrike

Its amazing how immature birds plumage will change as they become adult birds, so much so that it is hard to believe that they can be the same bird. The Gorgeous bush Shrike is a bird in point as this sequence of pictures show.

Very young Gorgeous Bush Shrike

The very same bird 30 days later

And of course the adult, one species where the name does the bird justice

Animals Karoo National Park

Over the last few years I have been lucky enough to visit the Karoo National Park on a few occasions and these are a few of the animals that I have photographed.

Klipspringer

Male Kudu

Red Hartebeest

Yellowbilled Kite

The Yellowbilled Kite is a common inter African Migrant that frequents the region in summer, generally arriving between the 7th and 10th August.
For the last couple of seasons I have been feeding chicken necks to the kite and he seems to love it. I can always tell when they are back from their trip up north as their behaviour is pretty standard. The male sits on the telephone pole waiting for me to put his food out.

Waiting for food



Watching the food coming out

I'm coming!!!

Whitefaced Duck

Whitefaced Duck often referred to as the Whitefaced Whistling Duck due to its call.

Water Thick-Knee (Dikkop)

Whilst attending the inter coservency quiz at the Crocodile Farm in Ramsgate I was able to photograph this Water Thick-Knee amongst the crocodiles. Anyone looking to see this species should look at the crocodile farm as normally there are quite a few Thick-Knee's to be seen.

Lion's

The following two pictures show three lions that were seen at Nossob Camp in Kgalagadi Tranfrontier Park. They were seen early morning at the waterhole that can be seen from the hide at the rest camp. They were a fair distabce away and almost everyone in the camp crowded into the hide to see them. I went for an early morning drive to look for birds, knowing that lions are extreemly lazy during the day and would most likely be there later in the day. On arrival back at camp at about 10am the lions had not moved much, but the hide was empty.
I sat in the hide for a few minutes before the lions started approaching the hide enabling me to get some amazing photo's of them, here are just two pictures.

 The two females of the Pride

The King of the Pride

Redbacked Mannikin in the garden

Kynsna Turaco

This Knysna Turaco was one of two that was caught and ringed on 9th August 2011.