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We headed towards Kranskop loop. Arriving on the plateau at the top I couldn’t believe my eyes! On my left there was a cheetah walking towards the ridge!!! I was so unprepared for this lucky sighting that I never managed a photo of it. By the time I had gathered my wits again, the cheetah had disappeared… Still, SO and I were elated! First proper game drive and first proper sighting was a cheetah! Surely, that had to be a good omen for the two days to come?

Otherwise the first drive produced mainly far off sightings of the black wildebeest, blesbok, zebras, springboks and ostriches.

Just a very few didn’t not jump off when we stopped to take some photos. They were all miserable looking though.







The rain continued but we decided to have a sundowner (could have started hours earlier with that – the sun had been ‘down’ for ages that day…) on the look-out point towards the guesthouse and the dam.
Back at the bungalow, SO lit a fire in the fireplace and instead of a braai we had veg parcels from the oven and potatoes.

Mountain Zebra
31/03/2012

The next morning started rather gloomy as well. We headed out to Kranskop again after having been told that our chances to see the cheetah again would be reasonably good as it obviously roamed that area at the moment.

The sighting day started off with a few distant elands:

Still on our way up to the plateau, I spotted a brown-hooded kingfisher (tick!). But the birdie had decided to camouflage itself with as much branches as it possibly can, so my photos are just hideous...

Arriving on the plateau we didn’t get to see a cheetah but the closest gemsbok we would ever have in this park.

A beautiful mountain zebra gave me the eye:

And while I was shooting away at the zebra, a spike-heeled lark (tick!) emerged next to me:

The blesbok had an urgent need:



While this one was rather uncooperative regarding photos:

The wildie had an itch:



Generally I found the critters in Mountain Zebra rather skittish. Most of them would move off as soon we approach with our car…

Next tick with a sickle-winged chat:

Further down the road we saw our first mountain reedbuck ever:

And even the baboons kept running away from my lens.

At least the birds were a bit more forthcoming:


Ant-eating chat

We were headed towards Rooiplats Loop and the Ubejane Loop. Down on Ubejane a goshawk was posing nicely in the dull morning:

And a kudu ewe showed off briefly before legging it once again:



We also go an ostrich lady



Also another kudu lady

And we still stopped for BSKs (Take note, Ronnie! )



We had also seen jackal, mongoose, hartebeest, buff spoor all over the place but no buff anywhere, more oryx, more eland, more kudu, more zebras, more wildebeests, more blesboks, more springboks, … But all of those sightings were far off and I didn’t bother to attempt photos, especially since the light was so low. We had also seen red-knobbed coot (tick!), reed cormorant (tick!), Verreaux’s eagle (tick!), white-breasted cormorant (tick!), lesser kestrel (tick!), rock kestrel aptly sitting on a rock (tick!), but my photos are just too scary to post them.