This is my one-and-only photo of a sable antelope, which I had never heard of before and only saw once while on a safari in Botswana.
This beautiful and powerful-looking antelope inhabits the savannahs of eastern and southern Africa.
Photography
Elephants, being large and gray, work well as monochrome images.
This small desert-adapted elephant survives on limited flora and regularly has to walk miles in the Namibian desert to reach its water supply.
One has to exercise caution when getting up close and personal with such an enormous animal. Better to rely on a longer lens!
Elephants are social creatures and travel together in matriarchal families.
This elephant seems to say, “Talk to me, I’m all ears!”
Elephants have strong mother-baby bonds.
Yes, we did see leopards in Botswana thanks to our guides. Some of the pictures were a little graphic and, to be honest, I’ll probably never include those in my portfolio. Just not my thing! We did get close, but they were never a threat to us. I hope these images show the terrific beauty of leopards.
I suppose this is your ultimate, classic, everyday leopard pose (if you’re in Botswana), but a favorite nevertheless!
What a beautiful physique and such a long tail!
The leopard blends beautifully with native grasses.
This one looks stealthy! He might have been hunting.
This cutie is one of the many animals I saw on safari in Botswana. I know warthogs are not thought of as the most adorable of creatures, and even the name seems to imply “uncute”. But I like them a lot and I’m sure their mothers love them! I found most of them to be quite camera shy and I don’t think I would want to get near one of those tusks! As you can see in the photo, they bend their front feet backwards to dig in the dirt for roots and bulbs.
A variety of animals showed up for roll call in this shot taken in Botswana…
a giraffe, an elephant family, lechwe antelopes, and a few birds!
Later in the morning (see last post), we got a taste of animals being less complacent.
This hippo was not making adorable and leisurely snorts like the ones at sunrise. It looks mad as hell, probably at us!
And this female lion didn’t want to share a cape buffalo leg she had carried off from the kill site. It’s as if she is saying, “Mine!”
Our first Botswana camp bordered an inlet populated with hippos whose vocalizations were such a novelty to us. We fell asleep listening to them snort and make bubbling sounds in the water.
Then, in the morning, the rising sun silhouetted their ears poking out of the water.
