A bit of a less wordy month for once. May is a beautiful month as the bush dries out and roads become accessible. The temperatures drop and the crazy insect life of the green season starts to drop off accordingly. With the cold temperatures comes mists on the river which to be frank is one of my favorite phenomena that we experience here on the Kafue river.
Oh and the other wildlife news is that a large (larger than we have ever had here) bee-eater colony has started establishing itself 5 minutes up stream! Expect lots and lots of bee-eater action this season.
In terms of travel news it is more of the same, so we are not even going to go there!
Enjoy some pictures taken in the month of May.
Mother and baby in the park side troop trying to warm up in the cold morning mists of May.
Ilala palms on mantobo island catching the last rays of the autumn sunset
And another ilala palm on the island this time backlit by a beautiful sunset.
Western banded snake eagle staring intently out over the dambo by our carpark. Captured on our first drive of 2021 of our pools loops.
On the same game drive we came across this magnificent specimen! A leopard tortoise that we estimated must weight over 20kgs!
And a random shot of the moon! I was asked by a few people on social media how to shoot the moon. It is not difficult, you need a long lens with either good image stabilization or on a tripod. Best is when the moon is not fully illuminated (so not a full moon). A faster shutter speed than you would thing and generally underexpose the shot a bit. This is 560mm at F8, ISO 400 and a shutter speed of 1/320sec.
Down by the rapids one evening we were astonished to watch a pair of Egyptian geese risking the waves in the rapids to graze on the rocks.
The bee-eater colony that we mentioned… Well the colony has rocks below it and I was amazed one evening to see the bee-eaters freak out and start mobbing this monitor lizard. Who in turn got chased off by a larger lizard!
More of the moon! This time a rather unusual sighting with it backlighting a bee-eater.
Another unusual sighting. We normally only ever see the crabs being battered apart by giant kingfishers! Clearly this one has had a few close encounters with something judging by the missing legs!
The elusive finfoot.
The bee-eater colony! I am so pleased at the location and the size of this colony. Oh, and there is the perfect place for a hide too….
Rocketing out of the burrow.
And we leave the month with a few shots of the magical May misty mornings!
And that is it for May. I have zero doubts that June will be more mists and more bee-eaters 🙂 !