Another beautiful day at the Potchefstroom Branch….between meetings and after church they gather in yard to enjoy the sun…

Church 6/21/15 – Primary Children singing and dancing to ‘Follow the Prophet’ with lots of spirit and smiles.
With the large amount of pollution in the air, sunrises and sunsets in South Africa can be spectacular…especially with the low mountains and stark trees to add interest…
Mary has a thing for zebras…I enjoy them also but we have seen so many zebras on our drives that I have reached a point where unless there is really something special about the scene I do not even get out my camera…I would like to see a mother with a brand new colt but other than that or one with three legs I am done with zebras.  The same thing is true of Wildebeest and Cape Buffalo…I did get a great shot of an old bull lying on the sand…
We saw tons – no pun intended – of white rhinos but of course no black rhinos…people claim to have seen them but no one has a photo that they took – “it was too far away” – it went into the bush before I could get a shot” etc. I think black rhino sightings are a myth. On a game drive during our first mission to South Africa one of the guides pointed out across the plains to a disappearing dot and said “There goes a black rhino” – right!
Warthogs are among the ugliest animals on the earth and I have come to love them. That is why  Mary had a special picture of a family of warthogs custom made for my birthday…
Coming soon to this spot – lots of great giraffe pictures…
We have some great shots of elephants with the best being a series showing a week old calf with its mother and one where an elephant is drinking from a cistern that is about 6 feet tall. We saw lions everyday but only got one really good photo opportunity because most of the sightings were at night…but we did finally see a leopard and got one photo! We also saw three cheetahs but once again it happened so fast and at dusk that we have no photos. Is a hyena considered a canine? We did get to see a couple and got one photo of this very shy animal.