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