We were talking to elders Wild, who has been here for over 22 months, and Hentunen, who has been here over a year, and found out that neither of them had ever been to a game reserve. So we invited them to come with us to the small game park in our district. Mainly it has antelope, zebras, a few giraffes and three rhinos. No cats and no elephants but at least it provides a touch of a major reserve. We left Potch at about 6:30 and were in the park a little after 7:00. The usual springbok was there to greet us.

We saw a couple of small herds of zebras.

But the main attraction was a family of 6 giraffes that elder Hentunen spotted and we all took lots of pictures. Notice that elder Hentunen who is from Finland had on a coat while elder Wild who is from England just had on a short sleeve shirt. Later elder Wild got cold and put on his jacket.

 The group included an old dark male that is almost invisible in the first couple of photos. There seemed to be 4 adults, a juvenile and a younger one. in the group.

I got some good shots of a pair of them that look like the front one is standing in front of a mirror.

Later we saw the same group silhouetted against the skyline heading across the plains to another group of trees. The big male was in front followed by a female and the juvenile. In the last photo you can see the littlest giraffe plodding along behind.

   

Mary had put together a nice lunch of sandwiches, chips and chocolate. I had stopped and bought some soft drinks. There is a large and very picnic area with comfortable tables and chairs, braai pits, toilets and lots of shade. But today it was cold and windy so although we ate in the sun, we still were rather chilled.

   As we were driving along one edge of the park we came to a plains area that had three large herds of antelope. The largest were wildebeests and bonteboks – there was also a herd of impalas but I did not take a photo of them as they were even further across the plains. We decided they were all there because of the watering hole that was near by.

 

We also saw some tsessebe, which is supposed to be the fasted African antelope, and a couple of fat waterbuck does – the bucks got away before I could take their picture,

This Gemsbok was nice enough to stay standing in the middle of the road so that I could take a nice head on shot. Later we got a side photo of another one. Notice the size of the horns on this antelope. I would not want to get one of them mad at me while I was outside.

This is the only photo of a bird that I got. I tried to shot a couple more but they flew away before I could take their pictures. So this Fiscal Flycatcher is has to represent all the birds in the park.

We had not seen any eland – the largest of the antelope – on our other trips to the park but this time we saw a couple – one walking  through the grass at a distance and the other one quite close and personal. Notice that his one has a broken horn on the right side. This is a common eland – there seems to be some uncommon versions around.