Author: johannekekroesbergen

I am an anthropologist of religion and photographer, currently living in Pretoria, South Africa. I wrote my PhD-thesis on narratives about Satanism in Zambia. Currently I am preparing a new research project that uses photography as an ethnographic method. In my free time, I love hiking, safaris and enjoying nature through photography.

The unpopular jackal

For the farming community in South Africa, jackals are a costly nuisance, as they kill sheep that are an important agricultural livestock. For a long time, bounties were paid for every hunted jackal. However, whether this really helped to keep the population in check is unclear. According to some, killing a jackal does no more than giving space to two or more jackals who will fight for the territory, and kill even more sheep in the process. I’m not a farmer, and for me seeing a jackal or hearing it in the night is an exciting event. Taking photos of the jackals in my neighborhood has so far been unsuccesful, so here is one from Pilanesberg National Park.

Dawn at the waterhole

Winter is coming, they say. In Pilanesberg the mornings are becoming chilly, with mist that forms over bodies of water like this waterhole. The Egyptian geese are just waking up and arranging their feathers. It’s going to be a lovely day!

Spotted thick-knee

The spotted thick-knee or dikkop (the Afrikaners and the English disagree about which part of the bird is thick…) always looks kind of sleepy. Its plumage gives excellent camouflage in the long grass, so it can be hard to spot this bird. At night, the bird becomes active and starts to hunt for whatever it can find on the ground: insects, lizards, and even small mammals.

Elephant family drinking

A family of elephants drinking at a waterhole in Pilanesberg National Park. I love how green everything still is! It makes seeing animals a little bit more challenging, but the sightings that you do get are usually great because they are really close.