Tag: wildlife

Saving rhinos

Rhino populations have been under heavy pressure from poaching. They are poached because some people believe that the horn of a rhino has medicinal qualities, and trade in rhino horn is very lucrative.

In the past years, there has been an effort to dehorn rhinos in several South African national parks and game reserves. A dehorned rhino has no value to poachers, so this is an effective way of protecting them – and the incidences of poaching have dropped significantly as an effect. For the rhino it does not seem to matter much. Fights over dominance can still happen, even without a horn, and may even be safer for the parties involved.

Still, it’s sad that we have to do this to protect a species!

World Leopard Day

Apparently it is world leopard day today! Leopards are such special animals – solitary, secretive, hard to find and absolutely stunningly beautiful. I didn’t nearly see enough leopards on our recent trip to South Africa 🥲 but this one, just waking up, time to get moving, silhoueted against the sunset-sky was really special.

Buffalo

You wouldn’t say so, because buffalo traverse in large herds, but they are actually quite hard to find. After an afternoon speeding from one end of the Thornybush Game Reserve to the other, we finally found this old, angry, solitary male glaring at us after he had to get up from his personal spot on the beach. Hrmph.

Cubs

One of the highlights of our trip was finding this mother lion with two cubs in a river bed. At this age – maybe three months old – they are still reliant on mother’s milk and too little to engage in the hunt with the rest of the pride, so mother will hide them for long periods to go hunting and come back for feeding and play time.

Falling…

A leopard dozing in a tree above us. In fact, he was dozing so hard that he lost his balance and needed some claw action to prevent him from falling out of the tree and on top of… well, me. That was a scary moment!

At first sight

It was a long journey from the Netherlands to Tangala Safari Camp in #Thornybush Nature Reserve. We were just in time to catch the departure of the afternoon safari drive – and this was the first picture I took. What a welcome in South Africa!

Dutch safari

We had heard about the deer rut in the Hoge Veluwe National Park, so we decided to check it out yesterday. Waiting for the gate to the park to open, it hit me: this is a safari! We drove our car slowly through the park, full of anticipation. The map indicates a few hotspots for deer, which were already filling up. There must have been a hundred other people in the park, setting up their tripods, waiting for the deer to arrive where they should be according to the map.

From where we stood, I could see a small group of deer resting on a grassy field. There was a strong wind blowing from behind us. I was worried that the deer would smell all these people waiting for them and wouldn’t come out. But, a little while later, Hermen came running, saying that he had spotted a deer a hundred meters down the road.

It was amazing! It seemed like the worst (or best) part of the rut was already over. The male deer had already collected their groups of females and were not that interested in fighting each other – at least not while we were there.

Such proud animals, with their heads held high! And such antlers must weigh quite something! Back in our original spot, the group of deer that were resting had also woken up and came close to the road. Great, these animals that follow the maps! We’re very happy to have had this chance to go on safari in the Netherlands.