Daily Archive for January 3rd, 2008

Day-old elephant calf: Video

Today was one of those re-discovering days.

Above it all
We were travelling into areas that were out of reach with all the rain, but now with a few warms days the ground had firmed up well. But still our travel was limited to the sandy areas.
And wherever we travelled we were met by tall, taller and the tallest grass. Visibility was down to nothing almost. To follow lions moving in this grass one can’t even see them and you end up having to follow the moving stems. Not much fun there. Well we didn’t find any lions so didn’t have to put that exercise to test.
While resting up Hwata pan we heard elephants to the west. There we found this small herd of elephants all huddled together, and right in the middle of them was this tiny day-old elephant calf. She was still so young her ears were still pink.

Day-old
The family was all huddled up and agitated as several bulls were hanging around wanting to get to the new baby. But the cows were having none of it and together kept seeing them off.

Bully's
And amazingly the herd were totally happy with our presence, even bringing the tiny calf right up to the vehicle and then standing there watching us before resuming their grazing.

Sunset 01/02
At sunset we left the elephant and shortly I was confronted by 3 black rhino! These dudes were really really interested in my vehicle and just kept approaching. When less than 10m away, the one bull charged several steps forward, spun on the spot and took off huffing and buffing through the undergrowth.