At Close Quarters

After a very successful tour I've once again returned with some "distinctive" photos like this Vervet monkey - trying to hide or blend in with the environment?



On the subject of primates, which often reveal human-like mannerisms - ditto these Chacma baboons.






"Hold on tight!" seems to be the instruction to this baby baboon.






It's always a pleasure to see a family of graceful giraffes and fun to photograph if they represent such a "united front".




Tracking down all of the BIG 5 is no easy task when on a game drive, so the excitement when discovering one of the cat species, often "knows no bounds" - just ask the lady, who spotted this well-disguised leopard, how she reacted.



In contrast this otherwise habtually "shy" nyala male didn't seem to mind that we admired it - at such close quarters.


Talking about nyalas - to this day, after taking thousands of animal photos, I still haven't been able to "capture" a nyala male & female "side by side" - although both "feature" in this photo. I "long" to do that mainly because this is the only one of our antelopes, where there's a marked difference in size between the male & female, so that in Enlish we call a nyala male a bull (not a ram), but a female nyala a ewe (= more or less the size of an impala antelope).