I arrived at Pilansberg nature reserve at 12 on Monday, for what I considered a well-deserved break. Should have been in the Cape visiting friends and family, but my car decided it wanted a new radiator, and it is not a good idea to drive 1600Km with a leaky radiator. After I got that fixed, there was not enough time left for the Cape. Needed somewhere a bit closer.

So. Two nights in the Pilansberg it was then. The Pilansberg is a fascinating place. It is a very old volcanic crater, by now eroded down to a circle of hills. Sun City and the Lost Palace are situated as an enclave to one side.

But enough of all that. I checked in, and drove straight to the hide at the main dam. At that hour few animals would be about, so no use driving around looking for them.

Getting to the hide I set up my camera with the 1000mm reflex lens I got some time earlier. I had not yet tested it under the conditions I got it for: game. But of course I forgot my ASA400 film I got just for it, and was stuck with ASA100. Not really fast enough for a f11 lens. But it made do.

After a while of sitting there, looking over the dam, eating a rather meagre lunch I packed for myself, an elephant appeared at the side of the water. It started to splash itself quite merrily. Some people in the hide with me from Botswana called it "Itchy Bum". It clearly was missing its tail, and quite a lot too, since it splashed its rear as much as it could! Here are some of the photos of my trip, hope you enjoy them.

In the first three the water itself is not that clear. Click any photo for an enlargement.
Then it moved into the water, splashed some more, laid down, and rolled over.
From the size of ol' Itchy Bum I believe it is one of the mature bulls brought to the Pilansberg to control the young bulls in the park. All of the young ones were brought there as young orphans, and the park only had some mature cows to take care of them. Since the young bulls tried to be dominant males before they where mature enough, problems started to appear. This ended in the killing of rhinos! From what I have heard the project was a success, they were put into their place by the new bulls.

It is early summer now, so a lot of young animals are about. Stepping out of the hide, on the way to the car, I saw these darter chicks being fed by a parent. Sorry for the bit of fuzziness in the photos. I did include one close-up of an adult darter, taken from the hide.
Later I came across a secretary bird, walking around killing small mammals, snakes and suchlike with hard blows of its feet. I saw it joining its mate at their nest nearby. It was to far to see any chicks, but I suspect they are there. Again, sorry for the fuzziness, I was stretching the capabilities of my equipment a bit far, and the ASA100 was not nearly fast enough to freeze the movement as it came in to land. Still it make for an interesting photo.

Coming across a big herd of eland with calves early Tuesday morning was something special for me. These massive antelope, with a very gentle disposition are possible my favourite. Mixed with them are some zebra.

One thing you see a lot of at the Pilansberg are rhinos. Really. Tuesday morning I saw rhino on about five different occasions before noon. After a while you almost grow weary of them! The white rhino is now quite common in some parks in South Africa.

The black rhino is not as common, and I only saw them once. These are two groups of the white rhinos. I could unfortunately not get a clear (photographic ;-) shot of the black rhinos since they were browsing in some bushes.

Later the day I saw two black-shouldered kites fighting for quite some time. I managed a quick photo of one while it was resting.

Watching elephant feed can be quite interesting. This individual was walking around, eating some grass. The method they use is to pluck the grass by folding it's trunk on itself around some grass until it has enough, lift the grass in the U-shaped bend of the trunk, then pick it out of the bend with the tip of the trunk and put it in its mouth. All done with a Zen-like state of calmness about it the whole time! Notice the little blue flowers all around. At some places the veldt was covered with them, especially were the grass was burned down.