Swallow Tailed Bee Eaters

Backblip #

Merops hirundineus

Fabulous morning out radio tracking wild leopards in the Okinjima (Africat) reserve. We spent a full hour and a half driving around listening to a very weak radio signal from a leopard they have named "Electra". We were so excited when we finally found her as we know she has two very small cubs at the moment! However she was keeping very low and had chosen to rest behind a thickly branched tree in a very densly wooded part of the reserve. When a leopard doesn't want to be found she will make it very difficult! We could see no sign of her cubs but the tree she was lying under was next to an old termite mound with just the right sized hole for her to hide them in. Damn! She did stand up at one point and walk out onto the mound, but she still wasn't in clear view so no particularly good shots of her unfortunately.

In the afternoon we found a radio collared cheetah mother "Daisy" with her beautiful 10 month old cub - both being particularly lazy and just slept the entire time we spent watching them!

So instead I've chosen to show you these beautiful bee-eaters that we came across on our drives. They are such stunning birds and this is the first time on my trip that I have seen them! I was almost more excited to see them than the cats!