Group Hug

Africa Geographic reader Karin Frömmel lives in Germany, but she loves the

wildlife of Africa and spends most of her holidays on the continent.

When she visited Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve in August last year,

she took this photograph of a group of cheetah cubs playing.

Photographer: Karin Frömmel

Night Swimming

One afternoon in the Lower Zambezi National Park, this lioness followed the buffalo

and waterbuck that swim to the islands in the Zambezi River to graze the sweet,

green grass that still grows there during the dry season. The remainder of the pride,

another lioness with three sub-adults, stayed on the bank, trying to pluck up the courage

to cross. Finally, after a long wait, during which time darkness fell, the braver lioness

gave up and entered the water to swim back to shore. It was a fast-flowing channel,
over 50 metres wide and home to some big crocodiles, but she made it and a
very boisterous greeting ceremony ensued before the pride moved off to hunt..

Photographer: Stephen Cunliffe

 

Winter Leopard

Fraser Lamond was visiting the Sabi Sand area in South Africa on business and took his

camera along ‘just in case’. On the morning of his departure at around 09h00, he came across

this female leopard scent-marking. She happily presented herself, tail and all, as she moved

away from the newly marked tree.

Photographer: Fraser Lamond

Family affection

During an early morning drive in southern Africa’s Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in October 2007,
Mark D. Anderson stumbled across a small group of lions – one sub-adult male and four younger
individuals. The affectionate interaction between the lions (three members of the group are shown here)
demonstrates how important it is for relationships between individuals in the pride to be maintained.

Photographer: Mark D. Anderson



Snack bar

On Marc Mol’s first morning at a lodge in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park,
he visited a hide on the Luangwa River hoping to see southern carmine bee-eaters in their nest holes.
Instead, he was met with the sight of two baboons breaking the holes and extracting the chicks,
which were identified as the young of white-fronted bee-eaters. Mol learned later that the carmine
bee-eaters had abandoned this nest and moved some 200 metres upstream to a site that
offered more protection from predators.
Photographer: Marc Mol



A scaly stalemate

The stripe-bellied sand snake Psammophis subtaeniatus is a harmless, diurnal and
common bushveld inhabitant. It is very fast and gets out of the way whenever a potential
threat approaches. For this reason I have had limited success photographing them in the past,
until I stumbled upon this scene on an autumn morning in the Waterberg. I soon realised that the snake
was caught in the act of procuring its next meal, in this case a Turner’s gecko Pachydactylus turneri.
These large, stout geckos, formidable predators in their own right, are another common bushveld
inhabitant occupying rocky outcrops where they shelter under rocks and loose bark and may at
times venture into houses. Their large size makes it possible for them to catch smaller lizards,
but for the most part they prey on insects such as grasshoppers, beetles and the like.
The battle took place on a recently stacked pile of bricks at a construction site. The bricks
had been moved on the day prior to the encounter and the unfortunate gecko was probably
relocated with the bricks from the veld to the building site where it met its fate.

Albie Venter