Giants Castle: Jackal vs Vulture!

I was lucky enough to spend a few days at Giants Castle in September. This is always an amazing experience and will surely give me enough material to blog for weeks to come.

The following amazing shot was taken at the Giants Castle Vulture Restaurant and shows a Jackal stealing a meal from a Cape Vulture.


I never thought I'd be complaining about having too much lens, but as you can see I could not fit the action into the frame with 420mm ... Grrr. Nevertheless it was an amazing sight to experience so I'll "let the pictures tell the story" with the full sequence:

Golden Harvest - Ovambo Sparrowhawk

I have been hearing about the sparrowhawks at Golden Harvest Park in northern Johannesburg for a while how. Apparently Black, Ovambo and Little Sparrowhawks are all breeding in the park. Since the Black Sparrowhawk is possibly my favourite raptor, I visited the park to try and spot one ... but it is a large park and I had no luck. This morning I returned following some advice from Niall Perrins, and although I did not manage to spot the Black Sparrowhawk I had a lovely sighting of an Ovambo Spar (I initially though it might be a Shikra but the orange legs confirm it is an Ovambo).

I initially saw it sunning itself in a Eucalyptus:



I sat quietly and watched him for a while, and after 10 minutes he suddenly became very alert and darted after some weavers flying through an opening in glade. The chase was obscured by a large tree, so i missed the kill, but after 30 seconds or so the Ovambo returned with his spoils:





So a big thanks to Niall Perrins who pointed out the areas in the park each species frequent.