Last week-end we had some fun sightings during a visit to an Elephant Park only two hours' away from home. Would like to share with you a few images, it was interesting to see how elephants interact and just awesome to spend almost two days in their company.
Myself, Andre and Carl sat quite comfortably in a hide situated at some distance from the water hole; from there we observed an incredible number of adult male ellies and some youngsters coming to drink, the "kids" were well tolerated by the elders and taught how to behave in "ellie society". We saw no aggression whatsoever between them, a nudge here and there and the younger ones always gave way to the bigger tuskers as soon as they saw them approach.
The "kids" were rather playful and we managed a number of frames while they were interacting, all in-between so much laughter! Here are just a few images, difficult to choose which to share because there are so many...the first image shows an older male and two young boys playing under the shade of trees near the waterhole;in the second the older male went to drink, third and fourth image show the youngsters follow him to the water constantly playing, and finally, after lots of play and games the two oversized mice decide to go and have a drink themselves, trunks stretched towards the water... And yes the old chap did not mind them one bit, I think he thought they were funny too...
Have you noticed in the first image how one of the ellies is holding the tail of the other in its mouth?
Images taken with Nikon D4, Nikon 500mm F4, ISO 1000 and F 5.6, 1/2500s.
Settings might vary slightly from image to image, it was overcast for most of the time and our cute subjects moved from the shade of the tree to open ground. At times the sun peeped through the clouds and the lighting conditions changed, easier to show you a single image rather than a sequence because conditions changed constantly, but I hope you enjoy viewing nevertheless...
Little Tuskers
Reply With Quote
