11/12/2023 by Anne

MY DELIGHT: SUNRISE

I am usually an early riser no matter the season and so often witness the beautiful colours that brighten the sky ahead of the actual sunrise. I enjoy seeing the early pink shades on the eastern horizon before the sun actually appears. This, and the next two views are taken from our bedroom window.

Sometimes the sunrise is a spread of golden light that is rather stunning and well worth rising for.

Occasionally, usually because there is dust or smoke in the air – the presence of clouds help too – sunrises can be fiery in nature.

This next sunrise was taken in the Kruger National Park with the sun shining through a thick cloud of smoke from a veld fire.

In the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park I witnessed this sunrise ….

So much for the colours of sunrises that never fail to delight me. I really love the way the early morning light shines through the ears of this scrub hare in the Addo Elephant National Park. This was definitely worth rising early for!

14/04/2023 by Anne

NATURAL ADMIRATION FOR …

The sheen on the wings of a Hadeda Ibis

The brightness of a sunflower

The scarlet beans of an Erythrina caffra

Elephants

The curve of a buffalo’s horn – with the added bonus of a Red-billed Oxpecker

The ears of a scrub hare

31/01/2022 by Anne

TIME TO SILFLAY

Please tell me you have read Watership Down by Richard Adams! Even if you haven’t, you might be familiar with silflay for this word from Lapine, the fictional rabbit language he uses, means ‘to feed’. More precisely, to come out [from their burrows] to feed. I recently showed a photograph of a Scrub Hare with its long ears highlighted by the sun:

Usually Scrub Hares (Lepus saxatilis) are nocturnal, although they can be seen early in the mornings too – especially if the day happens to be overcast. This explains the dullish light in the following photographs of this one breakfasting in the Addo Elephant National Park:

Unlike rabbits, these hares do not live in burrows, instead the Scrub Hares tend to make a shallow depression in the sand or long grass – known as a form – under bushes for protection and move out from there to feed in the open early in the mornings and at night. Even vegetation like this would do:

As their name implies, Scrub Hares mostly eat grass, although they are also known to feed leaves, shrubs and rhizomes – especially during particularly dry periods:

This one is feeding on Spekboom. Although the lighting is not particularly good, you should be able to see the patch of red-brown fur behind its ears:

Although Scrub Hares tend to be solitary creatures, they are vigilant animals whose long ears can help them to sense the approach of a predator from some distance away. When fleeing from danger, they tend to run fast in a zig-zag motion which is intended to confuse whichever animal that wishes to catch them: