Our First Game Drive

The morning of our first official day at Amakhala Game Reserve started a little chilly and foggy but quickly turned itself around as we had a wonderful breakfast and set out in two groups on our first game drive. We saw a lot of incredible mammals and birds in action. A few of the mammals we saw were the eland, water buck, kudu, elephant, warthog, lion, vervet monkey, blesbok, rhinoceros, wildebeest, and the red hartebeest. A few of the birds we saw were the ant eating chat, fork-tailed drongo, speckled mousebird, southern boubou, African fish eagle, black headed heron, cape longclaw, pied and cape crow, ostrich, helmeted guinea fowl, common fiscal, hoopoe, and brown hooded kingfisher. Some of the highlights on the game drive included witnessing a lion kill and having a very close encounter with two of the elephants on the reserve. Witnessing the lion kill was a very educational example of a predator prey relationship in the wild. We not only saw the lions make the kill, but we also heard a few of the other species (including the vervet monkeys and the cape crows) give alarm calls to warn one another that there was an approaching predator. The elephant sightings were also very interesting. We got to see the elephants in their natural habitat and observe their ecological niche. We looked at what they were eating and talked about their physical appearance and any slight differences that were seen between the two of them.