rhino – Page 9 – Christian Sperka Photography

2015-12-13

Mud!

It looks almost like make-up – the various colors on this White Rhino’s horn 🙂

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2015-11-162015-11-16

Large, Small and Tall

These are three of my favorite images I took during another great stay at Pongola Game Reserve.

Large

Small

Tall

2015-07-10

Vigilant ‘house cats’, the neighbours’ kits at play and an excited gentleman in front of the house!

Well, this title might be a bit misleading 🙂

When I left Thanda House this afternoon for a quick visit to friends on a neighbouring reserve, I left Thanda’s two Cheetah boys in charge of perimeter security around Thanda House.

As I drove onto the reserve where my friends live, I took pictures of two little White Rhinos at play.

And when I got back to Thanda a young Elephant bull gave me a rather excited welcome. From the way he reacted to my vehicle, looking at the glands on his forehead and judging from other obvious signs of excitement :-), he may be getting into musth.

Not the regular house cats, not the average kits at play and a rather unusual excited gentleman in front of the house, but another really good afternoon in the African bush!

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A bit mad!

What does a wildlife photographer – who lives on a big five game reserve – do on his day off work? He goes to another game reserve to spend a day taking more wildlife pictures 🙂 – sounds a bit mad, but I enjoyed myself!

This “Lion-Rhino-Car” encounter is just a teaser for the images to come from my recent off-day at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi National Park!

This picture shows a White Rhino bull walking calmly by a young male Lion. This youngster was part of a large pride of Lions devouring a Buffalo bull, which they had killed in the morning hours next to this road, only 20 meters (50 feet) to the right in thick bush. I drove up to this scene just moments after I entered the park. And a few more minutes after I took this picture cars started piling up at this sighting which made it impossible to take any more good images. I moved on and left the madness behind me.

2015-05-01

Fourteen for the Villa! (13)

I have selected fourteen images which are now hanging in two of the suites at Thanda’s Villa iZulu. These are some of my favorite images and I have prepared them in sepia to match the existing old-fashioned frames. Over the next few days I would like to share these images with you.

Here is number thirteen: Black Rhino Charge

PS: If you stay at Thanda’s Villa iZulu in the suites number 2 or 3 you can view them in the original print.

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Fourteen for the Villa! (9)

Here is number nine: White Rhino Cow

PS: If you stay at Thanda’s Villa iZulu in the suites number 2 or 3 you can view them in the original print.

2015-04-22

Eye Level

It takes a bit of experience to keep shooting pictures when a Black Rhino bull gives you a proper warning charge and comes up within meters of your vehicle. The first few times the adrenalin level is so high that pressing that shutter button is just not an option :-).

Today, one of Thanda’s Black Rhino bulls gave me such a charge, but I was not sitting high up in my game viewer as usual, but I was straight on eye level in my Toyota Fortuner. This picture shows the gentlemen in full charge, only turning away a few meters in front of my car. My 300mm lens was too long to shoot the complete sequence. For the second part of this process I had only his head in my viewfinder!

These type of exciting motion photo shoots are my favorites!

2014-12-15

Rosettes, Horns and a Gorgeous Bird!

Two amazing days at Thanda! Even our most frequent safari guests were very impressed when we had Leopard and Black Rhino sightings two days in a row.

After last night’s exciting encounters with a young Leopard and three relaxed Black Rhinos (a bit of a contradiction in terms :-)), we spotted a big Leopard male early this morning and then found a quite nervous Black Rhino bull (being nervous is more standard Black Rhino behavior).

But the most exciting sighting for our guests was a Gorgeous Bush Shrike. This very colorful bird is often heard, but seldom seen (especially in good photographic condition). So after six years in which our guests were tracking this species in many different places around South Africa, yesterday Bheki and I were able to show them this beautiful creature (and we even got some decent pictures).

PS: I should mention that during their two-nights stay our guests also saw Lions, Elephants, White Rhino, Cape Buffalo, Cheetah, Black-Backed Jackal, Giraffe, Zebra, Kudu, Nyala, Impala, Wildebeest, Warthog and many different bird species.

Young Male Leopard