Shaky sunrise

The sun rose soon after our encounter with the trio of lions. The sky brightened through a series of colours, and the darkness around us could soon be resolved into grass and road. Strangely shaped peaks rose out of the horizon.

Zebras had begun grazing already. Zebras tend to eat all parts of grass, leaves, sheath, and stem, but their stomachs are not designed to digest the sheath and stem completely. A foal stood on the road and looked intently at us. The light was still so low that I had to use a long exposure. I liked the fact that it allowed me to capture the motion of the foal’s head as it tried to assess us. Its legs were planted firmly on the ground, so it had no intention of running, but the movement of its head showed that it was curious about us.

In the semi-light at the edge of the road we spotted a spectacularly spotted bird. The legs were long, was it a courser? No, its knees gave it away. A thick-knee. Its identification gave me a little trouble later. It can be nothing but the Spotted Thick-knee (Burhinus capensis), although its eyes look dark in this photo, and not yellow. I put that down to the bad light we saw it in. It is a common bird, found right across sub-Saharan Africa all the way down to the cape, which inhabits all ecologies except the forests of the Congo region.

It had already turned out to be an interesting morning. And now, as the sky brightened, we spotted a lioness in the distance, near the horizon. We noticed the movement as it rose from where it had been sitting. I nursed a secret hope of seeing a chase or a kill. But no. It sat down again. It remained alert, with head poking out of the grass. It certainly looked like it wanted to eat, but we decided to move on.