It was quite windy through the night and it is cool this morning. As the dawn breaks I can see that it is partially cloudy and light is quite flat. I think photography will be a challenge today. We find the three male lions close to where we left them last night. They look sleepy and are just lying by the side of the track without a care in the world. We watch them for a while but it is very clear that they are not moving any time soon so we continue on our drive.

I enjoyed sitting and watching a coran. I call them the suicide bird. They perch on a mound, click their beak faster and faster, then let out a piercing series of high pitched whistles. If you are lucky they then fly straight up in the air, close their wings and do a death roll to the ground , just opening their wings at the very last minute. Sadly I couldn’t capture that but did get the singing.

I never tire of trying to photograph bee-eaters, but they rarely pose with the light in the right direction.

There are lots of zebra around this morning and a few herds of impala. We spot elephant in the distance and there are some lovely groupings of animals down by the water holes including wildebeest with very young calves.

I capture some reasonable in-flight photos of a juvenile fish eagle which was a very long way away 

When we stop for coffee we notice a Verreaux’s eagle owl in the tree above us. While I was taking photos I could hear buzzing and realised there was also a beehive in the same tree. It looked as though the bees had just swarmed and this is where they had settled. There was also an unusual sighting of a large monitor lizard in a tree. I had assumed that they only lived on the ground and was very surprised when Mayezi pointed it out to me.

On our way back to camp I also saw a side-striped jackal which I have never seen before.

I’m sitting in my room and looking at the photos I took this morning. I’m disappointed that many are quite grainy due to the poor light conditions. I think on past holidays I would have been quite happy with this morning‘s results but now I know what I can achieve with the new camera lens. This morning’s efforts are not up to par at all. I think I may have taken quite a few bird in flight photographs in tracking mode and I am beginning to feel that this is a mistake. I think I achieve a much better result using back button focus in continuous focus mode. However, I shall continue to experiment and see what I prefer. It’s early days and almost every animal requires different camera settings. I set up lots of custom modes but in the heat of the moment I couldn’t remember what was what! I found it quicker to change settings in the magic grid. So I just need to practice to work out what works best in each situation.

On my final drive at Lebala, I opted to spend some time trying to capture lechwe running and jumping. It is a huge challenge and I think I will need to return and spend solid days trying to get the perfect shot. They are not bad but I know I can do better with time and patience.

…..and of course I had to take a few more bird photos before I left and we had nice sunset drinks by the river.

When I returned to camp there were two new guests – Amy and Douglas. It turns out that they will join me at Kwara Camp in three day’s time. They seemed a nice couple – interesting and chatty. It was quite a treat to have other guests for dinner and not just camp staff (even though they were good company).