July has been a quiet month, and thank God for that! I know it’s such a blessing to be able to travel as much as we do, but it is tiring, too; it felt so good just being at home this past month, and enjoying the wildlife in our garden, or on our little island. (As a side note, I’ve learned that green areas cover 72% of our island; there are three nature reserves here, and we’re neighbours with one. Way to go, Lidingö!)
I enjoyed the quiet time, listening to music while I edited photos from our May safari trip. (I try to match the music to the images, it helps set the mood when editing, so there was a lot of African music. Right now, there’s a lot of Ismaël Lô, a Senegalese musician. I listened to this track on repeat, closely followed by this one.)
“Cheetah don’t climb trees”, the guide had just told us. Next thing you know, we stumbled over this handsome teenage cheetah posing nicely on a tree (albeit a low one). Cheetahs are not built for climbing (their claws don’t retract like a leopard’s), but give them a sloping, weathered trunk like this one and they’ll take the high ground gladly. Better view, better odds. Better photos, too.
This one sat for a good while in the early light, watching something far off in the bush. I like that about cheetahs: they always seem to be paying attention to a world slightly beyond the one I can see. I took my photos and mostly just watched it watch.
This image has become one of my absolute favorite photos, one of the highlights of this trip. His intense gaze, the soft light, that fluff on its’ back telling you he’s still young… I love it so much, I may print it and hang it on my wall, in fact.
Another day, another cheetah. Green bokeh behind it, morning light catching the gold in its fur: this cheetah just stood there for a moment, sizing up whatever it was watching. Cheetahs rely on vision more than scent, and it shows in how much time they spend simply looking. Those black lines running from its eyes down to its mouth aren’t decoration; they cut the glare, so the cat can keep watching straight into the midday sun.
We spent the whole afternoon tracking this pride at Tswalu Kalahari Reserve. We knew the lions were lying under bushes and trees somewhere in that area, most likely sleeping and completely invisible in the tall grass. Lions are champion resters: up to twenty hours a day, if you let them.
Then the light started to drop, and the mood shifted. This lioness got up, stretched, and set off down the red sand track, her cubs following at their own pace behind her. Two adult males and another lioness with her cubs were nearby, outside the frame. She’d picked the track for a reason: lions use cleared paths like this one to move quietly at dawn and dusk, without the crunch of dry grass underfoot. The evening hunt had begun, and we watched them disappear into the grass as the mountains turned blue behind them.
This lioness stepped out of the thornveld and stopped right in front of us, front paws neatly together on the red sand, and simply looked. Not aggressive, not nervous, just checking. Lions do this accounting constantly, and once you’ve been on the receiving end of it, you understand how little of the bush you actually notice compared to what notices you.
I liked the restraint of this moment more than any action shot from the trip. The soft overcast light kept her eyes that deep amber, and the dark green scrub behind her did the rest. Sometimes the best photograph is the animal doing almost nothing.
This is the same lion pride, a different day, in the Tswalu Kalahari Reserve. The sky had turned that pink and violet color you sometimes get right after sunset, with the mountains going dark blue behind them. The pride had already made a kill on a zebra, and by the time I caught this moment, cubs and adults were all crowded in around it, with the dominant male moving in to claim his share. Feeding order in a pride isn’t always what people expect; proximity and appetite matter as much as rank in the moment.
It’s one of those scenes where the drama has already happened and what you’re watching instead is the quieter part — who eats where, who waits, who pushes in. I find that almost more interesting than the hunt itself.
This is the male lion from the photo above. While popular media often portrays the “Lion King” as a benevolent father, the reality at a kill site is much more tense. In a pride hierarchy, adult males usually eat first, using their size and intimidating facial expressions (like the snarl seen here) to maintain their position. This snarl serves as a visual warning to others to respect the patriarch’s space.
Despite many trips to Africa, I have never seen wild dogs, unless you count some white tails disappearing into the tall grass. So, imagine my joy and happiness when our guide and tracker not only found them for us but also managed to stay with them for four hours.
We set out at 5:30 in the morning to look for them before they became active. When we finally found them, we watched as they searched for prey, sizing up gnus and oryxes and nearly catching a young oryx that managed to get away. Afterward, they played and socialized before resting in the shade as the day grew hotter. It was an experience I’ll never forget.
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The African wild dog, or painted wolf, is one of the world’s most endangered mammals. According to the IUCN, only 3,000 to 5,500 remain. African wild dog numbers are notoriously hard to pin down, and estimates vary quite a bit by source. However, they all agree they are endangered.
Human expansion and habitat loss have limited them to small areas in southern and eastern Africa, though they once lived across the continent. To witness African wild dogs in the savanna is a rare privilege, as they are notoriously elusive and require massive home ranges.
There’s a colony of habituated meerkats at Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, and I was looking forward to watching them in the morning as they start their day sunning, grooming themselves and each other, and foraging. They didn’t disappoint, and I spent several hours low on the ground, trying to keep pace with these oh-so-fast small animals. I have so many photos from that morning, they’re likely to become a fixture in my favorite-photos series for a while.
This is one of my favorite meerkat photos, because it’s not doing what you usually expect from a meerkat photo — standing sentinel. I wanted to show something different; you’ve probably seen thousands of meerkats standing at attention before. Lying flat like this is mostly about temperature: they press their bellies to the cool sand to shed heat once the day warms up, or sprawl out to soak up the sun early on when it’s still cold. The sand on its’ face is from digging; meerkats have non-retractable claws built for excavating insects and larvae out of the ground, and they’re immune to some scorpion and snake venom, which is a really useful trait when that’s most of what you eat.
📸 All photos were taken with Canon R5 Mark II & Canon RF100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM, except the third one (linoess with cubs at dusk), taken with Canon R5 & Canon RF70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM.
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