New local photo spot!

[Rudi Venter]

Well, new to me anyway

I recently discovered I have a wilderness/conservation area of around 100ha less than 5 minutes from home, a well kept secret!

I went there for a quick hike yesterday, to investigate if there are any photo opportunities and I was pleasantly surprised. The area used to be part of a game farm but the farm house was abandoned years ago. The area includes at least 3 different forests, a river, nice cliffs, rocky hills and savannah area. In the short time I was there I spotted Impala, Blesbuck, Zebra and Ostrich and I am sure there are more. The hiking trails are nicely laid out, while walking you cannot believe you are inside a big city!

A few images, next time I will go out armed with a long lens for all the birds and animals and a macro lens for all the small stuff, this time I only had one of my trusty 1DSmk2's and a 24-105 L IS with me.

Some of the typical Africa Bush veldt vegetation.

More trees and grass closer to the river.

It is now full winter here as you can see by the color of the dry grass.

The abandoned, historic farmhouse. No, no CP used, the sky was that color

Impala trying to decide if he should run or not, suppose he saw I was "shooting" with a "Canon"

I was a bit cautious of this Ostrich, they can kick the cr@p out of you

I will be returning soon, can't wait for spring!

Thanks for looking,
Rudi

 

[Pete Askew]

Nice find Rudi. I like the second and the last especially and I can imagine those abandoned house might be worth exploring.

 

[Katherine Lihou]

I particularly love the colours and textures in #2

Good shots of those animals just wandering around the abandoned buildings instead of their usual habitat. Ostriches can spot you over two miles away and can run down most animals so I'm thinking they can't be particularly aggressive. But your reminder about their kick made me curious enough to look up rather odd articles online on how to survive an ostrich attack. Not sure how true most of this is, but parts of it made me smile:

http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-an-Encounter-with-an-Ostrich

I also didn't know until today that ostriches can swim. I just can't seem to visualise it without laughing. Will continue to search the web for images of it

Thanks for sharing another world.

Cheers,

Kate (the armchair traveler)

 

[Pete Askew]

There you go Kate!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6SSqQZPcds

 

[Katherine Lihou]

Ah! Thank you Pete. Guess we share the same sense of curiosity. I'd just found it too And such a coincidence that the only good one was filmed in Rudi's homeland But having heard written reports of them looking like Loch Ness Monsters in the water I have a strong suspicion that this one was actually wading. Will now be trying to verify the wilder claims in the initial link...

But I'm not sure if you should have posted it on a family site. That ostrich was clearly enraged and out to kill, and all those people running away, and the screaming! Not for the faint of heart

Cheers,

Kate