The main focus of our stay in Oudtshoorn was a morning “safari” to see meerkats in the Klein Karoo. However, when we got up at 4.30 am it was raining and we had been warned that the trip would not go ahead in the rain as the meerkats would not come out to play.
Fortunately we were able to re-arrange another visit on the morning we were leaving Oudtshoorn and the weather was fine.
The vegetation in this part of the world was very different from Kruger but quite impressive at this time of the morning with the backdrop of the Swartberg and the Outeniqua Mountains. I must say that, as in Kruger, much of the time I had great difficulty getting the white balance correct in my photos especially with the morning and evening light.
Before we got to see the meerkats (we had to search for them as they move from burrow to burrow) we only saw antelope. In this part of the world they have Southern Eland, Greater Kudu and Common Duiker (the smallest).
Common duiker
Greater Kudu (with the big ears)
There was a family of seven meerkats. It’s a matriarchal society and it seemed that 2 of the meerkats were pregnant and our guide assured us that this was going to cause some fuss in this group.
We saw a few birds on our trip. The first was a house sparrow! There were quite a few Egyptian geese, southern-masked weavers, a couple of southern black korhaan and the ubiquitous common fiscal.
House sparrow
Southern-masked weaver
Southern black korhaan
egyptian goose
Common fiscal (the butcher bird)
Martin's Bird Blog & Nature Photos 