A Morning With Ellies

The day started off with the sound of the Wild Dogs running past the lodge, but the morning belonged to the Ellies!

As we were waiting for the guests to come down for breakfast a very large breeding herd arrived at the lodge's waterhole to join the lone bull that was hanging around for most of the morning so far. Fantastic spectacle!! There were more then thirty elephants drinking and splashing around.

There were at least three very, very young babies in the group and this made for some quite aggressive behaviour between the various females in the group. At one stage one of these females charged and knocked one of the young males off his feet when he got to close to her baby.

The youngest ellie in the herd could not have been more then a few weeks old and never ventured too far from mom! Great to see a herd with all the different ages mixed together! Young males play-fighting, youngsters suckling from mom and the whole bunch of them in and out of the water.

When the herd eventually moved off after more then an hour, two of the oldest males stayed behind. You could almost see their sense of relief that all the females and 'noisy children' decided to move on.

As the guests sat down for breakfast, one of the the old guys came to enjoy the Red Bushwillow right next to the breakfast deck. Some nervous guests, very excited kids and great images!!

Anyway, now I have another hundred or so images to work through... The plan is still to get most of them loaded by the end of the week!! Gonna have to get busy!

Until next time!

Gerry