From my back yard

Ok so I think its about time I should show you some of the scenery in my yard. A little breakdown. We live in an old farm house which was built around the 1930's. Its situated on a pecan nut orchard. I stand to be corrected, but its about 60 hectares in size. The part of it we stay on is the oldest part of it. You can tell just by looking at the trees. The largest on the farm and they produce most of the nuts. Harvest time is just around the corner. I CAN'T WAIT!! When I go for hikes and to take some pics, I walk about a km or 2 until I reach the Magaliesburg river. It's truly a breathtaking sight.

The orchard in winter

The orchard in spring/summer

The hiking trail goes on for miles. If you have the energy and time, you can go right up to the foothills of the mountain. other than hiking, you can also do it on mountainbike and also book at one of the surrounding lodges to go by horseback. What i still want to try is go on a zipline tour through the tree canopies along some of the gorges.

The clean mountain river water is really refreshing in the hot summer months. The piece of river closest to me is riddled with rock pools. Once again, the birdlife is terrific, a mixture of bush birds and aquatic birds, as well as farely large raptors. I have often found the remains of dead birds from them. What I still have to try and see, are the few leopards and jackals amongst the bushy surroundings. I have found their spoor, but that's about it!

Then, after a good days hike, we like to come home, have a good south african braai, and chill by our outside fire pit, seen below. Life is good right now :)

It is like we are forever on holiday, and I can promise you this, even though I have to commute to the city for work, it is all worth it to come home to this!

Pilanesburg national park

Myself and Stace decided to go to this park for the day to see some of the bigger mammals we have. Wow we saw a lot! No predators unfortunately as it was the middle of summer and way too hot. Regardless, I got some pretty decent shots. We arrived at about 7AM and were one of the first ones there which was great. I was so excited because I hadn't been to a national park in about 16 years, which was the Kruger.

This Impala and her young were the first ones I snapped.It wasn't even 5 minutes through the gate. 

There must've been about 50 of them, as always.

I managed to get this great picture of a dung beetle rolling a fresh ball from the elephants droppings. They are amazing creatures. He would roll the ball a few cm and then climb on top of it to see which direction he was going and making sure it was safe. There are even signs on the road warning drivers to watch where they going so not to run them over!

Birdlife was plentiful, much to my liking. I captured this Lesser masked weaver singing away and trying to entice a worthy female to come and inspect his newly weaved nest.The one female who came to check it out wasn't really impressed and flew off to the next male. Poor guy. It can't be easy building something so intricate with just a beak and feet!

We were in for a real treat when we drove up this narrow and quiet dirt road. I noticed quite a few broken branches around and was certain there were elephants close by. Around the corner we found a small water hole and snapped this beautiful shot. This is probably one of my best ones so far.

 This Zebra was nice and close to our car. Great for a "Kodak Moment" There were quite a few babies around as well which was nice to see. Always in the same vicinity as the Blue Wildebeest. As far as I know, Zebras have a keen eyesight and Wildebeest have keen hearing so together, make a good team when looking out for predators. They looked very relaxed here so, unfortunate for us, knew we wouldn't be seeing any carnivores!

Well, that is all for now. Keep a look out for my next one in the following days to come.

The Challenging ones...

 Right, so I really have found my match in terms of photography.......Trying to capture the perfect shot of a bird in flight. Damn bloody difficult! I'm always too early or too late, proper flaws of an amateur! Oh well, practice makes perfect I guess.

 On the right is a Grey Hornbill. When the seasons change to the cooler times of the year, I get a flock of no less than 15 of them. They seem to search for the grubs hiding beneath all the fallen leaves from the pecan nut trees. They are very difficult to photo in my area as they are quite shy. Using a 300mm lens, I have to get kind of close as well which isn't easy. I captured this one by pure chance. Yes I know, it is no way near to being compared to a professional photographer, but I don't think it's that bad?



Below is a Whitebacked Vulture. It was on Christmas morning of 2011. We were busy preparing a Tarzan roast which is basically a spit roast that is hung above a fire instead of using a motorized assembly. It obviously took a liking to the sight of the leg of pork! We have a vulture sanctuary just up on the mountain by us. They are often circling high up in the wind thermals. Sadly, these magnificent creatures are endangered, largely due to eating carcasses that have been poisoned.
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This Grey Headed Gull was quite a treat. Keeping in mind that I am give or take, about 600km from the nearest ocean, it has found refuge here by the dam! It just kept gliding continuously  up and down the river where i was fishing. It was just perfect. Every now and then it would fly down close to the water and catch small fish.

I really like this one. When we first moved into our house, all I had was my bird field guide. No camera as yet. Seeing all these birds got my mind set on getting one. I decided to make a feeding spot on this tree to attract the fruit eaters. These are known as Red Billed WoodHoopoes. The one parent, seen here with the red bill, would eat its fill, and then regurgitate the remainder into either one of its four young. It was fascinating to watch how the youngsters progressed and learned from its two parents.

Some of my first's

Right, I have just started blogging and already I'm addicted!






OK let's get going. Below is one of my favourite resident birds. Commonly known as the greyheaded bush shrike, the locals call it the "spookvoel" Afrikaans for "ghost bird" because of the eerie call it makes. The male, seen here in the photo, is a real loner, calling out for a suitable female to breed with. You can see here that he also offers gifts to try and entice her. You can tell this is one of my first photos. Off centre and a bit blurred in some spots. I was still getting the feel of my camera, so please bare with me, they will improve as we go on!

This photo below was a particular hard one. I think it was about 40+ photos taken to capture just this one!I used a macro lens zoomed to 55mm for this. It still is one of my favourites.

Below is a small spotted genet, a nocturnal feline. My dogs were going ballistic the one night so I strapped on my headlamp to investigate. I heard a commotion in the trees so I quickly ran in and got my camera. I was really excited to get a night shot of whatever was lurking in the trees! With the help of my headlamp I managed to focus on it, using a 300mm lens. I took quite a few good ones, but one uploaded picture should suffice.

Well that's it for now. More photos to follow shortly!

So it Begins.....

So this is my very first blog ever. Mmmmmmmm, how to start?

Well, I have always been fascinated with the outdoor life from a very young age. Living in the city was really stumping my love for it, so about a year ago, my fiance and I found a perfect house to rent in the middle of the Magaliesburg mountains in Hartebeespoort, South Africa.

A nearby hiking trail I found

Well, the nature and scenery that I have been exposed to here, right in my backyard, is truly breathtaking! There was only one solution to show everybody what I was talking about. I decided to get my very first DSLR camera. Although it is only an entry level camera, it is still able to capture phenomenal shots! Or maybe its not the camera, but the eye behind the lens, I don't know.

Our night time visitor

So, What I will be doing in the up and coming future is to upload the shots I take, and write about the little story behind each one. I truly hope all of you who hopefully end up reading/following my blogs, thoroughly enjoy it. This is basically the easiest way to share what I see " through my lens"