Tuesday 24 April 2012

Dancing Flamingos and Prancing Hippos

Two incidences stood out for me on yesterdays boat cruise (on top of the fact that I left my camera behind as the day was dark gloomy and threatening to rain – which held off until my guests were safely back in the hotel) – dancing flamingos and prancing hippos.The hippo was a young one that is very curious about the boat at the moment and sometimes follows us for quite a way before returning to his family. 


I was gently floating down the shore with the engines off watching a group of reedbuck on the shore when he decided to cross the lake for another look at us. He moved off a bit after studying us for a while and then started to jump about in the water like a puppy with a toy throwing himself out of the water and rolling around forwards, backwards and sidewards. After few minutes of this display of rotund grace he decided to return across the lake moving like a porpoise in a series of rolling dives.


Later the bird contingent decided not to let the mammals carry the day away entirely and organised a small group of greater flamingos to put on a display of stilt walking, pink feather ruffling, wing stretching and a short flight just to end the show. On behalf of the mammals I would like to say it was possibly a bit over the top and showed desperation in the competition stakes.