Well, it’s a good day when you see a hyena, a honey badger, six lions, one black rhino and four white rhino before breakfast. Admittedly, breakfast only happened after 10:00am, but we were occupied with other things.
Wonderful to see a black rhino, but the poor animal had obviously had a run-in with lions recently. You could clearly see claw marks on both sides, as well as under his chin, which means that at least three lions must have tried to take the big guy down. Obviously, he managed to shake them off, because he’s still around, wounds and all. Come on chaps! Don’t you know he’s endangered? Go and eat an impala, for goodness sake! Poor rhinos – not an easy life when you have poachers and lions to fend off. I hope he stood on one of the lions, just for good measure. We did see six lions in the area, but whether this was the guilty party or not we don’t know. None of them was limping from a rhino stomping.
From the photos you can also clearly see the different shapes of the two kinds of rhino: the black rhino has a pointed lip for browsing (leaves and branches), while the white rhino broad, flat, wide lips for grazing (grass). We saw the black and white rhinos at the same waterhole, within minutes of one another.
Another good day in Africa.
