What Big Ears You Have

At the camps in Kruger National Park there are daily sightings boards where visitors can mark their major animal sightings on a map. Every day, the species sighted the fewest times was the wild dog. We didn't see any during our first six days in the park. On the morning of the seventh day we said goodbye to our friends and left camp to head out of the park toward Mala Mala game reserve. We were on the road less than five minutes when we came across a small traffic jam, caused by three dogs wandering down the road.

The sun was just coming up, and cars kept blocking it (as well as my view) much of the time, but I was fortunate to get a few nice portraits of this endangered species. I think this one turned out fairly well thanks to all the nice gold and orange tones in the background and on the animal itself.

Later I learned that packs of dogs will often split into three groups when hunting. Two will head out into the bush and drive prey toward the road, where the victim will slip on the pavement. The third and final group will be lingering on the road waiting to pounce. So we may have witnessed a hunting party in action. The dogs led a parade of cars for several kilometers before we finally decided we had to head off to our destination.

Canon 7D
Canon 500mm f/4 IS
ISO 640
1/400th
f/4

Max