South African wildlife is off the scale, but you don’t even have to go on safari to experience it. Usually, there is plenty (sometimes a little too much) wildlife right here in our neighborhood backyard in Johannesburg, South Africa.
I’ve variously written about and/or where possible photographed the spiders, snakes, birds, wasps and the scorpion that we’ve encountered around the estate and occasionally in our home or garage. There’s a lot of windows in our house, so we’ve had several birds thud into them and several more that have flown in through and open door or window.
We’ve had visits from crested barbets, hadedas, spider wasps, rain spiders and all manner of other creatures great and small. However, I’d never managed to get a really good look at any of the monitor lizards resident in our estate , until now…
Check out this bad boy heading off to chomp on his fish. He (or could it a be a she?) lives just down at the end of our road in a small nature reserve where I walk our dog. Easily two meters or more from top to tail, it could easily be mistaken for some kind of small crocodile, or, if you’re imagination is a vivid as our youngest child, a dragon or even a dinosaur. You can read more about that in the post Dragon Sighting.
Alternatively, you can read more about actual safaris, with elephants and lions here.
What the most ‘exciting’ wildlife encounter you’ve had in your neighbourhood?
Since writing this, we have moved to Hong Kong and yet again, there is plenty of wildlife. Some of Hong Kong’s wild residents include snakes, but also wild boar, porcupines, pangolins, monkeys and rather thrillingly PINK dolphins (also known as Chinese White Dolphins).
Mostly creatures are spotted in the wilder parts of Hong Kong, the jungle covered hillsides, yet even in the concrete jungle there are wild things. Not so long ago a wild boar wandered into a train station and briefly caused havoc.
Expatorama 