Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Parkland Savanna


I have always thought of this, my favourite landscape after the beaches of East Africa, as 'parkland savanna'. It's typically open grassland with stands of acacia, doum palms and, nearer the coast, a scattering of giant baobab trees. It's a landscape dotted with....

....towering termite mounds, and the home of....

....some of the world's most magnificent wildlife.


It's a perfect landscape for walking in search of game. Their presence adds another dimension: this landscape may be beautiful but it harbours some of the world's top predators; and the frisson between these two ideas is what makes it so very special.

It also makes a fine silhouette foreground for Africa's stunning sunsets.

Pictures taken in Selous Game Reserve, Tanzania. 

2 comments:

  1. A magnificent landscape; and to think it goes on and on into the distance - not just a small parkland like we might expect in the UK. Being dry, is it good for insects, other than termites? The big five for me would include beetles, moths, butterflies, wasps and centipedes.

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    1. Plenty there for you to enjoy, Derryck, some of them none too pleasant. Tse-tse fly, mosquitos, dung beetles, hornets, a long millipede we called a 'Mombasa-Nairobi train', and some of the nastiest bees in the world. It really is a wildlife paradise. Jon

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