LATEST IMAGES ETHIOPIA18

LATEST IMAGES - ETHIOPIA18

On our final full day in the Bale Mountains three of us decided to have a last try for the Wolf. We were accompanied by the local guide Ziyad who soon had us yomping about on the plateau, no easy task with camera gear and no oxygen due to the high altitude! After about 4 hours we had been rewarded by distant views but no images. We were just thinking we would not be successful when the guide called us up onto a ridge and when we got there we were overlooking a den site. Remarkably a Wolf came back within 10 minutes of us being there and regurgitated food to three hungry pups who appeared out of the den hole. One ran away with the mum to the top of the ridge, one shot straight back down the hole but one sat just outside the den providing great photographic opportunities. Ziyad was trying to get us to keep down as much as possible while we were trying to get a bit higher to exclude the out of focus foreground! It was probably quite funny to watch us get a bit higher when Ziyad wasn't watching and then get down a bit when he was looking! Heat haze was still a problem especially as by now we were taking images in the middle of the day but we really did want to do our best to capture this great encounter with these superb animals. After 20 minutes we left the Wolves to themselves and we felt very privileged to have seen the pups at such close quarters, such a great end to our time in the Bale Mountains.