Safari guests can be heard laughing in disbelief as the elephant easily uproots the tree in a South Africa game reserve.
Safari guests in South Africa watched in awe recently as an elephant uprooted and toppled a fairly large tree.
“Unparalleled strength. He made it look so easy,” Tim Prettejohn, a guide for Dulini Lodge, described via Instagram.
Prettejohn’s footage shows the elephant shoving with its head and pushing three times before the tree toppled to the ground. The safari guests can be heard laughing in disbelief.
Elephants are known to occasionally topple savanna trees in order to access their upper leaves. In fact, this type of browsing behavior is fairly common and has been described as destructive in parts of South Africa.
Dulini Lodge is within Sabi Sands Game Reserve adjacent to Kruger National Park.
Birders and naturalists observing great blue herons in Ontario, Canada, were astonished Tuesday to discover that a black bear had climbed high up the narrow trunk of a tree to access a heron nest.
Birders observing great blue herons in Ontario, Canada, were surprised Tuesday to see a black bear standing in a nest more than four stories up a tree.
“How do I report this on eBird?” photographer Ken MacDonald joked on Facebook, referring to the online sightings database.
MacDonald told For The Win Outdoors that the bear must have climbed “four or five stories” to reach the nest, and while that’s impressive the bear’s motives were sadly clear.
Black bear chose one of the highest nests. Photo: Ken MacDonald
“We couldn’t see chicks in the nest that the bear was sitting in but it did seem to be nosing down into the nest and feeding,” MacDonald said. “The bear was also looking at the nest below and behind it, but it would have had to climb back down and then up another tree to get to that nest.”
Great blue herons establish nesting colonies in treetops and adults can be fiercely defensive while fending off potential predators. But on Tuesday, as MacDonald reported, “The heronry didn’t seem quite as busy as it was earlier in the spring, perhaps for a good reason.”
Black bears are prolific climbers and among their prey items each spring are great blue heron eggs and nestlings.
Black bears sometimes prey on heron nestlings. Photo: Ken MacDonald
MacDonald said adult herons did not so much as swoop on the bear, “though all the birds in the neighborhood were silent and watchful.
“We wondered if some adults might attack the bear as it made its descent but we weren’t able to hang around long enough to see that.”
MacDonald said the bear, being well-fed, might have been content to remain in the nest into or through the night.
The heron nesting colony is in Ontario’s Severn township. The photos appeared on the Midland-Penetanguishene Field Naturalists Facebook page.
