Forest Cobra

This was the morning walk from the camp. The first two hours it was fairly quiet with not much animal activity around us in the vegetation type broad leafed woodland. Our tracker, Zakele suddenly stopped and freezed. Just in front of it we saw this shiny black tail and realized maybe a Forest Cobra, and a very big one as well. We stood there for approximately five minutes and the front half of it was in a hole. With no movement we thought the snake was dead. We then went a little bit closer and then the snaked moved. We moved back a bit and then the front section came out and stood up facing us. This was enough to make a positive ID that it is a Forest Cobra. The Forest Cobra then started sailing into the thickets and disappeared. This was fantastic seeing for the first time the typical cobra defense display. Special thanks to Stephan Bierling for the photographs.

Posted: Phinda by philip de bruyn, Date: 9 March 2008

 
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