Safari Live - Day 11 | National Geographic

[Music] Well, we are trying to see if we can't find a Terrapin once again. But suppose we should say hello at first. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to our sunset Safari. We had a few technical issues, so we are now back with you guys, and hopefully, everything will be sorted for the rest of our afternoon. Our chair is a beautiful afternoon, so we hopefully are going to have a wonderful time as we explore the northeastern corner of South Africa.

My name is Justin, and on camera today, I've got Sebastian. As I was saying, we are going to be exploring, and it is live, which means that we would love to hear from all of you. So, hashtag Safari live on Twitter or on the YouTube chat if you want to get hold of us. I did say it was a warm hot day. It almost feels as though it's summer. So, he came down towards—we asked them to see if there wasn't anything lurking—and there is a hippo, if you can believe it, somewhere in this dam. But unfortunately, it seems to be very shy.

There its nostrils are, just a little nose sticking out, so a very shy hippo. It's getting a breath, and under it goes again. It doesn't want anything to do with us at this stage, so it's being a little bit of a terror when it comes to that. Also, the Terrapins seem to be giving Seb a hard time. I can actually see one floating in the distance. They serve in the dark green part of the reflection. You'll see that there is a head just on the left side. There it is, so there's some Terrapins that I have the best possible place today. They are enjoying a bit of sunshine and the pool, basically, and I think they have definitely got it right this afternoon.

Now, I'm going to explore all of the water holes because it is a warm afternoon. But Dr. Tara is back in familiar territory, and she's decided that she's going to teach us all the wonderful and weird things that we have here from the confines of the tent back in the office.

So yes, welcome. My name is Tara, and joining me on camera this afternoon is Senzo and James. I promise I won't break anything—well, I'll try not to break anything. So, I'm very excited to be in the tent and do it. Well, I'm calling it Aladdin's cave—it's amazing. So, we'll have a look in there shortly. But those who weren't on safari, we picked this up this morning. This was from a lappet-faced vulture—absolutely fantastic! Look at the size of it.

So, we did go and have a look at the carcass, and we thought we would go and see what the vultures were doing. The lappet-faced vulture was sat there on the tree, and he toileted, which tends to suggest they're about to take off. He didn't take off while we were live, so as we crossed to Tristan, he then took off as we drove underneath, and this fell out. Now, that's very normal, so don't worry—that's not losing its feathers just willy-nilly. It's very, very normal from Toulouse feathers, even the primaries like this during a molt.

What they normally do is molt the same feather on both wings so that they actually balanced. But look at the size of it! So this lappet-faced vulture—this is its primary feather and one of the outermost primaries, and that's the one that you see when the birds are actually soaring. It's the one you see that looks like fingers. But look at the size of that—it's just absolutely incredible. I just can't get over the size of this.

And then you can see the part that will actually go into the bird. I mean, look at that—it's pretty thick, isn't it? I mean, that's almost half the width of my finger. That is just crazy! Now, I know this is a primary feather because we can actually see it's very uneven either side. And I was actually correct this morning; I got myself all muddled.

So, I was calling this ratchet, and I was thinking, "No, it's not the ratchet." But it actually is! So, this is the ratchet—the middle section—and then these are the veins. But you can see it's very uneven, so we've got the very thin leading edge just like that as a plain wing, and then you've got the trailing edge, which is much longer.

And if you've sat on a plane—which I'm sure many people across the world have done—so I'm usually behind. I'm usually this side of th...