Namibia/Botswana/Zambia 4

Tags

bateleur, bee-eater, black rhino, giraffe, Halali camp, hippo, Impala, Kori bustard, lioness, slender mongoose, Springbok, Striped mongoose, turtle dove, zebra

Monday afternoon and evening, 25th February. After a siesta we went out for another drive, aiming for another waterhole. On the way:

Kori bustard – a very big bird which ‘flies reluctantly’

These may resemble our collared doves, but they are African (aka Cape) turtle doves. I rather mind the name, given that our own turtle doves are now such a rarity.

Once at the waterhole we were royally entertained.

Springbok trying to keep cool. It was particular hot this afternoon.

Adult and juvenile Bateleurs. ‘Bateleur’ is French for an acrobat, and the bird is so-named for its sideways rocking flight. like the rocking of the high-wire artist’s pole.

Black-faced impala

Juvenile baleteur

Zebra with a springbok

A scattering of giraffes

I thought I was taking the juvenile Bateleur cooling itself. But, as I take photos on burst setting, I found I had also taken a sequence of a bee-eater coming in, hoping to catch a fish. Sadly the sequence did not include the entry to the pool, but here it is emerging – with no fish.

? I’m tempted to suggest a juvenile African fish-eagle, but our records say we did not see one that day.

A lioness appeared some way off,

and joined another.

Springbok

During our return to Halali Camp for our second night there:

A slender mongoose

some striped mongooses,

and another black rhino! Most unexpected to see so many and so soon:

After an early dinner we returned to the morning’s waterhole, by now floodlit, in the vehicles this time even though it was only a short walk away.

As we arrived, a hippo was leaving, and there was the twittering of hundreds of sandgrouse (?) arriving and drinking their fill for quite a while until they left.

A mother hippo and youngster arrived.

Another (the first?) arrived. Mother was very protective, though the youngster seemed curious about the newcomer.

But sadly, having stayed an hour we had to leave before we could see the outcome of the confrontation.

Namibia/Botswana/Zambia 3

Tags

black rhino, black-backed jackal, blacksmith lapwing, elephant, Etosha National Park, Etosha Pan, glossy starling, Halali camp, Hyena, Impala, kudu, laughing dove, Lion, marabou stork, Namibia, red hartebeest, rhino, Rock kestrel, Scops owl, secretary bird, Spotted hyena, Springbok, Striped mongoose, whydah, zebra

Monday, morning, 25th February. Here is a map of Etosha National Park. “>http://a href=”https://www.etoshanationalpark.org”><img src=”https://www.etoshanationalpark.org/media/Etosha-Map2.jpg” alt=”Etosha National Park Map” title=”Etosha National Park Map”/></a>

It’s huge. Etosha Pan itself is 75 miles/120 kilometres long. This is a dried up lake, the salt from which affects the land to its south. We had entered the NP by Anderson Gate, in the middle of the Park, and Halali Camp is a little over a third of the way along the Pan to the northwest of the Gate. The map shows the many waterholes.

After a very early breakfast, we went out for a ‘game’ drive. It was not quite as light as my camera made out to begin with.

Black-backed jackal

Our first lion, a female with a nasty but healing wound. She seems to have the remains of a kill.

Springbok and Striped Mongooses

Secretary bird, the last we were to see

Our first elephant, much further off than it appears from this maximum zoom photo

The Pan in the middle ground

Rock kestrel?. No, a lesser kestrel according to BL.

And then we heard a lion was on its way. Our leaders positioned the vehicles near the pool it was thought to be heading for.

What a handsome beast!

He roared for his females. It was loud! Nothing like the gentle huffing in the following video taken from a new spot we had moved to

He stopped, examined us …

… and then moved off. We did not see his females.

We continued on our way, and I’m starting to recognise a blacksmith lapwing.

What’s that venturing its head out of a (dried up of course) culvert?…

… A spotted hyena

Another black rhino – or rather two!

When we got back to Halali Camp, it was still relatively early, and we had a couple of hours off. The Camp had no free wifi, but our vehicles did, and I spent some time in one of them (as it was being driven to get fuel and then parked somewhere in the camp) catching up with vital home political news. (For those interested in such things, I learned that THAT vote, due already for the nth time on 27th February, was being put off again for two weeks.)

Before lunch, the group walked five minutes to the waterhole a few had visited the previous evening. En route we saw in the camp grounds, among other things, …

a Cape glossy starling (we were to see many varieties of beautiful starling in the two weeks),

and an African Scops owl, trying to sleep, a bit fed up with the attention. To quote from my bird book, ‘ … its cryptic colouring makes detection difficult. This camouflage is further enhanced by its habit of depressing its fathers to appear long and thin, raising its ear tufts and half-closing its eyes, creating the illusion of a tree stump.’

Once at the waterhole, where we were comfortably seated, we saw plenty of life.

Kudu and Marabou stork

Red-billed teal

Kudu

Laughing dove and Long-tailed paradise whydahs (?)

I think this is the male of a species of Paradise whydah in transition to breeding plumage, but I’m not sure

Impalas practising. Elephant dung gets everywhere.

Marabou stork

Long-tailed Paradise-Whydahs, male and female

The pool was not empty for long

Red hartebeest

And this I how the pool was when we left for our lunch.

It had been quite a morning!

Tanzania 6

Tags

black kite, black rhino, black-backed jackal, buffalo, elephant, flamingo, great white pelican, hippo, Kori bustard, lesser flamingo, lioness, Ngorogoro, Ngorogoro Crater, rhino, Tanzania, Tarangire, Thomson's gazelle, weaver bird, zebra

We moved on, and I was thrilled now to see flamingos taking off from the lake,

rising higher and higher and higher.  I was mindful of a documentary I had seen on TV about some Great White Pelicans taking off daily from a lake with no fish, using thermals to rise over some mountains to get to another lake where the food was plentiful.

As I followed these flamingos with my eyes, I seemed to me that they were doing the same thing, for whatever reason, and I watched them fly off from the crater and over its rim.  Others more interested in photographic opportunities than wildlife behaviour  did not get as excited as I was.

Kori bustard, display

Black-backed jackal

We found ourselves in an area with many lionesses – and many jeeps.  The former just ignored the latter except when they had to go round them.  Reactions of other wildlife were mixed.  Some seemed to realise that the felines were not hunting, but were just in a quest for water. Others – the Thomson’s gazelles perhaps – maybe could not even see the danger.  Truly hunting lions would not have made themselves so obvious.

We were all excited to see in the distance a black rhino, something we could certainly not have counted on.

Black rhino. The name has nothing to do with the colour.

Black-backed jackal

To the ‘Hippo Pool’ where some of us were fortunate enough to find some shade and a place to sit to have our lunch, amused by two kinds of weaver birds.  We were advised to keep our food well covered or it might be snatched by black kites.

Hippo pool

Two kinds of weaver birds

Black kite

We started to climb – in our jeeps – out of the crater after lunch, to make our way to our next Park, stopping only to pay tribute to those  who over the years had lost their lives in the service of wildlife, killed in the main not by animals but by poachers.

Climbing up the side of the crater

At the top

A tribute to those who have lost their lives in defence of the area’s wildlife

 

(Coming: Tarangire National Park)