As I walked back to my room at Mokuti Lodge for a rest after lunch, I felt uncomfortable, not for the last time, to see lawn-watering going on for the pleasure of tourists, in a country so afflicted by drought.
In due course, we went out for our late afternoon drive.
Blacksmith lapwings, impala, and the only elephant who visited this watering hole while we were there.… Though more elephants were hanging around at a distance when we arrived, facing in both directions, and took some time to move off. It was as if they couldn’t decide whether to come closer. (I refrain from making current political analogies.)Marabou stork and White-backed vultureThe vulture (which is tagged) does not seem bothered by the giraffe passing behind it.A grey heron lords it over the blacksmith lapwingsI don’t think you can have too much of giraffes.Pied avocets. (It’s not for nothing that in French the avocet is ‘Avocette élégante.)Grey-headed gulls
We moved on – as I recollect to a sewage works.
The Marsh terrapin hangs his legs out to air the rest of his body, as I see it.
As we drove back to the lodge, I tried to capture some of the termite mounds which were to be seen almost everywhere.
KuduThese korhaans started a lekking display but moved off into the privacy (?) of the bushes so we were unable to observe it. Pity!A kudu in our wayBurchell’s sandgrouseDouble-banded courserThe weather threatened…… and came to nothing. Tawny eagle.But still kept threatening. Pale chanting goshawk.
We spent our second night at Mokuti Lodge, to move on the next day.
After as early a breakfast as the hours of Mokuti Lodge would allow, we set off for the morning’s drive.
Very near the roadside and indignant at being disturbed.Lilac-breasted roller. I seem to have taken a lot of photos of this species. They seem to be quite co-operative. And pretty.??Risking the slight irritation of my birdy companions, I asked if we could stop for a photo of these palms, which we had seen the day before without stopping. My companions were in fact quite pleased, in the event, since …… they spotted in one of them what we would note at the of the day as a white-backed vulture. ?Northern black korhaan. If I were to go by my bird book I would say it might be a White-quilled bustard but that is not on our checklist, and it has a different Latin name.Blue craneBlack-winged stilt and very blurry ‘duck’. ?Teal?We came across a lot of ostriches.Many, many ostriches.A male (black) and a female (brown)To me they seem rather sinister when you can only see necks and legsStrutting their stuffShowing their irritation I think. We had hung around for a while.
We stopped for unexpected mid-morning hot drinks, prepared and served by our leaders.
Any stop provides an opportunity for looking out for birds.
African red-eyed bulbul
Someone said, rather patronisingly, that this bird was far too far off for me to be able to take with my small camera. Well, ya boo shucks! Pearl-spotted owl(et). Book says ‘appears dumpy, large-headed and short-tailed’. Yup!Laughing dove. Soooo pretty!
And we continued on our way.
European bee-eater
How leader Neil managed as he was driving along to spot this motionless creature by the side of the road, so well camouflaged against its background, I couldn’t say. ‘Experience’, they said.
Etosha Agama (lizard)HoopoePale chanting goshawk
We arrived at a waterhole, where we were to observe wildlife drama. Wildebeest and zebra were standing around, preparing to drink, but then along came an elephant troop.
A hyena sloped off.
Indeed, two elephant troops arrived – and merged.
To take over the pool entirely. I love the way giraffe’s heads show up against a treeline.After drinking, mud baths are in orderA gemsbok/oryx arrived, but did not yet go near the pool.Wildebeest hold backAs do giraffe. The bolder zebra were soon ‘discouraged’.Two of which took it out on each other.In due course the elephants did move off…And the first to drink in the, by now very disturbed, waters were a black-backed jackal and a blacksmith lapwing.
It was time to return to the lodge for lunch and a siesta.
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 MongoosesSecretary bird, the last we were to seeOur first elephant, much further off than it appears from this maximum zoom photoThe Pan in the middle groundRock 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 hyenaAnother 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 storkRed-billed tealKuduLaughing 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 sureImpalas practising. Elephant dung gets everywhere.Marabou storkLong-tailed Paradise-Whydahs, male and femaleThe pool was not empty for longRed hartebeestAnd this I how the pool was when we left for our lunch.
Saturday night and Sunday morning. (23rd/24th February 2019). We’ll gloss over the sheer panic I had felt for two hours on the Friday afternoon when a trespasser on the railway at my local railway station made me miss my long-haul flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, and I saw my two-week safari in three countries melting away before my eyes. I’ll just thank Naturetrek for speedily booking me onto a flight 3 hours later, and for having arranged the timing of the whole journey such that I was still able to take the intended onward flight to Windhoek, Namibia, (formerly South West Africa) at the same time as my prospective 14 companions.
At Windhoek, we were met by Neil, the proprietor of Safariwise, and the other leader/guide, Jakes, both Afrikaans-origin Namibian nationals. They drove us in two vehicles to the Waterberg Plateau, halfway to Etosha, where we would spend the night. From my leaving home to arrival at our lodge there, it had been some 27 hours.
The scenery changed during the four hoursApproaching the Waterberg Plateau. Termite mounds were everywhere throughout the trip.Pale Chanting Goshawk, a bird we were to see many times in the two weeks. Even I came to recognise it.
Here is a map to explain our itinerary.
From Waterberg we were to go onward to central Etosha for two nights, eastern Etosha for another two, and onward to the north-east border of Namibia to stay for one night in a lodge in Kavangoland, on the Okavango River, with Angola on the other bank. We would then move for three nights to a lodge at the western point of the Caprivi Strip. From there we would make a day visit into Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland), after which we would move on further east within the Caprivi strip for a night in a lodge on the banks of the Zambezi River, and then spend two nights in Botswana itself in Chobe National Park. Our last two nights would be spent just over the border in Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) and we would fly back home, via Johannesburg, from Livingstone, near Victoria Falls.
The following, Sunday, morning, we started as we went on most days – getting up very, very early, with a pre-breakfast walk. This makes sense because it is around dawn and dusk that wildlife is most active. Like us, the creatures do not like to move around in the middle of a hot day. (Daytime maxima during the fortnight varied from 33°C to 38°C, night-time minima from 18° to 22°.) We followed a track near to our accommodation, which was considerably higher than the surrounding plain, but still with the plateau looming over us.
Verreaux’s eagle
The sun was not yet up.
But arrived during our walk
Purple roller
A word on captions. I only started systematically noting the names of the birds I photographed about halfway through the trip, so certainty about the names is not always guaranteed, depending both on whether I was able to check them out after the event, and also on whether I noted them correctly (the latter going for the second half of the trip also). Anyone with better information than I is very welcome to make corrective notes in the comments!
Grey Go-away-bird. These were common, its name deriving from its call.Violet wood Hoopoes
I found their movements quite amusing (3 secs)These sweet little Damara dikdik were all around the rooms – this one was feet away from mine after breakfast – and were quite unafraid of humans.Fork-tailed drongo eating African monarch butterfly, which we saw it catch while we were waiting to leave
After breakfast we set off for our next destination, Etosha National Park. This is one of the two vehicles we travelled in. Everyone had a window seat, most also having the chance for a better view if they stood when the roof was up.
As we travelled our guides kept their eyes skinned for anything of wildlife interest and stopped for us to look and take photos as appropriate. The rule seemed to be that the longer we were taking to get anywhere, risking our next meal, the more significant the creature had to be for us to stop! I was just amazed at what Neil and Jakes noticed and immediately identified as they drove along.
Even before we left the lodge’s grounds we stopped to look at colourful butterflies, and more particularly a Rüppell’s parrot of which I did not get a good photoThe African monarch butterfly, quite unlike the one seen in N America and MadeiraMonarch butterflies on a plant which is highly poisonous to other creatures, including us, which make the butterfly in turn toxic
We diverted to a sewage works – not for the last time in the fortnight! I was the only traveller not principally and passionately interested in (and knowledgeable about) birds, my interest in wildlife, and the countries visited, being more general. And I was to learn that sewage works are fantastic for birdwatching, as they are made up of a series of ponds which attract waders and other birds.
Wood sandpiperEgyptian geese, little grebes and (BL) garganeys and black-winged stiltsBlacksmith lapwings and … ?The beautifully elegant black-winged stilt
Neil and Jakes also removed some illegal traps set to catch birds at the sewage works.
We had lunch at a safari lodge en route. We did not starve in the 14 days!
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