• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Uganda 2013

Musiewild's blog

~ An occasional blog, mainly photos

Musiewild's blog

Tag Archives: blacksmith lapwing

Namibia/Botswana/Zambia 7

27 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by Musiewild in Countryside views, Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

African white-backed vulture, blacksmith lapwing, Burchell's sandgrouse, Double-banded courser, elephant, giraffe, grey heron, grey-headed gull, Impala, kudu, marabou stork, marsh terrapin, Mokuti lodge, northern black korhaan, Pale chanting goshawk, pied avocet, Tawny eagle, termite mound

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 vulture
The vulture (which is tagged) does not seem bothered by the giraffe passing behind it.
A grey heron lords it over the blacksmith lapwings
I 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.

Kudu
These 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 way
Burchell’s sandgrouse
Double-banded courser
The 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.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Namibia/Botswana/Zambia 6

24 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by Musiewild in Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

black-backed jackal, black-winged stilt, blacksmith lapwing, Blue crane, elephant, Etosha agama, European bee-eater, gemsbok, giraffe, hoopoe, Hyena, laughing dove, lilac-breasted roller, northern black korhaan, oryx, Ostrich, Pale chanting goshawk, pearl-spotted owlet, red-eyed bulbul, vulture, Wildebeest, zebra

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 crane
Black-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 legs
Strutting their stuff
Showing 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)
Hoopoe
Pale 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 order
A gemsbok/oryx arrived, but did not yet go near the pool.
Wildebeest hold back
As 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.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Namibia/Botswana/Zambia 3

19 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by Musiewild in Cats, Countryside views, Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 14 Comments

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. ”Etosha“>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!

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Namibia/Botswana/Zambia 1

17 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by Musiewild in Countryside views, Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

African monarch, black-winged stilt, blacksmith lapwing, dikdik, Egyptian goose, Grey go-away-bird, little grebe, Namibia, Naturetrek, Pale chanting goshawk, purple roller, Safariwise, Verreaux's eagle, violet wood hoopoe, Waterberg Plateau, wood sandpiper

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 hours
Approaching 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 photo
The African monarch butterfly, quite unlike the one seen in N America and Madeira
Monarch 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 sandpiper
Egyptian geese, little grebes and (BL) garganeys and black-winged stilts
Blacksmith 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!

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent Posts

  • Norway 2022/23 – 12, An even quieter morning, though not without a degree of anxiety
  • Norway 2022/23 – 11, A quiet day
  • Norway 2022/23 – 10 New Year’s Eve
  • Norway 2022/23 – 9, Turnabouts and changes
  • Norway 2022/23 – 8, Hammerfest
  • Norway 2022/23 – 7, Kirkenes
January 2023
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Dec    

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015

Blogroll

  • Avalon Marshes 'Hands on Heritage'
  • Londonsenior
  • Salmon Brook Farms
  • The Jaguar
  • Tootlepedal's blog

Recent Comments

Musiewild on Norway 2022/23 – 5, Boxi…
Musiewild on Norway 2022/23 – 4, Chri…
Hazel Anne Priestley… on Norway 2022/23 – 5, Boxi…
Hazel Anne Priestley… on Norway 2022/23 – 4, Chri…
Musiewild on Norway 2022/23 – 3, Chri…

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Musiewild's blog
    • Join 195 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Musiewild's blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: