Monday 4th March. Breakfast was to be at 8 a.m., we were told, preceded by a pre-breakfast walk round the grounds at 7 a.m.
Woodland kingfisherFascinating to see that what we have in our museum locally in the UK, as a remnant of rural transport hundreds of years ago, is still commonplace in rural Namibia. And so ecological.I was very ‘interested’ to meet this little chap. At the time we saw him, his sound was quite normal and reasonable and pretty. At 6 a.m. … well, you didn’t need to set an alarm, and it wasn’t pretty!Here he is again, a White-browed robin chat. My book says , ‘Considered by some as the best songster in Africa’. Hmm. His song perhaps, but definitely not his early-morning call!Bradfield’s HornbillAnd another. They appeared to be talking to each other.
Yes, breakfast was scheduled for 8 o’clock, but they hadn’t told us it was to be on a boat cruising along the river! What a lovely surprise!
This was the double-decker boat, and it was great to be able to go to the top deck to observe the wildlife along the way after we had finished eating.
Egyptian geeseDarterNile crocodileWater thick-knee. (Strictly, it’s the ankles which are thick, not the knees.)Hippo headMeves’s (aka long-tailed) starlingsBushbuckBuffalos, with cattle egret, and, I suspect, an oxpecker
After this, it was time to pack and move on from the Mahangu Lodge eastwards along the Caprivi Strip. We travelled on a main road which bisects the Caprivi Game Park, and saw some interesting wildlife on the way.
WaterbuckReedbuck
We stopped for lunch at a lodge overlooking the Kwandu River.
African Openbill (stork family)The first domestic cat I had seen since leaving home. Even I, felinophile, am not convinced they have their place in the middle of so much wildlife.
We resumed our journey.
Weaver birds’ nests. There are many kinds of weavers, and many kinds of weavers’ nests.Yup, another grey Go-away-birdLevaillant’s cuckooMeat-sellers, through a rather grimy lens
In due course (we did 340 kilometres that day, temperature 36°C max) we arrived at Zambezi Lodge, on the Zambezi River. Opposite was Zambia.
Sunday, 3rd March. Botswana at last, but only for a day trip for now. But first, breakfast. We always ate outdoors at Mahangu Lodge, for the three days. We did wonder where we would eat were it to rain, as we couldn’t see anything like a dining room, but the situation didn’t arise.
We set off to drive the short distance to the Botswana border to the south of the Caprivi Strip.
Lesser striped swallow
It was not long before we reached the border and went through emigration and immigration controls.
Never miss a chance to observe wildlife.
Scarlet-breasted sunbird
Everyone stood around taking photos while this hardworking dung beetle made its way over to a kerb, an impossible obstacle. With reassurance from leader Neil that it could do me no harm, I picked the beetle up and placed it where it appeared to be heading, then carefully placed its dung ball by its ‘nose’.
We moved on, into Botswana. We had just one purpose in making a day trip into a different country, which was to see a particular bird, very rare.
In due course we arrived at Drotsky’s Lodge, where we would in due course have lunch, but first we were to take a trip from there on the swamps of the neck of the Okavango Delta. The 17 of us were on two open boats, seated one person each side of a narrow gangway, with no shelter from the sun. We had been well-warned to protect ourselves as much as possible, and for me the breeze from the movement made the experience quite pleasant.
Some, by now, familiar and some less familiar birds.
White-fronted bee-eaterLittle bee-eatersAfrican jacanaCattle egretLong-toed lapwingsFan-tailed widowbird aka red-shouldered widowbirdGlossy ibisPapyrus and a convolvulusGymnogene aka African harrier hawk
After a while we saw the very bird we had hoped for, a Pel’s Fishing Owl, way up in a tree by the bank of a river we were travelling on. It’s a large bird, and the colour of a ginger cat! To quote from my bird book, ‘… cinnamon underparts and rufous-brown upperparts …… Strictly nocturnal; spends the day perched in the dense foliage of a large tree ….. When flushed, flies a short distance and resettles in another tree, from where it watches the intruder.’ Which is exactly what it did while we watched it.
Having admired the magnificent bird, we meandered back along the channel, in and out of another one, and went back to the lodge for lunch.
After lunch, retracing our route, we went back though emigration (Botswana) and immigration (Namibia) controls.
And I was pleased to see elephant on the opposite bank from Mahangu Lodge, where we were to spend our third and last night there.
By the way, if it seems that there are awful lot of birds in these posts, these are just a sample! We were given a list at the outset of 538 birds we might see, potentially, as they had been spotted on previous Naturetrek trips here in previous years. By the end of the two weeks, collectively we had seen or heard about 375 of them, and added two more to the list, one a lifetime first for leader Neil, a Red-throated twinspot. (I didn’t see it, so no chance of a photo. Indeed, I doubt if I saw half of the total myself, and I took photos of many, many fewer, concentrating mainly on the larger ones.)
Friday 1st March. Just before sunrise over the Okavango River from my ‘garden’ at the Kaisosi River Lodge.
A little while later, a fisherman was working from his dugout canoe opposite my room.
And just before we set off after breakfast, an African Pygmy-goose appeared.
We had been at the north of the Caprivi Strip, (that ‘handle’ at the north east of Namibia) and this morning were moving well towards the south of it but not much further east yet.
En route, we (they) couldn’t resist visiting the previous evening’s sewage works again. But before getting there we saw (among other things – it’s always among many, many other things, especially birds) ..
I’ve spent over half an hour searching for what this pretty bird might be, to no avail. Thank goodness that after this I started making a note of the name of every bird of which I took a photo! Much later: I’m beginning to suspect that my first thought, which I rejected initially because of the beak, was right. A Carmine bee-eater, its beak very much foreshortened in the photo.Upper wire: giant kingfisher with prey. Lower wire – pied kingfishers.
At the sewage works.
Painted snipe. Seeing this caused some excitement.Black-winged stiltIf the ground is too low for the telescope to be of use, you use whatever else is to hand, here the luggage trailer. RuffEuropean Bee-eater
We were due to go on a river cruise later in the afternoon.Almost as soon as we arrived, I was thrilled to see this Sable Antelope on the far bank. I had been doing my homework and knew that there was a possibility. Beautiful creature!Chobe dwarf gecko on the side of one of the roomsAnd this is the view from my own lime-green-painted room, which was to be home for three nights.There was a small ‘normal’ swimming pool at the lodge, but this one had been carved (not sure that’s the right word) out of the river. One of our number tried it and said it was quite impossible to swim there. He was just swept to the far (in this photo, near) side of the pool by the current.Way upstream these buffaloes came down to graze on the opposite side of the river.But directly opposite were many, many elephants. They entered right and left left, for over an hour. I stayed and watched them while most of the others went off for a bird-wander before our cruise.The white mounds are salt, put there by the proprietors of the lodge to attract creatures needing it, here elephants and, behind, kudu.Glimpse of a hippo
Musiewild's blog 