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Musiewild's blog

~ An occasional blog, mainly photos

Musiewild's blog

Tag Archives: secretary bird

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!

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Namibia/Botswana/Zambia 2

18 Monday Mar 2019

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

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

African Paradise Flycatcher, black-backed jackal, Blue crane, Crowned lapwing, Etosha National Park, flap-necked chamaeleon, giraffe, Gnu, Halali camp, Namibia, Pied crow, red hartebeest, red-crested korhaan, rhino, scrub hare, secretary bird, Sociable Weaver, Spotted thick-knee, Springbok, Wildebeest

Sunday 24th February, afternoon. This trip was timed to be the end of the ‘green season’, i.e. after the rains. Everything should have been lush, in fact making ground-living creatures more difficult to see, thus the particular interest of birders in this trip. But as were told right at the outset, the region had now suffered from seven years of drought, and areas that should have been marshy, and even flooded, were not. This was not only having an adverse effect on wildlife, but farmers were losing cattle, and entering into penury. For us however, shrinking waterholes were ideal for observing wildlife, not just birds. So after leaving our lunch spot…

… we visited a couple of waterholes, though many of the following pictures were taken from the roadside on the way to our first lodge within Etosha National Park.

African Paradise flycatcher, a small bird with (in the male) a very long tail.
Red-crested Korhaan (id. PM and BL)
Sociable Weaver nest. It’s huge, being the nest, as its name suggests, of many birds.
Pied crow
Common Wildebeest, aka Brindled Gnu
Blue cranes, in front of Springbok
Secretary bird, about the size of a (skinny) turkey – with long legs in breeches
Crowned lapwing
I was thrilled and surprised to see a black rhino (its name has nothing to do with its colour), given that I had only ever seen one before, and that at a great distance.
Spotted thick-knee, right by the side of the road, hoping its camouflage would protect it
Red (Leiwei) hartebeest
Secretary bird
Neil spotted this at the side of the road as we were driving along, and backed up for us to have a closer look. Another creature hoping its camouflage will protect it – a Scrub hare. It didn’t move for the five minutes we were beside it. Reminds me so much of Dürer’s 1502 painting.
A troop of Springbok crossed the road in front of us.
This Flap-neck Chamaeleon is green in the pictures you see in internet searches. But here it is crossing the road, so… It had a strange rocking movement, designed to put predators off. We were worried that it might be crushed on the road, but since vehicles were few and far between, this was unlikely.
Springbok almost as far as the eye can see.
Black-backed jackal
Our first giraffe, the Southern sub-species

After a long and tiring couple of days, we were very pleased to reached the Halali Restcamp, dine, and go to bed. Except that a few of them didn’t immediately, but walked to the nearby waterhole and saw lots of elephants. And apparently missed a leopard drinking there an hour later.

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Tanzania 2

29 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Musiewild in Cats, Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Blacksmith plover, cape teal, cheetah, Dik dik, dung beetle, eagle, giraffe, grey-crowned crane, hoopoe, Lion, long-crested eagle, Ndutu, northern white-crowned shrike, secretary bird, shrike, side-necked terrapin, Tanzania, Thomson's gazelle, three-banded plover, vulture, Wildebeest

After lunch, a short wander round the grounds, observing this notice

P1180607

Board near our accommodation at the lodge

and this Dik dik

P1180610

No danger, though, from this,

and a rest, it was time for another trip out in the jeeps.

P1180667

Cheetah

P1180704P1180777

P1180821

Masai giraffe

P1180826

P1180835

Dung beetles. The dung is the size of a tennis ball.

 

Impressed by the antics of the dung beetles, I made a video:

Vultures like being near lions, hoping to help clear up after a kill. We just liked being near lions for sheer pleasure, in this case observing adult females and cubs doing nothing very much.

P1180866

Vultures in weaver bird’s tree

P1180890

P1180901

Just too cute or what?

P1180905

Lions spend most of their day sleeping

We’d now arrived at Saturday, 13th February.

P1180955

Sunrise over the plain

Lots of lions again today, but no ‘action’, despite much soliciting by the females.  We stuck around them for much of the day, breaking for breakfast after a couple of hours,

P1180966

Secretary birds

P1180989

Long-crested eagle

P1180997P1190002P1190008P1190026P1190038

P1190039

Grey-crowned crane, and missis

P1190043

Northern white-crowned shrike

P1190052

expecting action of some sort when another male hove into view,

 

(but it turned out they were brothers),

P1190061P1190074

P1190075

P1190105

Cape teal

P1190130P1190134

P1190153

Blacksmith plovers

We went back to the Lodge for lunch and a rest from the fierce sun of the middle hours of the day. Later we returned to the marshy area to see what was happening.

P1190184

Thomson’s gazelle

P1190188

Side-necked terrapin

P1190190

Three-banded plover

P1190195

Hoopoe

P1190208

Juvenile tawny eagle

P1190223

Long-crested eagle

P1190240P1190243

P1190250

Grey-crowned crane

P1190259P1190272

But all the lions wanted to do was to lounge around, at least until the sun was going down (around 6 pm) and we had to be away. They are entirely unfazed by human presence, though it would not be advisable to get out of the jeep.

(To be continued)

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