Southern Africa 3 - mainly about the big beasts

This is the third of 3 blogs about our Okavango Delta. After focusing on the top predators, the cats and the dogs, you start to look at the other wildlife around. As I have said, a lot of it was easy to see as the brush was all bare and dry. The game is pretty much there all year, with only small migrations going on. The birdlife though is very different between August, their Winter, and January (Summer). A lot of our migrants - swallows, warblers, arrive when the brush greens up. There is still a lot of stuff to see though. Over the holiday, we got a total of 38 different species of mammals and 217 of birds, which isn't bad for thee time we were there.
Botswana is famous for it's large herds of elephants. This is partly due to their robust attitude to poachers, which is basically shoot on sight. They use the army and helicopters to track down any suspected poachers and if found the shoot to kill policy is enforced. The only downside though is the herds of elephants are getting large and can be destructive to the habitat.
Two out of the 3 of our camps were "open". This means no fences at all separating you from the wildlife. The 3rd, Shinde, only stopped elephants. The consequence of this is your tent being shaken at 3 in the morning by elephants and seeing hippo, lino and hyena prints by your front door!!. What you get is shown below. We were up for our morning drive in Nxabega, about 6.45, when this massive bull elephant came into camp.

First of all it was after jackalberries. These are about the size of large grapes and you wouldn't have thought they would bother, but elephants love them. They shake the tree and hoover up the fruits.

   We suspect though that this wasn't the first time he had been in camp, as he quite soon wandered round the back of the tents to the kitchen. The guides insisted the cook didn't feed him but I reckon he knew what he was doing.
One other bit of behaviour we've seen on tele but not in real life came in Shinde. We were on a river trip and not really seeing very much when an elephant started coming towards us. It was initially a long way off but over 15 minutes or so came quite close. We pulled back away from it and ploughed on through the marsh, splashing water as it went.

Then quite unbelievably it kept on going into the river. We were on a small boat so we followed it as it went deeper and deeper in. At times it actually submerged under the water or was so deep it was using it trunk as a snorkel. I'd heard about this but never seen it. It finally reached the fat bank and kept on going. No idea what it was heading towards but it was very focused as we watched it out of sight into the distance.  

Hippos were also were widespread though not easy to see. They are mainly nocturnal, spending most of the day out of sight in reeds or in water. At night they come out to feed but by then we were safely tucked up in bed. You could hear them though, grunting and snorting, especially at Lagoon camp where our tent opened up straight onto the river

One our first night we went on a river cruise. We did this on all 3 camps and generally didn't see much as you tended to penned in by high reeds either side. On this one though we did get good bird life, such as this white-fronted bee-eater.

Being on the river though we did get good views of the hippos. Generally they disappeared as we approached but some did remain visible. 

As the sun went down they started to appear our of the water as well. This one showed well, although the photo doesn't show that it was nearly dark by now and only a combination of flash and lightroom has made it  decent.

You also got lots of the other "classic" African animals though not the large herds  like in Kenya. Zebras were often seen around, many times keeping out of the away among small groves of trees. It's amazing how cryptic their camouflage is.

The same is true of giraffes. They're really big but even if someone says "it's over here" you can still say "where exactly". In with trees they almost disappear. In the open though they can be quite comedic.

 Of course, you have to keep your eyes open, as often they have oxpeckers on them as this one does.

Finally, you have all the supporting cast of animals, from monkeys to deer. Added together you get an incredible variety on animals and always something to watch.

Baboons were omni-present, often sitting high up in trees to survey the surrounding area 

Impala are the commonest of the deers in the area, although they are quite shy and hard to get close to

Kudu are a alrge to medium-sized deer. Like most of their cousins they have large ears to help them detect approaching danger

Quite uncommon, reedbuck have one of thr smallest horns

This is one of the smallest deers, the steenbok. They are only the size of a small dog.

Tsessebe are one of the fastest deer. This is good for them as they are also a very popular prey species for lions.

Vervet monkeys were almost a pest. In Nxabega they would come down to your table and try to steal bread rolls!

Warthogs are often overlooked. We had trouble with one group who refused to move off the runway when a plane was landing and had to be herded off with our truck!

This genet was almost a pet in Shinde. This is actually only 20 feet behind where we were having our dinner. 

Red lechwe against against blue water make a beautiful contrast in colour

Warthogs are just comical!

In the last blog from Botswana i will deal with some of the birds we saw.

Southern Africa 2 - having a hyena for dinner

This follows on from the previous post about the big cats of the Okavango.

The felines dominate the hunting on the delta, but they are by no means the only predators. The canines also make their presence felt. Surprisingly,compared to the cats they are harder to spot although you see their prints around in the sand. The guides and spotters were brilliant at seeing the tracks as we drove around, and the ground being mainly sandy was superb for enabling it.
There were 3 main types of canids we spotted. The smallest was the jackal.

 This is a side-striped jackal we saw at Shinde. There were 3 individuals in total, and just as the felines looked like domestic moggies, this boy does a good impression of something very proud of itself at Cruft's.

They are quite small though, only the size of a collie dog, so exist by either scavenging, as on the tsessebe in the bottom photo, or by killing much smaller prey.

There were two other larger canids around though. The first was the animal we most wanted to see, the african hunting dog, also called the wild or painted dog. They reached media stardom a couple of years ago with a documentary following a hunt which was shot from the air, showing the pack running their down in a collective hunt. We have liked them for years though but never seen them in the wild. They are now endangered and absent in many parts of Africa following persecution from cattle farmers as well as the inevitable habitat loss.

Our first camp was Nxabega. We arrived about 3pm, straight off 3 planes from Heathrow to Jo'burg to Maun the camp on successively smaller planes. We were given 30 minutes to sort ourselves and then it was off on the first game drive. The guide Kux asked us what we wanted to see. "wild dogs, please" we replied. He immediately set off for where he thought some dens were. The first two were just big holes in the sand but at the third we spotted a single female on the track.

You can see why they are called painted dogs. Their markings are beautiful, each one unique with shades of gold, black, brown, yellow and ears you would die for!!! We were only an hour into our holiday proper and we had already seen our number one target. Then it got better. First a second then a third adult appeared, all just lazing around the jeep.

 One of the females then started a low whiny call as she wandered over to the den, and the 9 cubs bounded out. There followed 5 minutes of chaos as the adults and the cubs greeted each other like long lost relatives.

 Eventually the adults got bored and decided to go off hunting. As they wandered off the cubs tagged along, which I don't think really helped their chance of finding anything.

 Finally, the adults parked the cubs in some long grass and loped off with a marvelous, economic, long-legged stride and disappeared off hunting which was where we left them.

The last of the dogs we saw was the brown hyena. A lot of people don’t like hyenas, seeing them as sneaky, opportunistic and somehow evil. We love them. They have great character and like most scavengers are always on the lookout for trouble.

Our first meeting was on the airstrip at Shinde. Generally the airstrips are great places for wildlife viewing. The airstrip is nothing more than an area of dirt where the Cessna’s land, but with it being open you can see much better. Anyway, on one early morning drive we spotted a pack of around 6 or 7 hyenas mooching about the end of the runway. As we drove up they became curious and started to approach us. I’d forgotten quite how large they are. 

 The biggest was much larger than the largest domestic dog and you could see how powerful it was. The bite from a hyena is the most powerful in the animal kingdom and can crush large bones. Interestingly as they got closer they were the only animals which the guides showed respect for by asking us to keep quiet and stop photographing. With both lions and leopards we just kept on doing what we wanted! This is particularly relevant for our second encounter! Anyway, we watched these for 20 minutes or so before they loped off into the brush presumably going back to their den to sleep off the nights meal.

Our second encounter was with the same pack but the following evening. About 20 minutes from the camp was a quite a large lagoon which we had visited a number of times. It was really good for birds, with lots of waders and lapwings present, collared pratincoles hunting over the surface, darters, storks and eagles feeding on the fish and a family of hippos normally cooling off in the deeper water.

African Fish Eagle - a common bird in the delta with a characteristic cry

Common Jacana - this is always around the pools and rivers behaving like our moorhens. They are sometimes called Jesus birds for their ability to walk on water, which in fact is walking on lily-pads!"

This rather poor photo is a lesser jacana, the much smaller relative of the bird above. Aubrey spotted it adn was very excited as it is not only quite rare but is also very difficult to spot. We gripped-off a group of birders in another truck who arrived 5 minutes later but by then it has disappeared back  into the reeds.

Pied are the most frequently seen of the kingfishers

This is a long-toed lapwing. There are many different sorts around in the delta, but this was the only time we saw this particularly attractive version

By contrast this is a wattled lapwing. These are more frequently seen, but do not necessarily associate closely.with water. Like their commoner cousins the blackmith and crowned lapwings they stalk around the grassy fields.

This little chap is a Kittlitz's plover. It is a tiny bird, but quite feisty. In a not great move this one is defending its nest of eggs, which it has laid right next to where the jeeps drive. Fortunately all the drivers seemed to know it was there and took avoiding action. 

Stalking around in the longer grass are these strange but striking birds - saddlebill storks. They are totally unmistakable with their multi-coloured bill and black and white wings which show well in flight. 

In July i spent three hours at Minsmere twitching a collared pratincole. Here there were probably 30 or 40 of them hawking for insects over the surface of the lake. Apparently they also breed later on in the year. 

This was our last night in Shinde and for our sundowner we asked specifically to come to the lagoon as we wanted to see the hippos out of the water. During the day you only see them submerged with their eyes as they keep cool, but as dusk falls they become more active and start to show themselves. We got to the lake about 6 as the sun was going down. The birds were all showing well and the hippos were starting to grunt and snort. Our guide Aubrey, who was a really top-notch birder, got the table set out for our sundowner and to our surprise got out a bottle of champagne! As it was our last night we were being treated. What could be better, a glass of cold fizz, some lovely nibbles to snack on and the lake hippos getting themselves sorted out for the night. 

Then Aubrey called out “we’ve got hyenas coming our way”. He wasn’t joking. As I turned round the large male from before was about 20 meters away, and we were all out of the truck with champagne in hand!! The reactions were interesting. Judith broke the world-record for getting into a truck, I turned my camera round and started photographing the approaching menace (with my flash gun going as well) and Aubrey walked round to the front end of the truck to protect our snacks! The hyenas, and the whole pack was now with us, weren’t interested in us, they had smelt the chicken we were having and were sniffing round that. I thought hyenas were dangerous but Aubrey dealt with them like you would a Labrador after your sandwiches – he literally shoo-ed them away. They looked a bit disappointed but just shuffled off after a better opportunity. In retrospect this was one of the highlights of our holiday and certainly not one we would have predicted!!