Written by Tony Medici
[Additional comments by Thom are in italics and brackets, like this]
Today is our last full day in a mobile camp since we will be traveling to Zimbabwe tomorrow morning. Our day will be broken up into three parts today. A morning drive before breakfast, a drive to town so that the vehicles can refuel while we have a coffee stop at a unique Botswana road stop, and then an afternoon boat ride on the Chobe river.
The early morning drive I would call uneventful. Which is another way of saying that we saw lots and lots of things, mostly further away than we’d like, while nothing stood out as really memorable in my mind. After all, that’s the way you tend to look at drives that don’t bring you up close to what you really want to see. Or when you compare it to other days that have had lots more action during the same period of time.
And yet I have pictures of two Red-billed Spurfowl fighting,
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a Goliath Heron by the river,
a portrait of a Swainson’s Spurfowl,
a Southern Carmine Bee-eater in a tree,
a Zebra and a foal, plus a male kudu on the road up to our camp
All these were taken before breakfast at 8:30 am. Some people would consider what I did get, mostly birds with a sprinkling of larger prey animals, as something to cheer about, while some would be disappointed they didn’t see anything interesting because there wasn't any predators. I consider it a reasonable start to the morning or a typical morning in Botswana.
After breakfast, we then prepared our gear for the rest of our day away from camp and headed out around 10:30 am for the ride through the park into town. Again not really anything I’d call eventful and yet I got these two images of a baby elephant in the open. (Usually the babies are well hidden in the mass of legs of the larger elephants around it which protects them):
We also managed to get pretty close to a Kori Bustard that was hunting in the area.
Baby elephants in the clear and Kori Bustards close in and posing are not exactly common. So maybe things are becoming more eventful.
The boat ride itself started at 1:30 pm and lasted until after 4:00 pm. The ride itself I would call eventful. So what made the ride eventful where the rest of day sort of wasn’t. It was a 1/2 hour show from two bull elephant fighting while in the river itself. It wasn’t the most photogenic series I’ve ever taken of elephant but it certainly was entertaining, and long.
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This above is a setup image of the elephants. The one on the far right left the water quickly. The other two then put on a wrestling match, complete with sound effects.
Here’s the one who left, getting out of the water…
And here’s a variety of images of the on-going water fight:
As with many things in Africa, size matters in a battle for dominance. But the littler (probably younger) guy put up a valiant and long effort.
The elephants weren’t the only things we saw while on the boat. Here are some images of some others that caught my eye.
A Nile Crocodile, for example,
and a nearby Monitor Lizard.
An African Fish Eagle waiting for the afternoon catch to swim by:
A Whiskered Tern:
An Openbill:
A Juvenile African Skimmer and an Adult African Skimmer (note how different the colorization gets):
A Nile Crocodile heading for the water.
A Pied Kingfisher with his afternoon catch:
Some White-throated Swallows
And a parting shot of an African Fish Eagle on his way to dinner:
If you haven't figured it out yet, being on a boat in the Chobe not only gives you a different perspective, but serves up an interesting array of birds and reptiles in addition to the usual mammals. The park regulates the hours we can be out in the channel, and we're always disappointed when that 4:30 quitting time rolls around, because there's so much more to photograph. Maybe I can convince Thom to have a morning and afternoon boat ride.
