Early and late green season in Botswana – 2 trips

[Athene]

@Peter Connan  Thank you so much for your nice words and for you help on the ID of the eagle. I can certainly go with Tawny (I'm not an expert...)

I am certainly not (no longer..) a Ninja . The Malachite take-offs were shot by my husband with pre-release on the Z9. It was the camera's first outing with new firmware and the Malachite was being very cooperative by returning several times to posts along the bridge. He doesn't use it so much now as it is only jpeg and fills up memory cards extremely quickly.

 

We had been told by Andrew that we might see a Sitatunga. The sighting from the mokoro was very brief and tricky to photograph through the reeds so i am glad it came out as well as it did.

Edited August 13 by Athene

[JimS]

On 8/13/2024 at 1:16 PM, Athene said:

I can certainly go with Tawny (I'm not an expert...)

 

I'm inclined to go with your original id of brown snake eagle. I'm certainly not an expert either, but had some excellent guides in Zambia helping me identify eagles there and we spent a while comparing the western banded and brown snake eagles ... The Tawny eagle if I recall correctly, has full "trousers" whereas the snake eagles have bare legs like yours (your eagle that is!). The brown and western banded snake eagles can be distinguished by the tail markings - yours has those of the brown snake eagle, the western banded would have single broad dark band at the tip of the tail.

 

Edit: Oh, sorry, now I scroll back again I realise  @Peter Connanwas almost certainly referring to a completely different bird - the earlier one you labelled as possible Wahlberg's.

Edited August 14 by JimS

[Peter Connan]

14 hours ago, JimS said:

Edit: Oh, sorry, now I scroll back again I realise  @Peter Connanwas almost certainly referring to a completely different bird - the earlier one you labelled as possible Wahlberg's.

 

Correct

 

@Athene, thanks for confirming the use of pre-release capture. These little Kingfishers are probably one of the best opportunities to use it as they do tend to come back to the same perches.

Edited August 15 by Peter Connan

[Athene]

Thanks again for the bird ID  @Peter Connan and @JimS, I changed it.

[Athene]

We spent the morning around the camp area. At first light there was an altercation between the resident Tau Pan pride and the Airstrip pride, who had come to the Tau Pan waterhole. Two of the resident lionesses were surprised at the waterhole and called for reinforcements. They all chased the Airstrip pride away with lots of noise and excitement. Mostly this took place in the bushes so we couldn't see it clearly.

 

This map of the area was hanging in camp.

 

 

Sunrise

 

 

This young lion was from the Airstrip pride.

 

 

Members of the Tau Pan Pride

 

 

 

 

The lionesses were very nervous after this incident

 

 

This young male was from the Tau Pan pride, the big males were not around

 

 

 

 

 

 

The young male's sister was not amused

 

 

 

After the early morning excitment we drove north towards Passarge Valley

 

Black backed jackal

 

 

Ground squirrel

 

 

 

Crowned lapwing next to the road

 

 

Wildebeest in the shade

 

[Athene]

Our afternoon game drive around camp

 

Pale-chanting goshawk

 

 

 

Lilac-breasted roller

 

 

Spotted eagle-owl

 

 

 

 

Female northern-black korhaans?

 

 

The lions around camp again

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Peter Connan]

Great Lion action and a lovely profile shot of the Owl!

I think there may well be eggs under that Lapwing...

[Athene]

Yes, she was incubating the eggs, @Peter Connanthank you for your comments.

[Athene]

Our morning game drive took us towards Passarge Valley again. We always stopped when we saw other visitors and asked them what they had seen. Mostly the answer was that it is a quiet morning.

 

Bat-eared foxes in low light

 

 

 

Black-backed jackals

 

 

 

 

The helicopter bird (northern black korhaan)

 

 

 

Swallow-tailed bee-eater through the bushes

 

 

 

Oryx with a bent horn

 

 

Lesser grey shrike

 

 

 

Edited August 21 by Athene

[Athene]

If I remember correctly the afternoon game drive took us towards Sunday Pan. Again, it was quiet.

 

Young black-backed jackal waiting for the mum coming back

 

 

 

Fork-tailed drongo

 

Violet-eared waxbill female

 

 

 

male

 

 

Ant-eating chat

 

 

White-backed vultures

 

 

Honey-badger

 

 

Digging deep

 

 

 

Edited August 21 by Athene

[Peter Connan]

Lovely Honey Badger and the photo of the two Jackals sitting together is beautiful.

The Shrike is Lesser Grey not Common Fiscal and the mystery bird is Ant-eating Chat.

 

[mopsy]

Great photos @Athenereally enjoying following along.

[Hads]

Thanks @Athenefor a great trip report. The Honey badger would of been a lovely surprise.

What were your overall thoughts on 4Rivers camp?

[madaboutcheetah]

@Athenevery well done with the violet ear waxbill …. Passarge valley is one of my fav areas in the ckgr…. Stunning 

[Athene]

Thank you for your friendly words and the bird IDs @Peter Connan, the ant-eating chat is a new bird for me, I even had problems finding out his german name.

I found two more shots of the honey badgers - it was a mother with her young one, they were so fast that we couldn't get a decent shot of them together.

 

 

 

 

[Athene]

Thank you @mopsy I am glad you followed along and liked the report.

[Athene]

Thank you @Hads. Honey badgers are not easy to find but you have a reasonable chance to find them in the Kalahari or the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. I never saw one elsewhere.

 

4Rivers is a nice camp and I liked it. Sightings were a bit slow in March, the grass was quite high and animals harder to find. Still, we found the lions and cheetah and I saw my first side-striped jackal. Unfortunately at the time the wild dogs were not there.

[Athene]

Thank you @madaboutcheetah here is one more waxbill I found

 

 

We also liked the CKGR a lot. I would like to go back to Tau Pan in a real rainy season and see all the flowers.

[Athene]

Our last day was a full day out. Our original plan was to first go to East to Deception Valley and then South to Piper's Pan. As we started out we followed some fresh big male lion tracks which were heading north. We followed all the way up to Passarge again without luck.

 

 

This rather long detour meant our plan to reach Deception Valley and Piper's Pan was quite ambitous. MP was still confident we could do it and we set off at pace. Not many sightings along the way - nevertheless the drive was very enjoyable and around 11 o'clock we reached Deception. We saw the Owens' campsite which I really wanted to visit after reading the book "Cry of the Kalahari".

 

Start of our drive in the early morning

 

 

Thick-knee

 

 

Chat flycatcher

 

 

MP at the coffee break with a skull

 

 

Nearly at Deception

 

 

As there was not much to see at Deception we set off towards Piper's Pan

 

There was already a lot of heat haze so these photos are not really sharp...

 

Bat-eared foxes

 

 

 

a big ostrich group

 

 

We were tipped off by a passing vehicle that there was a cheetah visible from the road. He was pretty lethargic in the midday heat but got up once to have his photo taken :-)

 

 

Warthog on the road

 

 

On arrival at Piper's Pan we ran into a German photographer who some of you may know. Jens Cullman spends a lot of time in Africa, mostly around Mana Pools in Zimbabwe and in Botswana. My husband is quite a fan of his work and we had a nice chat with him.

 

 

Clouds were building up for the first time during our trip and we had our very late lunch on the pan.

 

 

We still had a long drive to get back to camp. Our last sighting of the afternoon was a male lion just waking up.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 24 by Athene

[Peter Connan]

Beautiful scenic photos.

No, not Ant-eating. Perhaps Chat Flycatcher?

[Athene]

Thanks again for your comment and bird ID @Peter Connan, i can rely on you.

 

[Athene]

Last morning at Tau Pan. My husband went out on his own for an hour before our flight back to Maun.

During the night it had rained a little bit and brought out quite a few leopard tortoises.

 

Bat eared foxes

 

 

 

Leopard tortoises drinking on the road

 

 

 

 

 

One of the tortoises seemed to see his reflection in the camera lens and started racing towards it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 24 by Athene

[Athene]

Thanks to everybody who followed the trip report. I hope it gave at least an impression of the different areas and camps in the different seasons.

[Peter Connan]

Thank you for a very enjoyable trip report.

[Ginny]

@Athene  I didn't realize tortoises could "race" !   I really enjoyed your report...thank you for doing it.