Our next guests, a group of friends and relatives, came together in sunny Botswana from the far corners of the world - America and Australia. At this halfway point in the groups travels we headed out into the wilds to see what we could find to make their journey worthy of the effort and to hopefully tease them into coming back again sometime in the future. With interests as varied as their geographical locations I was lucky to have such a good natured crowd that kept me on my toes, and who enjoyed all the small things I could show them. I eventually got around to pointing out a few wonderful birds and remembered to show them some great animals as well!

With a final bird count of 243 species all P.I.'d (positively identified) including a rare sighting of a lesser jacana, plus a few species heard but not seen, and one or two glimpsed but not sures, we all went away very pleased with our tally. There was a lot of friendly rivalry on the photography side, with one member of the group having an uncanny knack of always getting the bird in flight. Some of the special sightings included a pair of secretary birds that were nesting near one of our camps, and so we saw them a number of times either roosting in the trees early in the mornings, striding out in search of insects and small mammals or just preening. Secretary birds have the knack of always turning and walking away from you, thus making it hard to get a good composition - at least until now. In the Okavango Delta it was fascinating to watch the lesser stripped swallows flying around - they would swoop in to land on their short legs next to a patch of mud, then with their beaks would paste the mud up into a ball before flying off to add it to their nests, a construction that consists of a long curved tunnel ending in an enclosed bowl nest that is adhered to the underside of a surface. The lesser stripped swallows favourite nesting sites in the wild are the undersides of the huge, outstretched branches of a baobab or on rocky overhangs, but under the eves of a thatched building in camp or the apex of a guests tent works just as well, and so we could see the whole process from raw material to the end product! Owls somehow always hold a special thrill for birders, and the lovely pearlspotted owlet with its fat juicy praying mantid let us get a few great shots before we left him to finish off his meal in peace. Even the dowdy birds put on a good show, with a usually very secretive female black korhaan standing out in a small clearing amongst tall grasses to preen in the golden morning light, or the dowdy female sunbird that would flit from flower to flower to feed on the nectar. Then there were the showy birds that everyone knows and loves - the fantastically coloured lilac breasted roller, various species of kingfishers and bee-eaters, the grand looking hornbills and showy bateleur eagles, or the noisy francolins that greeted us each morning and at days end with their loud squawking calls that could wake the dead. Needless to say I would love to do the whole newsletter just on the birds, but there is not enough room to show all the pictures I was able to take on just this one safari (plus I do not want to make the guests too envious as there was after all a bit of fun rivalry going on!)

So what else did we see? - three different snakes at just one lunch sitting, and a rain frog in the morning, funnily enough followed by a few raindrops that afternoon! There were also the fantastically marked and coloured painted reed frogs in the Okavango Delta, a pasty pale tree frog in a baobab and a giant bullfrog. These huge bullfrogs are carnivorous and if something tries to eat them their mucous skin covering causes the attackers mouth to foam up - a peculiar sight when it happens to be an unwise lion cub! Then there was the chameleon, with its ability to change the colour of its skin, enabling it to blend in with its background or to reflect its temperament. The chameleon also has the ability to swivel each eye independently to enable it to look in two different directions at the same time. A tiny praying mantid, much smaller than the one the owl had caught, had a predicament all of its own - it seemed as if a miniature (less than 5mm) scorpion or similar creature had latched on to one of its legs and was not going to let go! I do not know if the mantid was feeding on the scorpion and had bitten off the tail or if the attack was the other way around, but it was fascinating just the same. There were also spectacular butterflies flitting about, and having been generously given the ultimate butterfly book I was able to identify them, although even still there are some that continue to defy this huge voluminous reference book! Always a great show to watch were the wrestling matches of the dung beetles as they pushed and shoved each other out of the way in a bid to claim part of a dung heap. Just as fascinating is to be able to watch their sheer persistence and determination, as they roll their huge tightly packed dung balls away and over impossible obstacles and unforgiving gradients - all while standing on their front legs and pushing with their back legs at near vertical angles. For those that get their ball of dung to the chosen spot their shovel like heads come into play once again, as they dig out mounds of earth in order to be able to lower their prize into a deep hole so that the incubation of their eggs can begin. Ants can also be interesting to watch and on a few occasions we came across Matabele ants returning from a raid on a termite colony, with each ant carrying two or three termites in their formidable mandibles.

As mentioned we also saw a good amount of all the large general game - giraffe, impala, wildebeest, kudu, red lechwe and many more, plus the smaller animals such as squirrels, mongooses and tortoises. Each sighting was as special and interesting as the other, although the otters swimming along in the Okavango Delta were another of those rare sightings. One great scene was sitting patiently waiting for the right moment for thousands of zebra to arrive at a waterhole. Zebra typically wait until mid to late morning, when it is not yet too hot, to leave the pastures and make their way to a waterhole to drink. By watching and observing the movements of the vast herds I was able to choose which waterhole to sit at to await the unfolding spectacle. From the vantage point of the roof of the vehicle we could see the long ribbons of black and white stripes winding their way through the tree line and scrubby bushes, and on past the short grassy openings until the herds overflowed, splashing and stampeding chest deep into the water to get a few quick mouthfuls, before the mass of flesh behind forced them out of the way so that the next wave could drink. Every now and then an elephant would wander in, but they would usually take one brief trunkful of water, and on tasting the churned up mud in it would squirt the water out in disgust before moving on to another drinking point - not that they are too careful about churning up the waterholes when they feel the need for a soothing, cooling mud bath! Kicking with their huge feet and tusking in the sides of the pan, the elephants would create a mud slurry that they could throw over their bodies with great force as they squirted the slurry out from their trunks. On one occasion our position next to a pan at the centre of a crush of drinking zebras had us backing up to a good mud wallow where a big bull elephant, seemingly oblivious to our presence, proceeded to engage in a full body covering whereby each expulsion of mud from his trunk whether over his head, down the side of his body or under his belly would send sprays of mud flying just past the vehicle - had one little stump not been in his way I was sure he would have stood at an angle that would have had him scoring a direct hit with each trunkful!

The predator count was respectful. We started with a few early morning sightings of a pair of the less common, side stripped jackals as they wrapped up their nocturnal activities. We also had a number of good hyena sightings over the length of the safari. There was a chance sighting of a pair of bat-eared foxes, when two fighting zebra stallions spooked them from their hiding place. The leopard at one camp would tease us with his rasping calls early in the evenings and first thing in the morning from all around our camp. At times he was so close I was sure he was walking just beyond the tents, but at that particular camp the surrounding undergrowth was still green and wildly overgrown. I even led the whole group off into the bush in the hope of catching a glimpse of this wily leopard, but no luck - perhaps our moving around in the dark with torches was a bit of wishful thinking, but I also wondered if the crashing through the undergrowth by the ladies was planned or unplanned, depending on how one looked at their apprehension of this extra-curriculum nocturnal activity on foot! In the morning we could see the leopards footprints trailing through camp, but when we tracked his spoor down the road we only got as close as the point where he had cut off the road and disappeared into the thick bush. We did however get a good sighting of a leopard as we returned to another camp one evening - which made up for the time we had spent looking in earnest on one of the hills where we could hear the sound effects of a pair of mating leopards but did not get to see them. We saw a variety of lions and lionesses as well as sightings of some sub-adults. The sub-adults were quite playful and so gave us some action - we also got to see a lioness drinking at a waterhole as well as at the Chobe River, but mostly the males and females just lay about, quickly tired of our presence and fell asleep. We found the wild dogs as they were getting ready to head out to hunt, but when they took off in a high speed pursuit it was in a direction we could not easily follow. When we caught up with them again they were still on the move but seemed to have missed whatever it was they had sped off after, but we had an exciting time following them nonetheless.

We hope our newsletters continue to keep you entertained and increase your desire to return to Africa, or to come out on your first safari adventure. Don't forget to connect to the link to our website so that you can see the photos that accompany this newsletter, and also to download the printable pdf version. Please also keep on passing the newsletters to friends, family and acquaintances and to remind them that anyone is free to subscribe to our mailing list.

Until next month...