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We are currently filming in Botswana. have basically focused our filming efforts on three regions of northern Botswana: The Okavango Delta, The Chobe and the Makgadigadi Pans. have basically focused our filming efforts on three regions of northern Botswana: The Okavango Delta, The Chobe and the Makgadigadi Pans.
Before it joins waters with the Matabele’s iliMphopho, the river of rapid rising and falling, known to the rest of the world as the ‘great, grey, green, greasy Limpopo’ of Rudyard Kipling’s writings, the Ngotwane River marks the boundary line between Botswana and South Africa. Cover: 20 years younger version of me. Nile Crocodile 1.
I mainly guide in Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and South Africa but also East Africa How long have you been a bird guide? Rockrunner, a Namibian near endemic What is your name, and where do you live? living in Windhoek, Namibia What are the main regions or locations you cover as a bird guide?
Gaborone, Botswana; June 1999. Marvellous orange-pink sunrise high over the Indian Ocean… Then, landing on a small airport at Gaborone, Botswana. The next one I can remember, going chronologically, was my first sunbird ever – the White-bellied Sunbird in the bush in front of our lodge, opposite the Botswana University.
The Okavango Delta of Botswana, however, provides one of the very best opportunities to catch a glimpse. The elusive Pel’s Fishing Owl Although I had seen Pel’s Fishing Owls a couple of times since, I was a touch nervous when asked by the Botswana Tourism Organization to film one for our Birding Adventures TV Botswana series.
In 2001 I was offered the chance to joint-lead safaris with my good friend Brian Gibson, owner of Capture Africa Safaris , a long established and well-respected Botswana based safari company. I have been travelling to Botswana for over twenty years now and I still get excited at the prospect of another trip to the bush each time I go.
You probably have to go to a resturant in Botswana or South Africa to find Tigerfish on the menu. In fact, Tigerfishing is sometimes done with a dry fly, in Botswana. I’ve only seen Tigerfish (Alestidae, genus Hydrocynus , usually Hydrocynus goliath ) in two contexts, but I’ve seen a lot of them. One is on the plate, as dinner.
For this reason, places like the Okavango Delta in Botswana and the pan systems of northern-eastern South Africa are good places to find these delightful ducks. Most favored are shallow waterbodies that contain both plenty of water-lillies and surrounding reed-beds.
I used to live in Botswana, where there are about 450 bird species in an area a few dozen miles from the capital; then somewhat naively moved back to Serbia with mere 250 species around the capital. Botswana (529 / 577). And, sadly, haven’t even reached one thousand birds on my life list, yet. And it shows. Malaysia (702 / 781).
But there is one place in Africa where Wattled Cranes still gather in fair numbers – the Okavango Delta of Botswana. For more information on these stunning creatures and the beautiful country of Botswana , feel free to view our episode below. www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8-lZzV0Wck v=w8-lZzV0Wck a.
So imagine my delight to seeing a pair of African Scops-owls on the side of the road on a recent trip to Botswana. I can spend months in some locations without seeing a single one, in fact in 10 years in New Zealand although I hear them on a monthly basis I have seen them precisely 3, yes three, times. Can you see them?
Since I used to live in and know Botswana, let’s see what the guide says on that country in one and a half pages. Let’s presume I am travelling to Botswana. Checking the accounts of other Botswana targets such as the near-endemic Slaty Egret and the Short-clawed Lark , I get the idea which areas to visit and on which sites to focus.
At the time, I was an active volunteer in an organisation soon to become the BirdLife Botswana and have noticed that Brown, Forbes and Symes quoted only two out of five Botswana observations accepted by the Rarities Committee, so I wrote to the Vulture News editor, suggesting that I write a short note on all five observations.
Finca Luna Nueva Lodge. Arenal Observatory Lodge and Spa. Macaw Lodge. Birding Experiences. InkaNatura Travel. Bird Uganda Safaris. Birding Expeditions. Capture Africa Safaris. Puembo Birding Garden. Las Terrazas de Dana Boutique Lodge and Spa. Jaguarundi Travel. Aruacana Lodge. Cave Creek Ranch.
I bring this up because birding the Chobe River in northern Botswana gave me the interesting opportunity to bird a country I technically wasn’t in. But I have visited Guatemala, Lesotho and Zimbabwe to actually visit them and count them, even though I spent less time in them than I did Zurich. It’s arbitrary, but there you go.
Boy, Botswana is beautiful! Share your plans in the comments below. Whatever your plans this weekend, make time to enjoy SkyWatch Friday. Also be sure to come back Monday to share your best bird of the weekend ! Enjoy more gorgeous pics by Adrian Binns in James’s trip report (photo by Adrian Binns ) a.
Azure skies over the Okavango Delta of Botswana (Ever seen a Pel’s Fishing Owl ? Whatever your plans this weekend, make time to enjoy SkyWatch Friday. Also be sure to come back Monday to share your best bird of the weekend ! James Currie has… ) a.
You may have read my recent piece on Birding the Okavango Delta in Botswana here on 10,000 Birds. If you did you may have gathered that I have a love affair with that wonderful place. However, I have another ongoing love affair, with India. If you have never thought of India as a birding destination, I’d urge you to give it a good look.
When I moved to Botswana, to learn my birds I got myself the thickest local field guide. But I have to disagree with the publisher, HarperCollins, calling it an “ all-encompassing new field guide” – it is a world checklist and I say it with a lot of respect.
My books weren’t helping much so I had resorted to looking for large green areas on Google Maps on the border of South Africa and Botswana, and I happened on Madikwe. I had a look at the website and it looked interesting. But they are very cute!
These Collared Palm-thrushes were photographed in the Cresta Mowana Lodge in Kasane, pretty much the only place you’ll see the species in Botswana (according to one of the guidebooks I read). They remain little know. There’s the collar. They seem to like the building and are pretty tame.
I was told by some researchers that in Botswana trackers watch for this species when looking for Painted Wolves (or African Wild Dogs) as they follow packs to snatch up prey and scraps. It is now treated as its own species, confined to Africa and the tip of Arabia (Black Kites also migrate here from Europe and Asia).
And, a dozen years later, I still remember his name: Steven Makala , working for the Limpopo River Lodge in the Tuli Block province of Botswana. He had no binoculars and yet, was easily picking up and correctly identifying birds around us. What makes a good bird guide? Knowing birds and where to find them is only the first step.
Prime destinations for seeing African Elephant in the wild include Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Uganda. Lions are most easily found in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
The fun starts tonight with a show called “Swamp of the Baboons&# , which takes a look at the complex social network of baboons in Botswana. Among the forested islands and wildlife-rich floodplains of Botswana lies the highest concentration of baboons in Africa.
Another southern African endemic, this species ranges widely across the dry grasslands of central South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. Even less pink is the Pink-billed Lark although it is still well named as it sports a prominent pink bill. Pink-billed Lark by Andrew Stainthorpe/Rockjumper Birding Tours.
Ecuador or Botswana, respectively). In the end, there were more than 40 destinations listed, most of them countries, and some of them smaller regions within large countries (e.g. Galapagos or the Okavango Delta). In such cases, I added one vote to the country they belong to (e.g.
King Juan Carlos may be the King of Spain, but he is no longer the honorary president of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Spain due to his hunting and killing of elephants in Botswana, Treehugger reports. From EcoRazzi.
At the time I was the Secretary of the Botswana Bird Club, and Claire was one of recipients of the club’s ornithological journal The Babbler. Is its habitat still there? No one has seen it after the initial discovery! The habitat was there, the birds were there and Claire found them.
The reserve, in the eastern corner of Botswana near Zimbabwe and South Africa, isn’t open to the public in general, so I figured I’d share a few images here by way of showing off. I had the amazing opportunity to visit one last year as the guest of a friend of mine who is a shareholder (not what you know but who!).
Several years passed on and my home was now under the southern sky, on the outskirts of Gaborone, Botswana, not far from the Ngotwane River. The Kozara route (7.8mi, top) and the Veliko Ratno Island circumnavigation route (4.3mi, left; source: Google Earth ).
King Juan Carlos of Spain, Honorary President of WWF Spain, is recovering in hospital after breaking his hip in Botswana where he was on an elephant hunt. From the Wildlife Extra News. April 2012.
We break for… a beautiful Malabar Whistling Thrush (another lifer), only to discover a busy bird party: Asian Paradise-flycatcher (my first white morph male and the second paradise-flycatcher in my life list – I have observed an African one in Botswana before), Black-hooded Oriole , White-browed Fantail , Oriental White-eyes , Red-breasted (..)
I’ll finish with a recent communication: a friend of mine told me that she booked a bird tour of the Okavango Delta in Botswana (the Pantanal of Africa), and asked if I think she should get a copy of Peacocks and Picathartes? Therefore, I did not feel like describing the book when the author did a great job himself. Most definitely so.
First up, you can enter to win a trip to Botswana for a 12 day private safari! A new National Geographic movie, The Last Lions, opened this past weekend in Washington, DC. The movie is about saving lions, and they are doing some really fun promotions to help spread the movie around the country. Have an iPhone or iPad?
It will allow China to bid for more than 100 tonnes of ivory stockpiled in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe through culling and natural deaths. The UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meeting in Geneva voted in favour of China becoming a licensed importer.
Blue Cranes are almost entirely restricted to South Africa, with an isolated (but dwindling) population in Namibia’s Etosha National Park and a few pairs in Botswana.
This 15,000 sq mi Kalahari desert reserve straddles the South African and Botswana border regions and was created when two national parks were merged – these being South Africa’s Kalahari Gemsbok National Park and Botswana’s Gemsbok National Park.
If tourists are too dim to tell Sierra Leone from Botswana or Tanzania, do we really want to rely on them to save Africa’s species? I was in Africa earlier this year and the universal message I got was that bookings were down down DOWN because of ebola. Ebola, a disease ravaging the other side of the continent.
Adding Insult To Injury Spaniards can't decide which would be worse — whether their king might have spent public money on his jaunt to Botswana last week, or whether it was paid for by an Arab businessman courting favor, as some reports say. Either way, there are calls for the king's abdication.
In both India and Botswana, I was at the very edge of the tropics (under the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, respectively), but in dry semi-desert zones, never deep in the true, humid tropics.
18 years ago I moved to Botswana where that gloriously bright sunshine makes observing them easier, while shorebirds themselves ease things further by mostly sporting their wintering plumage. If I were to give a speech at the shorebirds conference, those would have been my opening words. Anything else would be a lie.
Big Cat Odyssey chronicles their meticulous work over three decades of filming, photographing and documenting the behavior of big cat species in Botswana. Award-winning filmmakers and National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert set out 30 years ago on a quest to get close to big cats.
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