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  January 8 - continued
    There were animals everywhere. We were able to get quite close to a giraffe standing under an acacia tree. Zebras were scattered across the plain, and a small herd hung out at a waterhole. Several tsessebes grazed nearby; these distinctive dark-brown antelope are much higher at the shoulder than the hindquarter. They are the fastest of the antelopes.

     A male ostrich was walking among the sparse trees, his black and white plumage standing out vividly against the grey trunks of the dead trees. The ostriches are bigger than you would think, and always seem sort of comical to me. A bit further on we saw three female ostriches; they are a more drab greyish brown color, and much better camouflaged than their flamboyant mates.

        We came upon several beautiful female kudus. These large antelopes are exquisite; they have intelligent faces, huge ears, thin white stripes on their sides, and a scruffy mane all the way down their backs. The males have huge spiraling horns, but these were all girls.

     We found another group of giraffes; these had several youngsters and one quite small baby - there are few things cuter than a baby giraffe.  We saw some very young impala babies as well, and they gazed as us with innocent faces. Two warthogs came up out of a wallow; they were covered in wet mud, and looked ridiculous as they ran off with their tails held straight up in the air. We saw more elephants, again all males.

     There were many birds of prey out this morning. Gee pointed out a handsome bird and told us it was a brown snake eagle. Janell asked, “Is that because it only eats brown snakes?” We also saw a steppe buzzard, a lovely chestnut color.

     ‘Buffalo,’ Gee called out, and we stopped to watch a small herd of half a dozen African buffalo. It was a bachelor herd, all males.  The dominant bull had an impressive set of thick horns, known as a boss. He stared at us suspiciously with near-sighted eyes, raising his head and sniffing the air with an ill-tempered expression.

     Gee pointed out that there were both red-billed and yellow-billed oxpeckers on the buffalo. These birds ride on many of the large animals, picking off ticks and bugs, but also picking at scabs and sores. They can perform a good symbiotic service, but can also be a huge annoyance. You see them on animals such as buffalo, giraffes, kudus and zebras. They don’t seem to bother the elephants, I expect because the elephants could use their trunks to get rid of them.

     We came across more zebras at a waterhole; I never get tired of watching these roly-poly cousins to the horse. Each one has unique patterns to their stripes, like fingerprints.  Up close their bold black and white stripes are dazzling, but from a distance they appear grey and blend into the background.

     As well as seeing the large animals, we enjoyed the small things. Gee showed us a column of harvester termites, cutting sections of grass and leaves and carrying them down into a hole. This type of termite does not build mounds, but lives underground.  
     Gee is fantastic at reading tracks in the sand along the roads; he could see a print and not only know what animal made it, but also tell you exactly what it was doing. Looking at some elephant footprints, Gee explained that the elephant that had made it was on the young side, because you could see a lot of tread in his tracks; their feet get smoother as they age. He showed us an interesting row of diagonal tracks in the sand, and told us they were made by a sleepy elephant that had walked along the road with his trunk swishing back and forth as it dragged the ground.  
      There were aardvark hole everywhere; these burrows are large and deep. They are often taken over by other animals such as warthogs or hyenas. It is interesting that we see so many aardvark holes but never see the aardvark; Gee told us they are not that rare, but are rarely seen because they are shy and nocturnal. We stopped to examine one of their burrows that had been dug out around the entrance. Gee read the tracks; warthogs had taken over the hole, and lions had been digging trying to get to them.

     A pair of steenboks stood in the shade not far from the road. These miniscule antelope are exquisite; they have dainty faces, and the males sport tiny straight horns. They tend to be quite shy, and these leaped away and disappeared into the brush as we approached.  
     The remains of a dead elephant carcass lay near the road. Gee paused for us to look, but the smell was pretty bad. The grey skin looked like a collapsed tent, and part of a foot lay right by the road. We wondered what had killed it.

     Around noon we passed an old derelict camp, and came out of the trees to a big lagoon, which was actually part of the Gometi River. A small herd of elephants lingered near the shore. We saw a huge variety of waterfowl. Marabou storks stood along the shore; these unique birds are very large and impossibly ugly. They have bald heads with a few sparse hair-like feathers, unhealthy-looking mottled skin, beady little eyes you can hardly see, and large, fleshy obscene-looking snoods that hang down in from their necks. They are so unattractive that it is fascinating to see them in a morbid sort of way, kind of like watching a train wreck.

     We decided to count all the birds we could see from one spot. There were Egyptian geese, spur-winged geese, white-faced ducks and comb ducks in the water.  Roseate spoonbills waded near the shore, using their shovel-like bills to hoover for food. Diminutive red-billed tea paddled in the shallows, along with Hottentot teal with their bright blue bills. We could see jacanas, blacksmith lapwings, ruffs, three-banded plover, black-winged stilts and wood sandpipers. There was a glossy ibis, several small grebes, and a collared pratincole. A yellow-billed kite perched in a tree. A common scimitar bird flew across in front of us. That came to twenty different birds without even moving, and I am sure I missed a few in that count.

     We heard a commotion, and a female elephant came into view, the first we had seen. She was moving fast, and seven males were all in a row running behind. Gee said they were probably all in musth, a periodic breeding condition in male elephants characterized by a large rise in reproductive hormones and testosterone, and aggressive behavior. He explained that when a female elephant is in estrus, she will run for miles and the males will chase her; she will ultimately mate with the one who can go the furthest and keep up with her. This is the elephant’s way of determining who the strongest potential mate is without fighting.

      We marveled at the number of animals we were seeing at Kaziikini. Gee said that the rainy season is the best time to visit, because there are waterholes everywhere, and many of the animals leave the Okavango Delta and come to this area. During the dry season the waterholes dry up and the wildlife goes back to the Delta, but for now we were seeing an abundance of animals. They all seemed to be in good condition, well fed and plump. During the rainy season there is much grass so all the grazers are well fed, and this makes for good meals for the predators as well.    

     Moving on, we crossed through an expanse of dead trees, then entered a denser woodland. Here we found a family of kudus; a mother with a young baby. There was also a half-grown male with small horns. We had seen several female kudus today, but I was hoping to see a mature male, as they have the most magnificent spiral-twisted horns. But we were very excited to see the baby!

     We passed another elephant carcass; I really wondered what had killed it. Not poachers, as the tusks were still there. A bit further on there were the bones and hide of yet another dead elephant. I found it a disturbing sight.  

     Presently we came back to the same waterhole where we had tea in the morning, this time approaching from the opposite side. The sun had briefly come out from behind the clouds. A yellow-billed hornbill watched us from a high branch; I think these are more photogenic than their more common red-billed cousins.  

      A male elephant made his way down to the water to drink with a family of warthogs following in his wake. A few zebras and kudus wandered toward the water, and we watched a baby zebra scratching his rump on a tree. Three large bull elephants stood at the edge of the waterhole having a drink, sucking up large amounts of water with their trunks then thrusting them into their mouths.

       We noticed that one male elephant was in a bad mood - he clearly didn’t want us there. As we sat in the land cruiser watching the herd, he walked by us feigning indifference while keeping a wary eye on us. But he gradually started to walk faster, and he became more and more agitated, turning his head toward us and flapping his ears. Then suddenly the elephant turned and charged straight at us! He wasn’t very far away, either. With a yelp, Janell, who had been sitting beside me, was suddenly in my lap. Of course Gee had been watching the angry elephant and reading his mood, so he wasted no time in accelerating out of his path. Glad we weren’t self-driving!

      As we travelled along a shallow river valley, dozens of smallish grey raptors flew all around us; they were Amur falcons. They seemed to by flying joyfully, riding the wind, embodying freedom.  We saw more birds; helmeted guinea fowl crossed our path frequently, and Gee identified pied babblers from hearing their song while driving – another of his impressive guiding skills. We watched as a bateleur eagle soared overhead, his outstretched wingtips moving as he navigated the breeze.  

     We came across yet another elephant carcass, this was the fourth one we had seen, and this time Gee stopped and we got out to take a look. It was pretty well rotted, mostly hide and bones. We didn’t know what had killed these elephants; Gee said maybe anthrax. Definitely not poachers, as they would have taken the tusks. Though there is horrible poaching in much of Africa, there is relatively little of it in Botswana, as the army acts as an anti-poaching unit and has instructions to shoot to kill. Gee held up one of the tusks for a photo, and said he would report the carcass to the reserve owners so the rangers could retrieve the tusks. Paula plucked some hairs tails from the dead tail, and said “Look, I’m a Level 3 Guide!” We did a cheesy group photo beside the carcass.

     It had been cloudy all day, though the sun would come out for a few minutes here and there. In the afternoon we could see dark storm clouds gathering around the horizon, and the slanting silver of rain falling.  We saw vivid lightning split the sky, but oddly we could not hear any thunder. Sometimes the storms were in the distance, and other times they overtook us with a sudden deluge. This was a pattern that continued for the first 12 days of our trip!

     We turned into the road to our camp, and paused at the Kaziikini camp office. There was an empty building with a sign that said ‘Bar’, with a porch deck overlooking a waterhole. The bar was totally deserted, but to our delight a breeding herd of female elephants with their babies were walking along the bank of the waterhole. There were over a dozen of them, mothers with young ones, and several of the babies were quite tiny. These were the first female elephants we had seen all day, except of course the one being chased by the seven randy males.

     It was starting to rain hard as we arrived back in camp around four o’clock for a late lunch. We were elated at the fabulous day we’d had. Gee went to the reserve office and called to see if my suitcase had arrived in Maun; it had not, but we were told it had reached Johannesburg, and supposedly would come to Maun the next day. I could only hope Duma (the stuffed cheetah mascot) was not too scared.

     We noticed a red-billed hornbill in the tree above the dining table. Gee explained that the female hornbill will find a crevice inside a hollow tree, then molt her feathers and use them to make a nest for her eggs. The male will seal her up inside the tree and feed her through a small opening until the eggs hatch, the babies grow big enough to fly and the mother grows her feathers back.  We watched the father hornbill as he inserted food for his mate through the narrow opening in the trunk.

     We went back out around 5.25 for a short evening game drive. We passed through one of the many forests of dead trees, which had been decimated by elephants. It was a good evening for birds. A little bee-eater, one of my favorite birds, was sitting on a branch with a butterfly in his mouth. He would perch in a tree for the longest time, then suddenly fly off quick as a flash, grab an insect, and return to the same twig. These beautiful birds have green backs, yellow bellies, a black stripe across their faces, and brilliant turquoise above their eyes, as if they put on iridescent eye shadow.

     We passed a red-billed buffalo weaver nest; these industrious birds build a large communal nest. Gee sighted a European bee-eater; I was scanning but couldn’t quite locate it. ‘There,’ said Paula, ‘it’s in that dead tree.’ We pointed out to her that this wasn’t very helpful, as there were about a hundred dead trees in front of us! We got a good look at a pair of swallow-tail bee-eaters. They are less common than the little bee-eaters, and have a forked tail like a swallow, which is a beautiful shade of turquoise blue.

     We saw a few scattered elephants and zebras, and always impala. It was starting to rain again, so we headed back to camp. Having had little sleep the night before, I was nodding off as we drove back through the darkening evening.

     Mosa had fixed us a delicious dinner of beef tenderloin and fresh veggies. We sat around the table, had some wine, and talked about the awesome day we had. We had seen an amazing array of wildlife, especially overwhelming for those in the group who had not been on safari before. No cats or major predators, but we had seen just about everything else. We reviewed our favorite sightings of the day; it was difficult to choose. My choice was the angry elephant who charged us - but then again, those young giraffes play fighting and hitting each other with their necks had been pretty special . . .

     There was no campfire that evening since it was raining. I went to bed as soon as dinner was over, and slept like a log. No animal noises in the night this time - or if there were, I never heard them.  

              ~ Continued on next page ~


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