Month: April 2024

I still have more to show you from Botswana, but spring is finally here in Lovell, and I have a few things to share with you. Today, my topic is waterbirds.

Ducks pass through here en route to breed in Canada. The males are in breeding plumage, so they look very smart. Here is a ring-necked duck, a close relative of the UK’s tufted duck

and a pair of buffleheads:

In flight, you can see that the two buffleheads closer to the camera are much smaller than the ring-necked ducks behind them.

One male had a head patch that was half white and half grizzled gray. I haven’t been able to find out if this is a juvenile, or an unusual variant . He is staring into the depths below.

A little stretch:

and a wave of his deep magenta feet:

Other types of duck stay and breed here, like the hooded mergansers:

And don’t ignore the mallards. For most of my life I thought all ducks were mallards. and although I know better now, they are still among my favorites. This pair were having a private moment on a tiny secluded pond deep in the woods, and they strayed into a sunbeam.

Great Blue Herons stay all summer. In years of watching them, I had never seen one actually catch a fish until last week. As luck would have it, I was in the midst of moving to get a better angle, so this photo is rather wobbly.

Next time, I’ll move on shore.

Their humungous beaks make hornbills look clumsy, but they aren’t. In these photos they dexterously (can you use that word when a beak rather than fingers is involved?) manipulate food or nesting materials.

The Yellow-billed Hornbill is probably lining his partner’s nest:

tossing the leaf in the air to adjust his grip:

In the same tree, a Bradfield’s Hornbill is feeding on berries:

A Red-billed Hornbill delivers an extra leaf to his mate, to supplement her bedding while she is walled into her nest till the young fledge:

This one has a juicy caterpillar:

and here a grasshopper:

Next morning, he undertakes his toilette, tweaking individual feathers into place:

to good effect:

In flight, these birds are often given undignified names: The Flying Banana, The Flying Chilli Pepper. But they deserve better.

I rather like storks, not just because they nest on chimneys and deliver babies under gooseberry bushes. They have a sort of stately demeanor that pleases me.

In Khwai there were three I want to show you. One was new to me, the Woolly-necked Stork, Ciconia microscelis. The dark plumage is more sumptuously hued than this photo shows.

The name of the second, the Open-billed Stork, Anastomus lamelligerus, aka the African Openbill, is obvious: this is the most closed its beak gets:

It wandered along the edge of the Khwai River at dusk, looking for the tiny water snails that it favors. But it came up empty while I was watching:

The best known of these is the less appealing Marabou Stork, Leptoptilos crumenifer, a scavenger. It has found the carcass to die for (sorry):

The elephant skeleton, our guide told us, had not been there on his last visit, so it was fairly recent. The tusks are taken by the authorities so as not to encourage their trade.

I do not think there was much left to glean:

so the stork hawked* (sorry again):

and moved on:

*In British English, ‘stork’ and ‘stalk’ both rhyme with ‘hawk’.

At first glance the Hammerkopf is an ungainly bird, with a bizarrely shaped head; I photographed these in 2019 in Ethiopia, in their usual pose on a jetty at a fish market waiting for handouts.

It is in fact a species of stork, and stands about 22″ high. The overall impression is rather homely, even dumpy. I have seen them hunting like herons, wading in shallow water.

But it turns out that head is really shaped for speed:

Let’s see the proof. This is a small pond in the Khwai Community Campgrounds between the Okavango and the Chobe. The brown bird flying low over the water on the left is a Hammerkopf.

It hovers:

and then, so lightning fast that I couldn’t see it until I looked at my photos, it lowers its head, beak agape:

dips into the water:

and grabs a tiny silvery fish:

The fish is often invisible, but the beak is dripping, proof of that dive:

It carries the fish off to the bank to feast. They made pass after pass across the pond, and for the life of me I couldn’t ever see the moment of catch.

Here is a video, with the crucial portion slowed down and one frame actually frozen so you can see it.

A not-so-humdrum brown bird after all.

There are various weaver birds in the Khwai. The Red-billed buffalo weaver builds huge communal scruffy nests. The Village Weaver builds much neater individual nests with an entrance at the bottom. And they sometimes choose the same tree, as here, top right:

Zooming in,

you can see the twiggy buffalo weaver technique vs the delicate woven grasses of the village weaver:

The village weaver nest starts with a ring, a sort of trapeze, which forms the scaffolding for the finished product. You can see one bottom left in the photo below.

Confusingly, the bird in photo above is a buffalo weaver, close to the village weaver nest.

We were admiring the nests, when TJ, cleverly looking down, noticed movement in a hole at the base of the tree:

It was a Nile Monitor, aka Water monitor, Varanus niloticus, related to the Komodo Dragon. It is Africa’s largest lizard, at up to 220cm long, and is not endangered.

It poked its head out and looked around,

but although we waited it decided not to fully emerge.

Monitors are carnivores, and its nesting hole was cleverly chosen, within easy reach of falling eggs or baby weaver birds.

The African Harrier Hawk, or Gymnogene, Polyboroides typus, is a bird I have shown you once before, but this time we saw it in action. It preys on nests, seeking the eggs and baby birds. As a result, if it comes anywhere near a nest the smaller birds mob it.

This is a juvenile gymnogene, just hanging out in a tree, crest erect.

The starlings noticed it, incoming from the left, and all hell broke loose:

It didn’t retreat, but you can actually see it flinch in this shot:

The following day, we saw an adult on the hunt.

It was slowly exploring a dead tree, looking for holes with nests inside.

As it hunted, the starlings dive-bombed it:

It seemed to have found something :

round the far side, though we couldn’t see the result:

Then it clambered up the tree on those long legs:

posed:

and flew off:

To close, a not-very-good movie to show you what mobbing involves, for anyone who has never seen this behavior.