Birds Part 2

More birds! These are all photos that I took, a few from Zimbabwe and the rest from Botswana.

Some commentary inline below.

Southern Ground-Hornbill

These guys are hard to find by somehow we keep managing to stumble across a small group. Even driving into the middle of Zimbabwe yesterday we found a group of four crossing the road in a farming community. They are ugly and beautiful.

Spur-winged Goose

This goose was sitting perfectly still in the leafy water where we sat and watched elephants for over an hour.

Southern Cordonbleu

These little guys (known locally as southern blue waxbills) are ubiquitous yet we never tire of seeing them. This one was at our camp at Chipinda Pools.

Golden-breasted Bunting with pool reflection

One of the many great photos I got at the pool hide at Lone Tree Camp. The buntings would visit like clockwork around 5pm each night and pop in and out for 30 minutes.

Red-billed Oxpecker

These are not AI generated cartoon birds - these are oxpeckers that normally are found on antelope, buffalo, domestic cattle, etc. The red-billed oxpeckers have the distinctive yellow eye-ring.

Crested Francolin

The ground birds, Natal and Swainson’s spurfowl and the crested francolins, have been our companions for most of the trip so far. We hear them calling in the morning and frequently scurrying across the road in front of our vehicles.

Speckled Pigeon drinking

This beautiful pigeon returned to the hide pool two nights in a row, standing out very distinctly from all the ring-necked, laughing, and Namaqua doves lurking around the pool.

Meyer’s Parrot

Two or three Meyer’s parrots were always hanging around camp, and it was almost as if they followed us to the pool when we would migrate to the hide before sunset.

Small Buttonquail chick

We spotted this tiny buttonquail chick at Tswehe - the little ones are often tough to identify.

African Hawk-Eagle

This hawk-eagle presented himself perfectly to me as it flew from a perch, and I got a few nice in-flight photos. The feathers all the wqy down to the toes are a good ID diagnostic.

Western Barn Owl

We arrived a baobob tree for a picnic break at Tswehe and discovered two barn owls perched in the tree. Sadly one flew away and I wasn’t able to get an in-flight shot, but this perching owl hung out for the duration.

Helmeted Guineafowl

These beautiful and noisy ground birds are everywhere in southern Africa, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t beautifully colored.

Verreaux’s Eagle-Owl

Another owl! This one at Khama Rhino Sanctuary. This is the biggest owl in the region and has distinctive pink eyelids.

Malachite Kingfisher

One of the many beautifully colored kingfishers in southern Africa, this one hung out perched on a branch in the Okavango Delta for us. This is one of the true aquatic kingfishers in Africa - quite a few are in the terrestrial family and go for insects rather than fish.

Squacco Heron in flight

I love this photo because it shows the range of colors on the squacco that are harder to see when it is standing near the shore hunting. This is a breeding adult with the distinctive blue bill coloring.

Lesser Flamingos in flight

A big win for us at Nata Bird Sanctuary in Botswana: the pans were still flooded, and the flamingos were still there. Ken and I thought we’d have to return during rainy season to see them (which might make the roads into the pans inaccessible). The heavy rains throughout the late summer and fall left the pans full and the bird-life was wide-ranging and super abundant. We saw so many colored adult flamingos leading juveniles through the water and teaching them to feed and fly.