The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 40: Leopards, Lions, and Baobabs

     We leave Mashatu Lodge in the Toyota Land Cruiser, and I can tell we're heading to the river beds.  How I know our destination is a mystery, because once again I am thinking about how utterly lost I'd be if I were to be separated from the group.

    Lost.   Utterly.   I would not know what direction to go to try to get back to the lodge.   

A beautiful iridescent skink that lives in the rocks outside my lodge room.

    Follow the road?   Perhaps.   That would get me a little distance, assuming there weren't any lions in the vicinity.  Or snakes.   Or venomous spiders.

    Utterly lost and vulnerable.

    I certainly don't need to fear the little skink that lives at the lodge.

    Since this is a privately owned reserve and entry is restricted to guests only, there aren't many trails, but there are some.  What would I do if I came to an intersecting trail?   Probably cry.  If the lions hadn't found me yet.

    My reverie is interrupted by a couple of impala stags.   I have no idea what they are doing when one raises its head and places its mouth close to the other.  Some kind of male testosterone thing, I guess.

Gossping?

   The river bottoms are my favorite places in the reserve.   Now that the guides know where the lioness and her three young cubs are hanging out, that's the first place we go, stopping for any other sighting along the way.

As usual, the cubs show evidence of playing in the water, as they are wet and sandy.

    We find a kudu and a crocodile.

    And, of course, some birds.   The sandpiper below is a wood sandpiper, a LIFER for me.

    And, one of my favorites, a three-banded plover.   They are tiny little birds with awesome eyes.   In my travels, I have "saved" a baby plover and a plover nest.  The baby was left in the road at Amboseli Park in Kenya when its mother and siblings scattered before an approaching vehicle.   I asked the driver to go back because I knew there was a reason the mother was lying in the road.   Sure enough, there was a hatchling there.

    The nest I found in a gravel pit when I pulled off the Denali highway in Alaska.   I spotted a tiny plover running at my vehicle and stopped.   The bird immediately squatted down.   She was protecting her nest, a nest just out in the open where anyone could drive over it unknowingly.   I built a "guard" around it with the biggest rocks I could carry.

    We circle back to the lions and find them resting in the shade of the river bottom.   

Mom, the jungle gym.

    In the photo below, one cub is nuzzling Mom, one appears to be nursing, and the third is playing with her tail.

    Now that you have it, Little One, what are you going to do with it?

    We come across a sleeping leopard.   She is not annoyed at our presence, but neither is she amused as she changes positions behind a log.

        And then, it's time for sundowners.

The incredible, easily recognized baobab tree with its slim, pear-shaped trunk.

    Toasting the day.

    The plan was to stay out after dark and photograph stars with the baobab in the foreground.   Once there, we realized it would be quite some time before it was dark enough to do that.

    As the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, "The best laid plans o' mice and men, gang aft agley."   Lots of wisdom there, Sir Bobbie.

The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 39: Hiding Again, sans Elephants

     I'm getting better at photographing the frogs in the "Elephant Hide."   Again, there are no elephants here to entertain us.   

    However, the days have been getting warmer as the perpetual overcast of the sky thins, so there's a good chance something will show up besides doves.

    While we wait, there are bugs to photograph, too.

These small white butterflies are called Pioneer White.

    Regarding the heat:  I was already quite warm when we arrived at the hide, but after I climbed through the top hatch and down the steep steps, sweat started running off my face.    

    Looking at the exterior of the hide, it appears to be a re-purposed shipping container--we call them connexes--so you might say I was in a steel oven and that's exactly what it felt like.

    The large panel on top is the hatch door.  On the left side near the ground are rectangular openings for the photographers.   Some have already been closed up with wood flaps to keep the large critters out.   The frogs were on the narrow strip of dirt between the hide and the water.

    Just when I was about roasted to medium-well done, a herd of impala approached, and I forgot all about the temperature.

    One brave doe made the first approach.   After that, it was free-for-all.   I had a hard time trying to decide where to aim my lens, so I began looking for opportunities to photograph individuals or a few individuals.

A nice stag in the center.

    Here's a stag with a broken horn.   Their horns are permanent and will not regrow, unlike deer, whose antlers are shed and regrown every year.

A cell phone video:

Love the water droplets.

Note how the impala has spread its front legs.   They re very vulnerable to predators at this point.   

    And then they were finished.   They disappeared into the brush.

    But wait!  Isn't there more?

    Why, yes, indeed.   What's a hide without a dove?

Then, a treat.   A red-billed oxpecker or two.   These birds are usually seen on mammals, checking them for parasites, etc., in a symbiotic relationship.

Then, we top it off with the beautiful Lilac-breasted rollers.

    As we leave the hide for the last time on this safari, I spot a male ostrich in the shade of the tree.   The bird is hot and has its mouth open in an effort to cool off.   Those luxurious black feathers don't help much in this kind of heat.