The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch: 13: The "Hide" Part of Hide and Seek

            The name of the trip I’m on is called Botswana 2025 Hide and Seek Tour.    So far, we’ve been engaged in the “seeking” part, the searching for birds and wildlife in Chobe National Park and Chobe River, and now in Dinaka Game Reserve.

            Today marks the first “hide” part of the safari.

            Blind or hide?   A blind, from a photographer’s or wildlife viewer’s perspective, is some sort of above-ground structure that enables you to peer through portals while being hidden from wildlife.   Usually, it is enclosed on only one to three sides, perhaps a camouflage tarp or wall of logs and brush.

            In a hide, you are completely hidden,.  The are often dug into the ground so you look out at ground or water level.  For photographers, this is the ideal level.   The object in such photography is “the lower, the better” for eye-level shots.  

            We stopped earlier for a “potty break” and to see a hide.  This one, we were told, was not active insofar as wildlife, but I went in to see what it was like.   There were two “restroom huts,” shielded from a small waterhole by a log wall between them and the hide.

Inside the hide.   There are canvas flaps covering the windows now.

            This morning, after driving for several hours and photographing  game, we pull up to the hide we will use.  A pathway leads us slowly underground while shielding us from view by any wildlife at the waterhole.

            There is room for eight photographers inside.   Our group of ten makes it work, but there is no room to move around or get better angles.   The hide is a simple, narrow concrete room with open viewing windows along the waterhole side.                     

 

We look out over the waterhole.

            There is no action as we settle in, so we focus on whatever we can to get our camera settings right.   I am elated because there are two ducks I have never seen before, making them Lifers for me.   They were once called Hottentot teal but are now called Blue-billed Teal.

"Hottentot" is considered an offensive slur by the native Khoisan peoples, a leftover from colonial days,. and efforts are being made to eliminate the word.

These very small Blue-billed teals  are Lifers for me.

When there is nothing else, we shoot anything on the ground, like this skink.  

Or this utterly frightful delta emarginatum or black mud wasp, we think.   Wikipedia says the larger female is 1-1/4 inches long, but this thing seems to be four inches when it flies around us.

        Then, a flock of red-billed quelea appears, much like a murmuration of starlings, and hundreds of birds almost blot out the sky.

A video of the flock:

Soon, the kudu appear and our cameras are filling memory cards like crazy.

 

A couple of wildebeest arrive and move in among the kudu.   

A wildbeest coats itself with dust.

Rubbing faces into the dirt.

One wildebeest rubs its face in the dirt.

And then looks like this.

The wildebeest do things I’ve never seen before.   They rub their faces in the dirt, kick up dust, and so on.   My guess is that they are trying to get rid of biting insects.

More and more kudu join the others.   

A kudu calf.

 

Then an impala stag takes its turn at the waterhole. 

Two blue-billed teal are in the water.

 

As always, the quelea land, drink, fly, land, drink, fly.   There are some doves that join them.

Laughing doves

Eventually, it’s time to leave and work our way back to camp for lunch and our mid-day break.