The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 36: A Heron Teaches Us a Lesson

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    It's Zero-Dark-Thirty when we gather for a quick breakfast of yoghurt and muffins before our 5 AM departure for the morning game drive.   Bashi has already done a patrol outside our rooms, making sure there aren't any wild beasts to block our way to breakfast.

    This morning, I'll be with Bellamy, along with Marg, as we head to one of the many river bottoms.   The sun is lightening the horizon, but its golden rays have yet to penetrate the sandy river course.

Bashi and Marg, long-time friends, with dawn lightening the sky behind them.

        The first thing we find is the colorful Saddle-billed stork, a bird that stands almost five feet tall and has a wingspan of nine feet.  

This photo shows both the sandy and rocky river bed, as well as a drainage gully that brings rainwater into the main river.   As you can see, all that's left of the river are ponds, but at certain times, there is so much water that it carves deep trenches.

This is a female, as evidenced by her yellow irises.   Males have brown eyes, plus some bling under the bill.  Those red knees (ankles, really) make me think of my arthritic knees.

    We drive around a bend, and there's an egret.  Note the eroded soil on the riverbank.   Bee-eaters and kingfishers burrow into these banks to build their nests with tunnels 5 to 15 feet long, depending on the bird species.

A lone egret.

    A little farther on, I see this gray heron on the branch of a dead tree with the first sunlight bathing it in gold.

A gray heron with the Midas touch of the rising sun.

    I would like to take a photo, but I say nothing.   Not everyone on this trip is as crazy about photographing birds as I am.   I try to keep my "stop" requests to the really unusual sightings.

    Aha!    Marg asks Bellamy to stop, coming to my rescue.

    AND THEN!!!!    Look what we see:

Note the water trailing from the cub's tail.  

Such a patient mom.

    At last, the sun is getting high enough to penetrate the shadows in the riverbed to touch the lions and water with gold.

    The lions move to the opposite side of the riverbed when the sun is lighting up the area.   One cub finds a stick, and apparently, it's a most valuable stick because he hangs onto it.

    Later, after we have our fill of lion photos, Marg says to me, "Do you realize that if we hadn't stopped to photograph the heron, we never would have seen these lions?"

    "Yes," I say.   "Let this be a lesson.   Always stop for the birds."

    Our guides knew about this lioness with cubs but hadn't been able to find her recently.   Now they know where she prefers to hang out.

    Just above the riverbed, the lioness and her cubs are relaxing in the shade.

Well, the lioness is relaxing.   Not so the rambunctious cubs.   They're up to all kinds of antics.

 The lioness has a black scar around her neck from a snare.   She was rescued from it and went on to become a mother.

"Mum!  Not in front of all those people!"