The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 35: Elephant Hide Sans Elephants

       I'm reduced to trying to photograph frogs, and I'm not having much success.

    Shelly shows me a beautiful shot of a frog, and I try to emulate it.   I can't even get one in focus because I'm too short to see over the dirt barrier, and the frogs are right in front of us.

My best shot----of many.

    This afternoon we are in a different hide in Mashatu Game Reserve.   This is a daytime-only hide, as it doesn't have overnight accommodations.

    Known generally as the Elephant Hide, its real name is the Matebole Hide.   Rumor has it that this hide is called Elephant Hide because elephants like to come to drink and frolic in the water.

    There are no elephants here today.  There may have been before we arrived, and they might come after we leave, but right now this place is sans-elephants.

    That's why I'm trying to photograph frogs.

    However, to give Mashatu its due, the hides at Mashatu Game Reserve have a well-deserved reputation for producing phenomenal sightings (not just frogs and doves), and that is why Marshel Adventure Tours was excited to book us here.   We just were unlucky that our trip followed two months of rain that left water in numerous places for the animals.

We are staying at Mashatu Lodge, and the hide is east of us.

    And, once again, we are waiting for anything thirsty to show up at the waterhole in front of us.

              

The ever-vigilant Randy.

Marg and Aubrey, the host, walk along and give camera advice while we wait.

You can tell nothing is happening outside the hide when photographers leave their cameras to get coffee and snacks from the table.

    Far in the distance, we see three warthogs s-l-o-o-o-o-w-l-y approaching.   We keep our eyes on them, hoping they will come to the water.   They're taking their own sweet time about it.

    When the warthogs are near, we are ready.

Warthogs weigh from 110 to 330 lbs, with a shoulder height of 25 to 33 inches.

See the calluses on the warthog's front ankles?   They are born with them.   Warthogs, with their long legs and short necks, often kneel to graze on grass.  I often wonder if the calluses are an evolutionary adaptation.

        Suddenly, something spooks them, and away they go like a speeding bullet train.

    They might look like chubby stuffed sausages, but they are amazingly fast and can run up to 35mph.   They run with their tails straight in the air.   Lions can't catch them.   Cheetahs can, but warthogs are too large for a single cheetah to take on.

    Lions and leopards can catch the piglets, though.   I've seen it happen.

    When the three warthogs are out of sight, Marg tells one of her favorite stories.  

    She was once at a sighting of a lioness sneaking up on an unsuspecting warthog.   

    There were also many, many photographers there in other vehicles, many of whom Marg knew and who knew Marg.   They watched with bated breath, hoping for some action shots of the lion chasing the wild pig.

    Suddenly, a woman in Marg's group who was on her first trip to Africa, yelled, "Run Pumba!   Run!"    And the warthog did, much to Marg's embarrassment.    The angry photographers gave the woman the stink eye as Marg pretended she wasn't with the woman.

    Pumba, by the way, is the name of the warthog in The Lion King play and movie.

    We wait some more.

Southern gray-headed swallow.   LIFER

I just like the falling drops of water, and they are more interesting than frogs.

    I think of my own favorite warthog story.   I was staying at Governor's Camp in the Maasai Mara of Kenya, and a family of warthogs lived in the camp.   We often saw piglets chasing each other through the tents and camp facilities.

    Because Governor's Camp is unfenced, security staff would escort us anytime when it was dark.

    One evening, as security gathered us to escort us to dinner, they motioned for the guests to look into a thicket that was almost directly behind my tent.   When they aimed their flashlights into the thicket, two warthogs shot out of it, startling the guests!

    The staff got quite a laugh out of it, and I could tell it was one of their favorite pranks.

Late afternoon sun accentuates the colors of the laughing dove.

Laughing dove.   Such pretty birds.

    To top off the day, a hamerkop appears.   It is my favorite African bird.   Hamerkop is an Afrikaans word for "hammer head" and this bird's posture shows you why.

    I love their prehistoric look.   Once thought to belong to the stork family, they are now considered to be in the genus Scopus and the family Scopidae.    Their nearest relatives are pelicans and showbill storks.

        Time to leave the hide and head back to camp.

Where we are.   The hide is in red on the map.

The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 9: Double Trouble on the Chobe River

(NOTE:   Clicking on  one photo will bring up a filmstrip where you can see the photos full screen.)

When people go to Africa for the first time, they often speak of wanting to see the “Big Five.”  Websites claim that if you travel with them, you will surely see the Big Five.  It’s all about the “Big Five."   

And there’s not a bird on the list!

 

I didn’t want to see the Big Five on my first trip.  I wanted to see everything from the tiniest insect right up to the giants that walk the earth.

 

The term Big Five is a holdover from the colonial days when safaris meant guns and dead animals, and the Big Five were the most dangerous animals a hunter could stalk.  Nowadays, most of those hunts are “canned,” meaning that the animal a hunter MAY shoot is pre-selected and most likely is one its owner selected to be culled. This does not occur in all countries, as the country owns the animals in most places.

 

Today, the Big Five remain as dangerous as they were years ago.   They are the elephant, lion, leopard, rhinoceros, and the Cape buffalo.  These animals, together with the Nile crocodile and hippopotamus, kill hundreds of people every year in Africa.   Tourists are not exempt.

 

Actually, the malarial mosquito kills more than all of the mammals, and snakes mark up a number, too.    The mammoth Nile crocodiles are an extreme danger to everything, including humans.

Anyway, late one afternoon, we’re slowly making our way down the Chobe River in the photo boat from Pangolin Photo Safaris, and the boat driver pulls over to shore so we can watch some bird action.   I’m focused on an African spoonbill that has caught something and is running away from the other birds.   In two seconds, a gray heron has stolen the fish from the spoonbill.

I am peripherally aware of one of the more cantankerous beasts in the Big Five—the Cape Buffalo.   Massive, unpredictable, and usually in a bad mood when people are around, a buffalo watches the action I’ve been photographing.

Or so I thought.

The buffalo has its eyes on a Nile crocodile that has decided to go on an overland walkabout.

Mr. Grumpy Pants, perhaps remembering that some of his kin that might have been taken by crocs when  an innocent calf was drinking, would have none of whatever the croc was up to.   Land was the buffalo’s territory; water was the crocodile’s territory.   The buffalo decides to rid the land of reptiles such as the huge, long-tailed beast now walking along, minding its own business.

The bull approaches and circles and waits for its chance to hook the croc with one of its sharp horns.   The croc defends itself by opening its mouth and displaying an enormous amount of sharp, unforgiving teeth.

 

Undeterred, the buffalo continues to spar, feint, circle, and get its horns dangerously close to all that dentine.   Undeterred, the croc does the same, except it doesn’t have horns, but more than five dozen sharp teeth.   Unfairly, I think, it can also grow new teeth if any are lost or damaged.

 

Occasionally, the battle pauses as the buffalo looks toward a couple of its herd buddies nearby, as if to beseech their aid in ridding the plains of this scaly menace.  One buffalo is lounging in a watery bog.  Another is asleep on the grass.

Pretending to sleep but one eye is open.

 

Someone with an overactive imagination might claim that neither of the herd-mates ventures a look toward their fighting buddy, and instead intentionally look in any direction other than the warrior.   Except the one that is asleep, of course, unless buffalo sleep with one eye open, which, as ornery as they are, is not at all far-fetched.

 

The battle continues.  The buffalo seems to call a detente, walks away, and the croc continues on its walkabout.

Not so fast, the buffalo decides, and the battle is engaged again.

I watch and press the shutter in stunned disbelief.   I’m reasonably sure everyone else in the two boats did also.   Our guide remarked that he'd never seen this before.

 

But then, I do have an overactive imagination.

***

Coppery-yailed coucal.

Squacco heron

Black-headed heron.

Gray-headed heron

Purple heron

Waterbucks graze as the sun sets on the Chobe River.