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. 34: 'Nothing but Evil'

        "When I look into the eyes of a leopard," says Bashi, a long-time wildlife guide at Mashatu Game Reserve in Botswana, "I see nothing but evil."

        While I don't necessarily agree, it's hard to argue with someone who has guided for many, many years, observed these cats so often that he can tell them apart by their spits/rosettes.   He knows their territories and their behavior.   He knows where to find them.

      Yet, there is something different, something uncomfortable, about a leopard’s eyes.  They aren’t the yellow-brown of lions, nor the striking, radiant amber of cheetahs when the sun hits them.

        Leopards have a luminous green glare in their eyes.   Not a strong, deeply-colored primary green, but a green-yellow that is disconcerting and unreadable.   

        In Kenya’s Maasai Mara, there was a leopard named Fig that had blue eyes, and she threw blue-eyed cubs, the most famous of which was Figlet.

        Little did I know when we started out this morning in a beautiful sunrise, that we would see and photograph FOUR different leopards within the span of three hours, and miss a another by minutes!   Then, hear of two sightings from a group that was in a different area. 

Very early morning at Mashatu Lodge.

African sunrises and sunsets are often phenomenal.

        Leopards prefer the forested areas beside rivers and waterways, so they can haul their prey high up a tree to avoid scavengers.   They climb trees to escape baboons and lions, or just to take a nice nap on a perfect limb.   So, we search the areas along the rivers.

                        LEOPARD NO. ONE

 We are in the river bottom when we come upon a male patrolling and marking his territory.   He is the most active of the four leopards we see today, so he gets the most photos.

VIDEO:

        On patrol in his territory.   He is known as the Euphobia male.

        And stopping to spray-mark.

More spraying.

        We run out of road to follow him on, so we go elsewhere.

LEOPARD NO. TWO

        We find this female resting in a cool, damp area, also in a riverbed.

    She looks around at her vistors....

    And goes back to sleep.

    She has a name, and if you can read my notes, you'll know what it is.

Right in the center.   It appears to read  "Greentree" female.

  These notes are often written while bouncing along a trail.   

    She is the mother of the next leopard we find.

LEOPARD NO. THREE

        This leopard is three years old, and she is the daughter of Leopard # 2.   Her name is Lerato, which means love.

 

        She's another "flat cat" and will probably stay that way, so we move on.

LEOPARD NO. 4

        Bashi spots this unidentified leopard while we're down in a river bottom.   It's concealed between two termite mounds and as soon as we get our shots, he's in a rush to get out of the river bottom.

    This is my favorite sighting of the leopards this day because of what you will read below.

        And off we go, pausing only to photograph an owl that we drive right under.

        Once on higher ground, Bashi turns left and drives into the riverine vegetation.    He passes right by the vehicles with the rest of our group, who are stopped and waiting for us to join them for coffee.   They look puzzled.

        Once I see the group, I understand Bashi's hurry.  It isn't only to get a possible face-on opportunity to photograph the leopard, but it's also because the cat is very near the group, watching them carefully.

        Who knows?   Who knows?   Probably nothing would happen.   Humans are pretty large prey for a leopard, especially in a group.   One alone?   Maybe.

        Nonetheless, I am tickled to tell them they were being spied upon by a leopard.

        Sometime after coffee break, when we are back in the vehicles, Bashi hears of another leopard very near camp, so we head quickly in that direction.   We miss it by a couple of minutes!!!

        Four leopards, almost a fifth in one morning?   Exceptional.   The only place that came close, for me, in the number of leopards seen was at Kirkman's Kamp near Kruger National Park in South Africa.

        Then, at lunch, another group that was in a different area tells us they saw two more leopards.

BIRDS:

            The owl we drove under:

Verreaux's eagle-owl

White-fronted bee-eater.

Saddle-billed stork.   A large stork with a wingspan of 9 feet, this bird stands up to 5 feet tall.

    Panning, or leading, with the camera is one way to catch birds in flight.   I might have been leading a bit too far:

Red-billed buffalo weaver. LIFER

Kori bustard

And the beautiful bird-of-many-colors, the Lilac-breasted roller.

FYI:   Leopards have enormous strength.   They're built like a tank, not like the sleek and streamlined cheetahs or the massive, impressive lions.   A leopard's ability to climb a tree while carrying an antelope, or a young zebra, is phenomenal.