10,000 Birds
JUNE 4, 2020
Before it joins waters with the Matabele’s iliMphopho, the river of rapid rising and falling, known to the rest of the world as the ‘great, grey, green, greasy Limpopo’ of Rudyard Kipling’s writings, the Ngotwane River marks the boundary line between Botswana and South Africa. Cattle Egret 16. Cover: 20 years younger version of me.
10,000 Birds
JUNE 11, 2015
Gaborone, Botswana; June 1999. Marvellous orange-pink sunrise high over the Indian Ocean… Then, landing on a small airport at Gaborone, Botswana. The next one I can remember, going chronologically, was my first sunbird ever – the White-bellied Sunbird in the bush in front of our lodge, opposite the Botswana University.
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10,000 Birds
JUNE 3, 2015
I bring this up because birding the Chobe River in northern Botswana gave me the interesting opportunity to bird a country I technically wasn’t in. Hippo and attending Cattle Egret. But I have visited Guatemala, Lesotho and Zimbabwe to actually visit them and count them, even though I spent less time in them than I did Zurich.
10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 3, 2013
At the time, I was an active volunteer in an organisation soon to become the BirdLife Botswana and have noticed that Brown, Forbes and Symes quoted only two out of five Botswana observations accepted by the Rarities Committee, so I wrote to the Vulture News editor, suggesting that I write a short note on all five observations.
10,000 Birds
JULY 10, 2014
Several years passed on and my home was now under the southern sky, on the outskirts of Gaborone, Botswana, not far from the Ngotwane River. The Kozara route (7.8mi, top) and the Veliko Ratno Island circumnavigation route (4.3mi, left; source: Google Earth ).
10,000 Birds
MARCH 18, 2015
White-faced Whistling Duck ( Dendrocygna viduata ); Kasane, Botswana, 1 January. Knob-billed Duck, or Comb Duck ( Sarkidiornis melanotos ); Chobe NP, Botswana, 2 January. Egyptian Goose ( Alopochen aegyptiaca ); Chobe NP, Botswana, 1 January. Egyptian Goose ( Alopochen aegyptiaca ); Chobe NP, Botswana, 1 January.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 16, 2022
One study found that birds living in Botswana had elevated levels of lead in their bloodstreams during hunting season, presumably coming from lead bullets used on animals killed by hunters. ” (HBW). Other – sadly rather common – reasons are habitat loss due to agricultural expansion and the use of some veterinary drugs.
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