18 July 2012

Day 6, Chobe National Park late morning boat ride, part 1.

We get to sleep in! Our first activity is a boat cruise at 9:30 am, so we get to enjoy a leisurely buffet breakfast before we head for the jetty. This time, our guide, Sefi, drives the boat, and it's a smaller boat with just our own tour group.

It's back to picture-taking time. Here are some African darters:

African darters

African darters

A pied kingfisher:

pied kingfisher

Grey go-away bird (grey lourie):

go-away bird

A jesus bird, so named for how it appears to "walk on water":

jesus bird

The photo below shows the "walk on water" technique a little better. Notice the spur-winged goose looking at the jesus bird curiously and the dangerous crocodile in the background.

jesusbird

The bird on the right is a pied kingfisher, the left one is a forktailed drongo.

forktailed drongo and pied kingfisher

Wire-tailed swallows:

wire-tailed swallows

Water monitors are hard to pick out from the background of earth, leaves, and sticks. They are cool to watch move, though, so if you have time view the movie at the bottom of this blog post.

water monitor

This vervet monkey is way up in the top of a huge tree.

vervet monkey

Here is a vervet monkey mom and baby. There is a banded mongoose just off to the right.

vervet monkey

A group of impalas came down to drink. This photo shows clearly the "Mac Donald" sign on their rear ends:

impala

impala

I took a series of photos showing an elephant eating the bark of a tree, to illustrate the issue of elephant destruction of the forest in Chobe National Park.

elephant

In the last photo, I zoomed in on the elephant's face. I like this photo - you can even see the elephant's facial hair.

elephant

We saw a boatload of people looking at something - oh! It's a crocodile in the water!

crocodile

Our guide pulls our boat nearer.

crocodile

For a full 8 minutes, this crocodile sat there and posed for us with his mouth open. I zoomed in for a close-up:

crocodile

Here's what it looks like just past the stationary crocodile. Hippos and birds and another crocodile lounge, fly, and feed. The big brown and white birds are spur-winged geese, and the white one on the hippo is a white egret. (I shot a movie of the scene too - see the bottom of this post.)

hippos and more

A close-up of a single and then several spur-winged geese:

spur-winged goose

spur-winged geese

The crocodile that was posing finally closed his mouth . . .

crocodile

crocodile

. . . and swam away.

crocodile swimming

crocodile swimming

We saw another jesus bird:

jesus bird

And an Egyptian goose:

Egyptian goose

We also saw a black sable although it was too far away for me to get a good photo. But hippos were nearby and posed for us:

hippos

hippos

We are about an hour into our late-morning boat cruise. Off on the shore, in the distance, is a large group of elephants. Our boat moves closer . . . but that tale will have to wait for my next blog post.

Water monitor moving:


I took the following movie as our boat neared the stationary crocodile that "posed" for us. I like it because it shows an intermix of hippos, crocodiles, birds, and even tourists.


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