Botswana Travel Guide
Botswana Travel Guide
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Okavango Private Reserves
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Pom Pom, Kanana & Nxabega
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Birdlife
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Botswana Travel Guide

Birdlife



The birding is good and very varied in this concession. Kanana has immediate access to the deep channel of the Xudum channel that is lined with a mixture of water figs, huge floating mats of graceful papryus and anchored sections of miscanthus grass (Miscanthus junceus). Amongst the birdlife here, there’s a notable profusion of squacco herons. However, what is really interesting in the Kanana area is the recent discovery (October 2001) of two heronries. One is small, whilst another is described as being as big as the heronry at Gcodikwe Lagoon. When found this had many birds breeding there, including yellow-billed, marabou and open-billed storks, darters, cormorants and egrets. (I haven’t yet seen this, but how such a large heronry went ‘unnoticed’ for so long is a complete puzzle.) However fascinating, visitors must remember the problems that disturbances can cause to the birds; don’t encourage your guide to approach too close to the birds.
Nxabega doesn’t have the heronry, though one recent September over 500 open-billed storks and about 1,000 squacco herons were seen gathering to roost just a little west of Nxabega. It does, however, have a couple of very old pole bridges across small waterways in its reserve. These prove particularly attractive perching places for waterbirds that can then be seen while driving. (This is an advantage if, like me, it’s a help to have a stationary base from which to use a camera and tripod, rather than a rocking boat.) Lots of hamerkops, small herons, egrets (including a good number of slaty), black crakes and bee-eaters. Kingfishers are well-represented; here I’ve got closer to photograph a diminutive malachite kingfisher than I ever have whilst on a boat.
Read the marketing literature for almost any camp in the Delta and you’ll realise that claims for sightings of ‘the elusive Pel’s fishing owl’ are a tedious marketing cliché. Every camp simultaneously trumpets their rarity, and yet claims you’ll see one whilst staying there. That said, when I last visited Nxabega, one such owl was making predictable, regular appearances on one of the old bridges, and the guides advised that three pairs were regularly seen in different locations in the area. Meanwhile, I’m reliably informed that in 2002 a pair of Pel’s fishing owls were seen in, and said to be nesting in, trees about 100m from camp.
Having said all that about the resident birds that associate with water, you’ll find an equally good variety of drier-country birds in this reserve. On my last visit just amongst the eagles, I spotted tawny, bateleur, Wahlberg’s and, most remarkable, near Pom Pom a martial eagle battled with a large monitor lizard on the ground beside our vehicle. (We found both locked in combat, but at a stalemate. Eventually they disentangled themselves and the great lizard made a hasty retreat under a bush.)
Finally, on a more domestic note, the staff at Nxabega seems to have ‘tamed’ a pair of wild yellow-billed hornbills sufficiently for them to come along to afternoon tea on most afternoons.


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