The birdlife in Botswana is certainly best when the foliage is most dense, and the insects are thriving, ie: in the wet season. Then many resident birds are nesting and in their bright, breeding plumage. This coincides to a large extent with the 'summer' period, from around October to March, when the Palaearctic migrants from the Northern Hemisphere are seen.

To give you an idea of the richness of the avifauna here, in the Okavango-Linyanti-Chobe areas during the rainy season it isn't difficult for competent ornithologists to record a hundred different species between dawn and midday. Really energetic bird-watchers can notch up as many as 200 different species in a 24-hour period in somewhere as rich as the northern Chobe Riverfront area. A real enthusiast might count about 320 species (out of the 550 or so which occur) during a two-week trip here.

The highlights of Botswana's birding calendar includes:

Mar–Jul
Wattled cranes and other opportunists follow the floods in the Okavango, snapping up drowning insects and reptiles.

Aug–Oct
'Fishing parties' of herons, egrets and storks will arrive at pools as they dry up, to feed on the stranded fish.

Sep–Nov
Nesting carmine bee-eaters colonise soft vertical riverbanks, skimmers nest on exposed sandbanks, and large breeding colonies of storks and herons gather at places like Gcodikwe Lagoon. Migrant waders appear beside the edge of most pans and lagoons.

Nov–Apr
Most of the weavers are in breeding plumage.

Feb–Apr
Red bishop birds, yellow-billed storks and the spectacular paradise whydahs have their breeding plumage on display. If the rains have been good then the flamingos may be nesting on Sua Pan; ostriches gather in numbers on the pans of the Central Kalahari.

Apr–Jun
Juvenile birds of many species abound as this season's young are fledged and leave their nests.