Botswana Travel Guide
Botswana Travel Guide
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Okavango Private Reserves
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Delta, Oddballs & Eagle Island
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Birdlife
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Botswana Travel Guide

Birdlife



Birding is an important feature of all the trips here; you’ll probably spend much of your time exploring the area from a mokoro. As mentioned above, the water levels can vary hugely – in October 2002 they dropped by 15cm in just three weeks. So expect the channels and the birdlife to vary greatly through the seasons.
When water levels are lowest, around November to February, you may find skimmers on some exposed sandbanks. Meanwhile knob-billed ducks, long-toed and blacksmith’s plovers, and saddle-billed storks are amongst a whole host of permanent residents. As levels rise, red-winged pratincoles gather in large flocks, and there is always a good variety of kingfishers, from giant and pied to the tiny pygmy and malachite. Woodland kingfishers appear for the summer around the end of October – insectivorous birds which are usually seen hunting for insects in the riverine forest. They arrive with a variety of migrants, including the carmine bee-eaters, aerobatics yellow-billed kites, and paradise flycatchers, the males of which have the most spectacular tails. I’ve a reliable report of black coucals in front of Delta Camp, but haven’t seen them there myself.
Much of the Boro’s channel usually sees the annual catfish run, and this area is no exception. If you’re lucky enough to catch this then you can spot 30 species or more in a 100m stretch of waterway. Pelicans, skimmers and a wide variety of herons, egrets, storks, stilts, snipes and cormorants all appear in quantity then, to take advantage of the abundant food.


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