Etosha National Park is a huge park which offers spectacular birds and wildlife.
Wikipedia says;
Etosha National Park spans an area of 22,270 square kilometres and gets its name from the large Etosha pan which is almost entirely within the park. The Etosha pan (4,760 square kilometres) covers 23% of the area of the total area of the Etosha National Park. The park is home to hundreds of species of mammals, birds and reptiles, including several threatened and endangered species such as the black rhinoceros.
Our accommodations were close to a great waterhole and it was too easy to spend a great deal of time just sitting and watching. On our first morning we were in place by dawn and watched the slow and steady stream of mammals coming in to drink. In addition to a great number of birds, especially the Red billed Quelea which numbered in the tens of thousands.
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| Elephant at dawn |
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| Wilderbeest |
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| Springbok |
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| Zebra and Springbok |
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| Red billed Queleas |
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| ? |
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| Rock Martin |
The next part of the day's plan involved driving onto the flat grasslands looking for both mammals and birds; especially Larks.
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| Yellow Mongoose |
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| male Northern Black Korhan |
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| Spike heeled Lark |
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| Eastern Clapper Lark |
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| Eastern Clapper Lark |
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| Eastern Clapper Lark |
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| Pink billed Lark |
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| Desert Cisticola |
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Double banded Courser
After a bit of time on the plains getting our fill of larks and cisticolas and others it was time to head to yet another waterhole where there was a huge assembly of mammals. Spingbok, Zebra, Gnu, Oryx - all the normal players had assembled as had a lioness and two pretty much full grown cubs. The mother was sitting off to the side while the youngsters cunningly waited for an opportunity to ambush. They waited. We waited until finally there was a brave leap towards the herbivores by one of the siblings. Needless to say no blood was spilled as a result of the errant charge. The mother took a stroll around perhaps to take small minds [of antelopes etc] away from the presence of her cubs. This theatre caught our attention for a good 45 minutes or so.
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| Waterhole with lions in wait! |
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| Spotted lions... |
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| a clumsy charge... |
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| and the herbivores scatter... |
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| annoyed adult female lion |
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| lion spotted.. |
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| Secretarybird |
Later in the evening we went on a night drive which, in many respects was the worst night drive I had ever been a part of. The drivers were ill-informed and gave false information about animals. They had no idea on how to use a spotlight. I carefully explained before the trip that we were interested in birds and small mammals however when we did see an Owl, perched agreeably on the road the driver refused to actually stop the car and put the spotlight on it until we found ourselves screaming at him. He drove with no headlights on so we could not see anything directly ahead. We could occasionally see eye shine as the driver clumsily swung the light around however the driver could not see they eye shine as his eyes were never in a direct line. He found hares however again he did not think to actually shine the light onto the animals until we yelled at him to do so. We did see some fantastic animals on the trip but it was despite our driver / guides and not because of them. WE saw Bat eared Foxes and Brown Hyenas however could not get a great view because of the poor light and the red filter that they insisted on. The other vehicle mis identified the hyena as a spotted and refused to stop. They felt, I'm sure, that everyone would be happy to see lions, elephant, zebra and Springbok at night. Now these animals are great however all can be seen through the daytime; so you would think a night safari would focus on nocturnal animals but they did not!
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| Spotted Eagle Owl |
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| Spotted Eagle Owl |
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| Scrub Hare |
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| Brown Hyena |
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| Bat eared Foxes |
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