Ok, we’re down to the next to last day in Botswana…Neil’s sort of surprised that for a trip in August it’s March the following year before getting them all done…but ya know…life intrudes.

Anyways…what’s been going on here since my last post. 

Basically…not much out of the ordinary. We did have a couple concerts in the Fort Myers Community series…first up was one called Three Italian Tenors. It was actually 4 of them, the printed insert in the program that said one of them was sick was on the same paper stock as the program itself which is commercially printed so it seemed like a setup. The 4th guy was amazingly enough also Italian and they sang mostly Italian opera pieces. Neil had googled before hand and it turns out that Italian composers (or at least operas in Italian) lead the list in total numbers. We recognized vaguely some of the pieces, many of them not at all, and easily recognized just 2 or 3…but since we’re not normal opera go-ers that seems about right. None of them were the next incarnation of Pavoratti but they were better than decent and entertaining. The piano accompanist stole the comedy section of the show in our opinion but then this series isn’t generally considered high brow classical music but more in the lines of classical entertainment. The second one was a production of Carmen but done with Flamenco dancers instead of singing although the 4 piece accompanying musician group did some singing.

We also got the oil changed in both cars, had annual maintenance on our A/C unit, and Connie had choir and Mastersingers rehearsals along with cantoring for a funeral Mass…but other than that it’s pretty much normal life here. We had some cooler weather around my last post but the past few days have been almost summer like.

Our allergies have been acting up a lot the past couple of weeks…as we get older that is getting overall worse. It was so bad that Neil skipped 3 bike days last week and went shorter than planned this week so far but he’s slowly improving.

OK, on to photos.

Pied Kingfisher

Green Heron…very similar to our Green Heron here in the US but not identical.

African Jacana

Striated Heron

Mr. And Mrs Pied on the roof of the houseboat

Helmeted Guineafowl

Juvenile Black Crowned Night Heron launching. As in many other instances…similar to but not the same species as the US version.

Another Green Heron

And another Striated Heron launching

Pensive Baboon

Malachite Kingfisher

Crocodile

He was still amazed that people would go down the river full pf crocodiles and hippos in a craft like this

Hippos nearby where the guys above were…this is just about 1/3 of the total bloat (that’s what a herd of them is named).

Yellow Billed Stork

Herd of elephants crossing the river.

And then after crossing they need to re-coat themselves with dust to prevent sunburn.

Yellow Billed Stork in flight

Marabou Stork

Another African Jacana…Neil especially likes the way he caught it with the water still coming off it’s foot as it mostly walks on water

African Fish Eagle takeoff sequence

And after landing briefly it took off again the other direction

These next two are both of the same Brown Hooded Kingfisher and I would normally only have shown one of them but for a couple of items. The two shots are about 20 seconds apart and the boat moved 20 feet or so between the two of them as you can see from the orientation of the perch. They serve to show how a very slight change in photographer position can seriously improve (or in this case downgrade) the shot giving either the nice dark buttery background or just some blue sky which isn’t nearly as nice of an image. The second item is that kingfishers cannot digest the bones so they puke them up and spit them out once the nutritional part of the meal passes on into the digestive tract.

Another African Fish Eagle…nicely posed for them

As the afternoon boat drive wore on there was a nice hippo opportunity

Followed by some Elephants at sunset along with another hippo yawning (not really, but that’s what it’s called) near sunset. Hippos do this display to help establish hierarchy and dominance among the members of the bloat without resorting to actual fighting.

And this last one you can just barely see the last remnant of the sun as it set mid frame along with a wider shot of the elephant herd. A great way to end the day before heading back to the houseboat which had returned from miles upriver to the original mooring location for the next morning’s Zambia immigration/Botswana arrival sequence at the end of the morning boat ride before lunch back the Pangolin Lodge then the flight back out to where all of the participants were going. 

Interesting things found on the net.

Cyas.