Travels with Gunther and Kara

OK, back to posting. Connie’s off to Daytona Beach until Sunday…the Florida Ladies of Elks Conference is going on. They talked about him going and he decided not to go for a couple of reasons…there aren’t many decent photo opportunities this time of year in that area, it’s only about 40 miles or so to Black Point Drive at Titusville but it’s still too much summer for many birds to be around. Add in the fact that it’s mostly designed to be a Ladies thing meaning there isn’t anything for him to do except the dinner on Friday night and he decided not to go. The Ladies group up at the Punta Gorda lodge does a bus trip so she signed up for that…Bloody Mary’s and silly games both ways…and so far she’s having a decently good time. She did have to get a new charging cable for her AirPods…Neil didn’t do a good job of making sure she had adequate electronic charging capabilities along with her…and he’s solved that problem by adding verify operations to the master packing list.

She was originally going to room with her friend Suzanne but Suzanne tripped and needed stitches in her lip so she canceled out…and it turned out that one of the Punta Gorda ladies was sharing 3 to a single room so one of them moved over and is Connie’s roommate which means she’ll split the cost there. Neil is meeting Suzanne’s husband Joe at the North Fort Myers lodge for fish dinner tonight…he tried to convince them that Joe should stay home and do husband things but no go there.

Nothing much else going on…they’ve got in a request to the HoA people to replace their garage carriage lights as the sun for the past 10 years has deteriorated the plastic. Since it’s an HoA you need to have approval to do anything outside and despite carriage lights being pretty much a standard thing they want a picture of what we’re planning on putting up…so he’s taking a trip to Home Depot to get some pictures today. He finds it hard to believe that the dozens of replacements he’s seen of the lights on other houses in the development all got approval but rules are rules and we would hate to get on the bad side of the HoA Gestapo ya know.

Ok, let’s get back to images from Botswana along the Chobe River which forms the northern border of the country with Namibia.

Last time we talked about nictating membranes that some birds and reptiles have to protect their eyes…it’s basically a second set of eyelids that are semi-transparent and usually move in a different direction…most eyelids go up and down but nictating ones generally move diagonally from the lower rear to the upper front. He was hoping that the shot I used last time had a corresponding one with the nictating visible but alas, he didn’t find one…but he did find one of a different Pied Kingfisher with an almost identical pose.

No eyelid

Nictating closed.

I’m sure they can’t see quite as well through the nictating one but use the keen sight to home in on prey and close the nictating just before hitting the water to protect their eye.

The second thing we talked about was the lack of depth of field getting both birds on a branch in focus so here’s an example of that. In this example…the light is coming from the left for just about direct sidelight of the shot and the perch is closer to the camera on the left side since the perch is in shadow. This means the female (single breast band) to the right is actually further away then her mate (double breast band) to the left…that makes sene since she actually appears about the same size and as in most species the females are larger. Pied’s are about 9 inches long which in this crop makes the image about 20 inches wide. He was using his 600mm lens and his nifty PhotoPills app tells him that for 20 inches wide field of view the birds are 28 feet away…and at that distance the depth of field is a mere 3 inches. Autofocus preferably latches on the closest subject (the male on the left in this case) so she is not as sharp as he is. He could have used a smaller aperture to get more depth but even going to f11 instead of f6.3 only increases it to 5 inches at the loss of 2 stops of light and thus his 1/2000 shutter speed would have been reduced to 1/500 and while that would have worked for a these perched birds it definitely wouldn’t have been enough to freeze any motion and wouldn’t have gotten both in focus anyway. As an alternative…he could have taken a burst focused on the male, shifted focus points and taken another burst with the female in focus and blended them later on. However…given movements and head turns and whatnot that’s a lot more difficult than it sounds and unless subjects are really still rarely results in a good final output…and the opportunity didn’t last that long anyway. So…that’s why last time I only showed you the image of the male. 

OK…moving on to new stuff.

Hamerkok…a weird looking shore bird.

Pied Kingfisher launching.

Impala coming down for a drink.

Kudu bull (one of the largest antelope species)  with an Oxpecker on its back. Their horns reach the full 2.5 twists of spiraling averaging 47 inches long at about 2 years of age and an adult is larger than an elk but smaller than a moose…this one is a Greater Kudu and stands about 5 feet tall at the shoulder and weighs 400-600 pounds. 

Neil can report that they taste pretty good…very lean very dark red meat like venison or elk so excellent paired with some mushroom sauce and a nice red wine…in fact due to the very low fat content and almost non existent marbling in herd critter meat they’re almost always better with sauce. He’s not sure whether the ones he ate were wild harvested or farmed but given their relatively scarcity in the wild probably farmed as hunting wouldn’t provide a reliable supply.

Closeup of the same bull.

African Darter…or anhinga here…this one is female since she has the brownish chest and head. Like cormorants…they hunt underwater and are frequently seen (like cormorants) perched with their wings spread to dry.

Nile Crocodile…this one was about 12-14 feet long. They sit on the bank and open or close their mouth as needed to maintain body temperature.

Marabou Stork…another of those birds with a face that only a mother could love. Huge bird…8-10 foot wingspan and stands about 5 feet tall and 20 pounds. Like herons and egrets…they’re mostly fish eaters but again like herons will eat anything they can swallow.

Waterbuk…very strange looking critter. Neil can’t remember if he got any more shots besides this one.

Elephant crossing the river and having a shower.

Bombs away.

Neil processed this one three different ways…let me know in the comments which one you prefer and why. All the same individual taken from about 20 yards away…you can see the busted right side tusk and the damage to his (at least we think it’s a male since you can’t see the breasts/teats under her chin left ear.

Closeup full color

Full color zoomed out shot

Full black and white and high key (blown out sky) since elephants don’t have a lot of color and it seemed to him that the blues and greens draw attention away from the subject.

Elephant left in color since he does have a little but the background saturation reduced to just a few percent. Neil actually prefers either this one or the full on B&W depending on which time he looks at them. He definitely likes the wider shot with the splashing water better than the closeup.

African Jicana…a wader about 12 inches long and maybe 18 or so standing vertically. They have huge feet which allow them to walk across linllypads easily…although not really visible or spread out in this shot as it’s on land in the grass he’s got some later in the week that show the size of the feet…which when spread are almost as large as the body is long.

Elephant family getting a drink while being photobombed by a Gray Heron.

A different family from the other side…although again 4 of them but you really need to count legs to see all 4. Both of these were relatively close to sunset and he really didn’t notice the difference in color temperature between the two shots until I just pointed it out to him. They were taken with different Nikon Z8 bodies and lenses…but both are setup the same way for ease of use so he’s got no explanation for the difference other than he keeps white balance (which controls the color temp and blue/orange cast to the shots) in automatic and the software made different decisions. As he recalls this second one seems more accurate to what the eye saw. They were near this area of the beach for awhile and the backgrounds are different so maybe the one above was taken longer before sunset and the golden hour really got going…or then again maybe they were a half mile down or upstream, a lot of the memory runs together and he’s too lazy to go look at the actual capture times. (Neil note…drat, darned bear made me go ahead and look…first one was at 1040 in the morning and the second one at 1737 near sunset so they’re different groups and time of day for sure.)

This one in the late afternoon decided he wanted a mud bath after crossing the river…he was in the same group that crossed 5 or 6 shots back in the post. Not a full adult but a teenager and both he and the rest of his herd spent 10 minutes tossing mud or water all over themselves.

Getting on towards sunset…they found this impala stepping down for a drink. Due to the slope of the beach they have to get into a really awkward position (although not as awkward as a giraffe does) to drink and that makes them slower to react. There be crocs in this river and drinkers tend to be skittish…this one jumped back several times as waves from the boats washed up near him…because crocs attacking you start as little waves just like that.

Jumping back just in case.

Another one from the morning coming down to drink.

And also this relatively newborn calf…barely up to the adult knee.

Ok, really getting to sunset now…and ya know about life how sometimes it gives you lemons? In the case of wildlife photography the lemon you get near the end of golden hour and sunset is really low light levels. These Helmeted Guinea Fowl are about the size of a large duck/small turkey and mostly run/walk instead of flying. This group happened to be in shade which meant that using a high enough shutter speed to get a sharp in focus shot would have resulted in crazy high ISO levels and a whole lot of noise which means not a great picture. The other option is to make lemonade…which in this case means you use a slow shutter speed (this was at 1/20 second) and pan with the running birds (they hardly ever just walk) and shoot long bursts hoping to get the bird enough in focus to be recognizable and the background blurred to show the motion. Neil sez that Connie wasn’t along to get the artsy fartsy shot so he had to do it instead. The drawback to this technique…although it does produce a different sort of shot…is that you shoot a lot of long bursts and the trick is to keep the subject pretty well in the same part of the viewfinder while panning. That’s hard because they don’t run at a constant speed so you end up with dozens (or in his case several hundred) really terrible shots in order to get one usable one. He wishes this bird was slightly more in focus albeit still blurry and realized after the fact that he should have shot some at 1/20, some at 1/30, and some at 1/40 or 1/50 to have some different options to choose one. Out of his several (like going on 300) shots…there were just 2 that were worth processing and the other one had some additional composition issues. It’s not a shot he is going to try to reproduce a lot…but as I said…lemons and lemonade.

With that…the sun had set on Day 2 so we headed back. Here are a couple he took as we motored down the river towards the dock at Kasane and as we slowed or arrival. Both are iPhone shots and the orangey sky is due to Apple’s night mode processing…it was really pretty much full dark to the eye. The first one was still a little orangey to the eye but the second one just looked dark.

They headed back to the lodge (maybe a 10 minute truck ride) for dinner and if he recalls correctly that was the first meal they had of kudu…served by candlelight at the lodge. After dinner…download images for backup, charge batteries, and bed since 0500 comes early and he was still recovering from jet lag.

Interesting things found on the net.

Actually this one was found on the trip, not on the net…apparently they don’t want you to flush what you came into the bathroom to do.

Cyas.

OK, Neil’s got all of his photos from the trip culled and imported into Lightroom and he’s finished processing the first day’s worth so I can now get into providing you some excellent images from the trip. One thing I’m gonna do differently this time…yes, I’m going to do the field guide sort of shots for identification of a species or whatever Burt I’m going to try and include interesting or interestingly processed shots as well.

Before that…a quick update on life here in SW FL. Connie had her follow up with the surgeon and she’s doing well…her swelling is almost gone and while the incision is still red and not looking all that great it’s a lot better than it was originally. She has mostly regained her former shape but the right side is going to not look the same as the left one after the surgery and that’s just the way it is. She’s graduated to wearing her underwire bras that provide more support as the bruising and soreness has diminished. Her pathology report is excellent…all of the cancer cells are gone and she’s going to undergo some localized radiation treatment to make sure. The oncologist wants her to take hormone replacement for 5 years…but there is a black box warning about doing that with retina issues so she’s going to most likely decline to do that. Her radiation doctor agrees and she’s just not comfortable taking the hormones given the side effects and her only one working eye situation as well as a detached retina from 2019…while it’s her decision Neil agrees with her that if it was him he wouldn’t take the hormones either.

She’s off to Mastersingers rehearsal tonight…so is happy about that as she’s getting back to doing what she likes to do. We are looking at some more concerts this year as well as a potential trip to see the leaves in Appalachia as they turn in the fall as well and we’ll stop by and see the kids in Richmond for diner as part of that. 

The weather is starting to cool off just a bit…I’m sure we’ll still have some hot and humid days but we’re getting close to when the weather is what we call comfortable and can open the windows for fresh air most of the time. It’s still raining most days…but Florida summers are like that. 

So…overall we’re doing well and getting back to what passes for normal for us. She’ll still need a mammogram every six months (vice once a year) for at least 2 or 3 years but that’s just fine with her.

So…let’s get on to discussions about his trip to Botswana last month. I’ll report on it on a day by day basis along with both photos and some observations about the trip. Suffice it to say he had an excellent time overall.

He left on July 29, Connie dropped him off at the local airport and he was smart enough to get business class both ways…otherwise it’s simply impossible to sleep if you’re back in the economy section. It costs more of course…but well worth it in our opinion. Flights were all Delta but some of them were operated by KLM as their partner. He had a 2 hour first class flight up to Atlanta…after all you have to go through Atlanta to get to Hell as we all know…and then a 2.5 hour layover there before boarding his business class KLM flight to Johannesburg, South Africa…all 16 hours of it. They departed at 2230 and there’s a six hour time difference along with the 16 hour flight. While he really appreciates the excellent service in business class…serving a full meal at 2300 followed by breakfast 5 hours later and then another meal 5 hours after that plus a snack before landing is just too much food. His dinner was short ribs and mashed potatoes and he ate part of that along with a cocktail and some wine but then it was past midnight so he crashed and skipped the next meal. Luckily KLM has lay flat seats in business…which while not really comfortable compared to a real bed are far better than sitting up crammed in the back. He put on an eye patch and blanket and fastened his seat belt over the blanket so they wouldn’t’ wake him up and slept pretty well. And 16 hours later they arrived in Johannesburg at about 2200 at night. He picked up his luggage, cleared customs, and headed to his overnight hotel…the International Hotel which was basically 50 yards from the terminal exit. He checked in and basically went right to bed before his next flight the following day. 

After breakfast in the hotel, he got a late checkout as his plane didn’t leave until early afternoon and headed back to the airport for the 2 hour flight to Kasane Botswana. The city is located right on the Chobe River which is the border between Botswana and Namibia and since it was Botswana there was the whole leaving South Africa entering Botswana immigration thing but overall that was pretty easy. On arrival in Kasane the tour company…Pangolin Safari Company…picked him and 4 of his fellow clients up at the airport, the 5th one (Luanne) had flown into Zimbabwe for a visit to Victoria Falls which is just a 2-3 hour car ride from Kasane. They all met at the hotel, had a quick checkin there, a brief meeting with Steve and Rose Perry the workshop leases and then went off on the first game drive.

Slight aside here…the workshop was divided into 3 parts. Three days in Kasane staying at the Pangolin Lodge with game drives actually being boat drives on the Chobe River. Then a mid day flight to the Kanana bush camp in the Okavango Delta area about 200 miles southwest of Kasane where game drives were actually in vehicles. Then the flight back to Kasane and a boat ride to officially enter Namibia as the houseboat is registered in that country followed by another boat ride to the houseboat where they spent the last 3 days. Again…boat rides on the Chobe River but they headed upstream 15 miles or so and visited some of the channels and tributaries of the Chobe River on the Namibia side of the border.. I’ll talk in more detail about those as we get there in the reports on the trip.

Some general geography to orient you. South Africa is at the southern end of the continent and Johannesburg is over to the eastern end. Botswana is the next country north of South Africa and Kasane is at the northern border of Botswana about 350 miles from Johannesburg. Namibia is mostly west of Botswana but there’s a thin section of that country that extends eastward just north of Botswana and then at the eastern end of that thin section there’s a common border area with both of those countries and Zimbabwe. The Chobe River forms the boundary with Botswana on the south side of the thin eastward section of Namibia. The first and third sections of the trip were along the Chobe. The middle section was in the Okavango Delta area which is about 100 miles southwest of Kasane, you can see the delta swampy area as the green area in the map below. The camp they were at was on the island (named Chief Island) in the center of that green area. Kasane isn’t marked on the map but it’s just west of Livingstone which is visible and it is located right where the two red lines cross just west of Livingstone. The Okavango is the area just northwest of main in green and Chief Island is the yellow area in the middle of that green. The second map below is about 400 miles across both north-south and east-west. Of note…the Kalahari Desert on the left as it extends from Botswana into South Africa is the area where the recently completed season of Alone was filmed in South Africa. Victoria Falls is actually located near Livingstone and the river there (the Zambezi) forms the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. Neil wishes he had known it was that close or he would have visited Victoria Falls with Luanne ahead of the workshop as well.

Also of note…remember that all of this south of the equator thus the seasons are reversed and it was pretty much the middle of winter there. In both Kasane/Chobe and Okavango…highs were in the high 70s to low 80s and lows were in the 40s. So…they all bundled up in the morning and shed layers as the day went on. Neil chose wisely with his wardrobe…a long sleeve wicking undershirt with a long sleeve safari shirt over that and a windbreaker over that. Add in gloves and watch cap for the mornings (and evenings as they sped back home after dark) and he remained pretty comfortable. On the boats Pangolin provided warm windproof cloaks that they mostly just tossed over their laps…and in the Okavango the camp provided hot water bottles and blankets in the trucks for the morning drives. They were all glad to have gloves and hats though.

Large map of southern Africa.

Zoomed in map with the areas they visited more visible.

All I can say is that it’s a long flight from Atlanta to South Africa and he was glad to have an overnight to recover from that before the trip actually started. I addition…the accommodations and food were simply outstanding overall…but then Pangolin is a higher end safari company and as expected you get what you pay for.

The Chobe River runs from a couple hundred yards wide to about a half mile wide and depth ranges from just a foot or two to probably 20-30 feet in the middle in some places. All of the boat rides were on a 25 or so foot long boat with 8 seats fore to aft…each seat had a nice gimbal to hold your long lens and plenty of space for the second camera on the deck. Seats swiveled so you could see both sides and get shots easily. Steve and Rose took the front and aft seats to provide directions to the boat driver and offer suggestions and the six clients took the other seats…clients rotated forward every boat ride so nobody got stuck with being in the back all the time time. There was plenty of water, tea, and snacks on the boat so nobody got hungry.

Food…well, they fed them 4 times per day. Rising about 0500 they had breakfast then headed off right after dawn for the morning boat or truck ride, returning about 1100. Then brunch which was really more like lunch and an hour or three to rest, download images, charge batteries and whatnot. Then about 1500 it was afternoon tea…the country was colonized by the British after all followed by the afternoon boat or vehicle drive another 3-4 hours arriving back just after dark. Dinner at 1900 or so every night preceded by cocktail hour of course and then some really excellent food followed by more image downloads and battery charging before bed. Rinse and repeat for the next 10 days…but on day 3 and 7 there was a flight to and from the bush camp in the Okavango.

Ok, with that as a basic description of how the trip happened let’s get to some photos.

Gathering around the Pangolin Lodge lobby as we all met up for the first time. The two ladies in the middle are Luanne who was on the trip to Tanzania with Neil last year and Lin with her walker. Lin is almost 80 and that walker has been to all 7 continents with her. She gets around pretty well but uses it to help keep up. On the right in the white shirt is Steve who is actually from Fort Myers. 

A shot 180 degrees from the one above down the first floor of the Lodge. The rooms are all up on the balcony walkway on the left and Neil and Steve were roommates the whole trip, their room was down the far end. He basically turned around after the iPhone shot above and took this one.

Headed out…the first critter was a Nile Water Monitor…this one is about 2 feet long and they are maybe 3-4 feet long at adult size. Very similar to the iguanas we have here in FL.

White Crowned Lapwing…a shore type bird about 15 inches tall…they have a couple of hanging pieces below the bill.

Bull Greater Kudu…a herd animal larger than an elk but a bit smaller than a moose. The horns reach the full 2 turns after about 3 years of age. Neil ate a bunch of these on the trip…they are red meat similar to venison or elk and very lean so mostly served with sauce of some sort. He wasn’t able to figure out if they’re farmed or just hunted for food. They probably saw 300 of them over the trip typically in herds of a dozen or two at most with an alpha bull, his harem and the youngsters that hadn’t been driven off yet.

Impala.

Pied Kingfisher perched then heading down to the river to snatch a fish. These are larger than the Belted Kingfishers we have in the US by about a factor of 2…and they move really, really fast.

About this time in the drive…our driver got a report from another Pangolin boat about a leopard upstream a bit. So…we put our cameras down and the driver floored it to get to that area before he left. The leopard was originally eating on a guinea fowl that it had caught but then a group of impala came down to drink so it tried sneaking up on them for a real meal…but the chase failed as they took off as soon as she charged them and the leopard gave up the chase pretty quickly. These were taken from maybe 20 yards offshore in the boat.

Headed back to the grouse after the chase failed.

And back under the trees enjoying the remains of her guinea fowl.

At this point…all 6 of the clients declared that no matter what happened the next 10 days the trip was a success. As it turned out they had more leopards later on though.

Nearby there was a Fish Eagle…very similar in both size and coloring to the Bald Eagle we have here in the US.

By the time the leopard and eagle were done it was getting pretty dark so they headed back to the dock…it was 40 minutes or so back and they got back to the Pangolin Lodge well after dark for dinner.

A couple other shots from earlier before sunset and the leopard.

Gray Heron…very similar to the Great Blue Heron we have in the US but not quite identical.

And a family of elephants having a drink at the edge of the river.

While waiting on dinner Neil grabbed this shot of a carved native outside of the dining room…they apparently believe in anatomically correct carvings in Botswana. This carving is wood and is about 4-5 feet tall…and pretty well done.

Cocktail hour and dinner ensued shortly afterward and they all went to bed pretty early as nobody had really recovered from the time change and long flights yet.

So…an excellent first day and already a successful trip…because leopard of course. They’re far less common than lions are in the area so getting one early on was a prime opportunity they took advantage of.

Interesting things found on the net.

Cyas.