Chobe National Park – Jadi Campbell

Dumb as a Box of Rocks

The ostrich is as about as smart as a box of rocks.

Hey! Where’d the lion go? Etosha National Park, Namibia

This bird is ridiculous! Oh, how the ostrich makes me laugh… just the sight of something so big, and awkward, and silly-looking cracks me up.

Maybe we’ll be safer here. Etosha National Park, Namibia

And stupid: the brain of an ostrich is roughly the size of a human eyeball.

The ostrich does make a pretty sculpture, though. Oudtshoorn, South Africa

And healthy, as well as tasty: ostrich meat has zero cholesterol. *

And striking, with all those feathers and angular limbs. When you see an ostrich running, their limbs go all akimbo.

Basket on the right: traditional Botswana basket pattern Running Ostrich

And lethal. Those spurs on the ostrich’s legs can be deadly. The spurs are found on males, who uses them in mating competitions or to defend territory. The ostrich needs them, because he can’t rely on superior brain power. Remember the comment about brains? An ostrich’s brain is the size of a human eyeball. And that’s a fact worth repeating, because it makes me start laughing all over again.

God was in a great mood the day She invented this bird.

One dumb cluck. Sandwich Harbour, Namibia

I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.

Follow these links for Amazon.com or Amazon.de.

Southern African Birds with their Friends and Foes

“A heart without dreams is like a bird without feathers.” — Suzy Kassem

The bird life in Botswana and Namibia is fantastically entertaining. One of my favorite birding activities was watching them interact with other animals.

In Chobe, Botswana we spent breathless minutes watching a male African fish eagle try – and fail – to fly away with the huge fish he’d killed. A trio of monitor lizards kept on coming, and the eagle finally dragged his catch across the grasses. In the end, the lizard won.

that’s a monitor lizard in the lower right hand corner, determined to steal the fish

On our last night in Botswana, at dusk (alas, too dark for photos) we watched a pair of Verreaux’s giant eagle owls hunting until it became too dark to see them. They were hands-down the largest owls we’d ever seen and absolutely magnificent.

A Verreaux's Eagle-Owl at Tarangire National Park, Tanzania. — Eagle owl photo courtesy of Animalia. We saw a pair in Ghanzi, Botswana

We loved watching the giraffes with birds. They eat the insects that plague the giraffe, and pluck hairs from the mane for their nests. We spotted this group in Moremi Game Reserve.

5 red billed ox birds. Their giraffe host looked so serene

Even more daring are the red billed ox birds who catch the flies and bugs that land on a water buffalo’s nose and eyes.

As I said in my first post on them, This Life is for the Birds!

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).

The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

ZZZZZZZEBRAS!

I’m in LOVE with zebras.

It was love at first sight. When Uwe and I were in southern Africa I sent my sisters ‘Zebra of the Day’ snapshots.

We saw hundreds of them in herds, and by the time our trip was over we’d spotted thousands.

We saw zebras in national parks in Namibia and Botswana. I was in ecstasy every day we were forced to stop to let them cross the roads.

We spotted them in the Okavango Delta from above in a helicopter.

Bathroom breaks were a gas station if we passed one. Most of the time it was just pulling over to the side of a remote road…. I took a memorable pee not 5 meters away from 60 zebras. They watched warily from behind the brush, but didn’t move away. I could hear them whickering to one another about me.

Funnily enough, (cue eerie music here), last autumn I’d decided that my next book is going to feature zebras. It’s still in the planning and thinking-about stages so I won’t say anymore than that. But to start the creative process I bought a zebra magnet at the British Library in London. I’m looking at it as I write this post: it’s attached to a stereo speaker.

I have a key chain I bought at a gas station in Namibia from the artist who was going from car to car. He carves them from soapstone and I kept turning him down until I saw the one that featured 3 zebras.

Botswana basket to the far right is Ribs of the Zebra pattern

I also brought home a basket with the traditional ribs of the zebra pattern in Maun, Botswana. *

Zebras are sociable, and intelligent, and cannot be tamed. Each zebra’s stripes are as distinctly unique as finger prints.

ZZZZZZZEBRAS!!! I shouted with glee each time we saw one.

NOTES: * In a future post I have more to say about the fine art of basket weaving in southern Africa! ©2024 Jadi Campbell. Photos ©2023 Uwe Hartmann. Uwe’s photos of our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Wild Birds of Africa

“Tame birds sing of freedom. Wild birds fly.” — John Lennon

When you think of watching wild life in Africa, everyone talks about the Big Five. And yes, we spotted elephants, water buffalo, lions, and giraffes, everything except the leopard (which for all kinds of funny reasons makes me really happy. It means we have to go back!)

The birds in southern Africa are amazing too. We saw an array of bird life so varied and exotic that halfway through our trip we bought a book on Birds of Southern Africa. It would have been too annoying to get home again and have no way of identifying them without having to spend days on the Internet trying to find them.

African hoopoe, Etosha National Park, Namibia

At our last lodge in Namibia, Uwe and I both spent hours sitting on the little balcony to our room. We were watching the weaver birds making new nests and feeding their broods only a few meters away from where we sat.

Along the Caprivi Strip hundreds of bee eaters live on the river banks.

Southern carmine bee eaters in the Caprivi Strip

The bee eaters colonies will wash away when the rains come and the Kavango River rises.

In Chobe National Park in Botswana, we saw herons, eagles, storks, and shore birds beyond counting. We did an early morning boat cruise and literally had the river delta and the rich wildlife to ourselves.

African jacana (aka ‘Jesus birds’). They use their long toes to cross via plants and lily pads on the Chobe River

African skimmer. Lower bill is longer and used to skim the river for fish

We saw marabou storks who happily scavenge carcasses.

We smelled the dead buffalo before we spotted it. Then, like a comedy routine, the stork’s head popped up from where he was feeding on the other side of the water buffalo carcass.

More birds to follow. In my next post I’ll give you Uwe’s photographs of birds interacting with other animals.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Tag: Chobe National Park

Dumb as a Box of Rocks

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Southern African Birds with their Friends and Foes

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ZZZZZZZEBRAS!

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Wild Birds of Africa

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