“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.
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.
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.
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!
NOTES: For more on Verreaux’s eagle-owl go to https://animalia.bio ©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.
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