Southern African Birds: At the Desert, the River Bank, the Salt Pan….

“Wherever there are birds, there is hope.” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan

There is something incredibly surreal — and very, very funny — to be out in a jeep in the sand dunes on the Namibian coast and see the world’s largest bird stroll by.

Ostrich, Sandwich Harbor

Uwe posted photos from our recent trip to southern Africa on his photography website. He now has an entire section dedicated just to birds of Namibia. http://viewpics.de/pics/Namibia/Birds  Here are some of his birds and their stories.

The ostriches were seemingly everywhere. They walk around in the Namib, the world’s oldest desert and one of the driest places on the planet. They hang out in flocks in Etosha National Park.

They hang out with other species, too. It’s safety in numbers, as well as combining forces against predators. The elephants provide their bulk and the impalas have keen hearing and sight.

someone’s got to keep an eye out for the lions

We saw hundreds of flamingos on the coast.

Flamingos, Walvis Bay, Namibia

When the rainy season arrives, the flamingos send birds north to see if the saltpan in Etosha Park has flooded yet. If the scouts don’t return, the rest of the flocks head north as well. Ann and Mike Scott in NamPower/Namibia Nature Foundation Strategic Partnership Newsletter No. 5: September 2010 had this to say: “Greater Flamingos are widely distributed in southern Africa with concentrations at flooded salt pans (during breeding) and coastal bays (during non-breeding). …at the central coast, they are concentrated at Walvis Bay and Sandwich Harbour. … Breeding occurs in large, typically mixed colonies on raised islands on flooded salt pan at Etosha …. Laying induced by extensive flooding and continued high levels increases chances of success.”

The birds migrate to this giant saltpan in Etosha once it floods. 1,100,000 flamingos were recorded in an especially rainy year!

Etosha Saltpan, seen in November 2023 before the rains. It is 4,760 km² in size, up to 129 km long and 72 km wide, and covers almost 25% of Etosha National Park

Uwe photographed this juvenile African openbill stork in Etosha.

I’ve saved my favorite photo he took of the Southern carmine bee-eaters for this post:

Almost everyone caught an insect

Here’s another bee-eater, this one in olive.

olive bee-eater

For the final image, I leave you with a species that birders and guides all get excited about: the lilac-breasted roller. Our guide was really pleased with himself that he got us close enough to this elusive bird for a photo.

the lilac-breasted roller IS stunning, isn’t it?

Much as I’d love to take credit for this post, it owes everything to my husband’s great eye and good camera equipment.

NOTES: One last comment about the flamingos: their other regular breeding site in southern Africa is Sua Pan in the Makgadikgadi Pans in Botswana. We visited Makgadikgadi a few weeks later. ©2024 Jadi Campbell. ©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.

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.

 

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