Image taken on my trip to The Okavango Delta in Botswana.

The Bateleur (Terathopius ecaudatus) is a medium-sized eagle in the family Accipitridae. Its closest relatives are the snake eagles. It is the only member of the genus Terathopius and may be the origin of the "Zimbabwe bird", national emblem of Zimbabwe. It is endemic to Africa and small parts of Arabia. "Bateleur" is French for "Street Performer".


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Last uploaded image of 2013. Springbok herd crossing the Makgadikgadi Pan in Botswana.

The Makgadikgadi Pan is a large salt pan in the middle of the dry savanna of northeastern Botswana. It is one of the largest salt flats in the world. The pan is all that remains of the formerly enormous Lake Makgadikgadi, which once covered an area larger than Switzerland, but dried up several thousand years ago.

Lying southeast of the Okavango Delta and surrounded by the Kalahari Desert, Makgadikgadi is technically not a single pan but many pans with sandy desert in between, the largest being the Sua (Sowa), Nwetwe and Nxai Pans. The largest individual pan is about 1,900 sq mi (4,921.0 km2). In comparison, Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is a single salt flat of 4,100 sq mi (10,619.0 km2), rarely has much water, and is generally claimed to be the world's largest salt pan. A dry salty clay crust most of the year, the pans are seasonally covered with water and grass, and are then a refuge for birds and animals in this very arid part of the world. The climate is hot and dry but with regular annual rains.

The main water source is the Nata River, called Amanzanyama in Zimbabwe, where it rises at Sandown about 37 mi (59.5 km) from Bulawayo. A smaller amount of water is supplied by the Boteti River from the Okavango delta.

These salt pans cover 6,200 sq mi (16,057.9 km2) in the Kalahari basin and form the bed of the ancient Lake Makgadikgadi, which evaporated many millennia ago. Archaeological recovery in the Makgadikgadi has revealed the presence of prehistoric man through abundant finds of stone tools; some of these tools have been dated sufficiently early to establish their origin as earlier than the era of Homo sapiens. Pastoralists herded grazing livestock here when water was more plentiful earlier in the Holocene.

The lowest place in the basin is Sua Pan with an elevation of 2,920 feet.

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Moremi Game Reserve
Okavango Delta
Botswana
Southern Africa

The common hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), or hippo, is a large, mostly herbivorous, semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae. The name comes from the ancient Greek for "river horse".

After the elephant and rhinoceros, the common hippopotamus is the third-largest type of land mammal and the heaviest extant artiodactyl. The closest living relatives of the Hippopotamidae are cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises, etc.) from which they diverged about 55 million years ago.

Adults average 1,500 kg (3,310 lb) and 1,300 kg (2,870 lb) for males and females respectively.
Despite its stocky shape and short legs, it is capable of running 30 km/h (19 mph) over short distances.

The common hippopotamus inhabits rivers, lakes and mangrove swamps, where territorial bulls preside over a stretch of river and groups of five to thirty females and young. During the day, they remain cool by staying in the water or mud; reproduction and childbirth both occur in water. They emerge at dusk to graze on grasses. While hippopotamuses rest near each other in the water, grazing is a solitary activity and hippos are not territorial on land.

The hippopotamus is among the most dangerous animals in the world as it is highly aggressive and unpredictable. They are threatened by habitat loss and poaching for their meat and ivory canine teeth. – Wikipedia

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Okavango Delta, Botswana

The South African Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa) is a subspecies of giraffe found in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique. It has rounded or blotched spots, some with star-like extensions on a light tan background, running down to the hooves.

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Okavango Delta, Botswana.

The Burchell's Starling or Burchell's Glossy-starling (Lamprotornis australis) is a species of starling in the Sturnidae family. It is found in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The name of this bird commemorates the English naturalist William John Burchell.

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