Waterbuck – A shaggy buck story
Visit any of the game reserves in southern Africa and you are sure to see loads of buck of every description, especially impala and springbok. Whilst it’s great to see the common buck, it’s...
Bird of the Week – Week 73 – Namaqua dove
Found throughout most of Africa, the Namaqua dove is the smallest dove in the region and the only one with a long tail. The sexes are similar in size, with a length of about...
Weekend at Twyfelfontein
Namibia and Botswana have a wonderful system of helping the indigenous population to share in the spoils of the tourism industry and to realize the benefit of preserving wild animals and the environment. In...
Bird of the Week – Week 72 – Giant kingfisher
The Giant kingfisher is, as one would expect from its name, the largest of all the kingfishers found in the southern African region. They have a length of approximately 44 cm, and the sexes...
A visit to a petrified forest
We’ve had an interesting month of seeing fossils in Namibia. After our visit to the Mesosaurus fossil site near Keetmanshoop, we wended our way up north to the Khorixas area in Damaraland, where we...
Bird of the Week – Week 71 – Short-toed rock-thrush
The Short-toed rock-thrush is a near endemic to the southern African region, with its range outside of the region being limited to southern Angola. Its preferred habitat within this range is the arid western...
A visit to a Namibian Mesosaurus fossil site
We normally camp in central or northern Namibia, mainly because the birdlife is more prolific and there’s more to see, but this Easter we decided to focus on the south, with a visit to...
Bird of the Week – Week 70 – Magpie shrike
Found in the more northerly parts of the southern African region, as well as further north into Kenya and Tanzania, the Magpie shrike is a distinctive bird that is quite hard to miss. It...
Bird of the Week – Week 69 – Double-banded sandgrouse
We most often see the Double-banded sandgrouse while driving along the sandy roads and tracks of central and northern Namibia, as they seem to favour the edges of the road as areas along which...
Brukkaros – the look-alike volcano that isn’t!
From the national road (the B1) Brukkaros looks like any other ordinary mountain in Namibia. Anyone flying over the massif of Brukkaros, however, could be forgiven for thinking that they were looking down at...
Bird of the week – Week 68 – Grey go-away bird
One of the common sounds to be heard in the dry savanna woodlands of southern Africa is a loud nasal “quare“, which, with a little stretch of the aural imagination may be interpreted as...
From nowhere – a heronry
About 150 km west of Windhoek in Namibia, the Black Nossob River runs through the farm “Vendetta” on its way to join up with the White Nossob before winding its way into the Kalahari...
Bird of the week – Week 67 – Yellow-breasted apalis
An attractive little bird that is found in the wetter parts of southern Africa, and further north as far as Ethiopia, is the Yellow-breasted apalis. Although fairly common within the southern part of its...
East of Woodstock, West of Vietnam
The Kalahari beckons me With fingers of red sand And a promise in the wind Of a desert wonderland!! Jane Wilkinson Have you ever heard that brilliant song by Tom Russell called “East of...
Bird of the week – Week 66 : Black-headed heron
Large grey-coloured herons are a common sight at many dams, river estuaries, lagoons and other bodies of water within southern Africa and throughout most of Africa south of the Sahara. Unmistakable with their long...
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