It was another fine day in Namibia, and the only driving on the schedule today was just 30 minutes on a paved road down the coast from Swakopmund to Walvis Bay to see its famous lagoon and surrounding wetlands, which “are one of the most important coastal wetlands of southern Africa.”
Before we get to that, however, let me show you a couple more sights from Etosha National Park before I forget about them. This first one came pretty early on Saturday as we were driving ourselves through the park. I was just driving along and trying to stay out of the ruts when suddenly both Anne and Deb shouted at the same time, “Stop, Stop, Stop!” I slammed on the brakes, and once the car had skidded to a stop, I slowly backed it up to find this magnificent creature right at eye-level and just 20 feet off the road. It looks quite similar to the great horned owls, of which we’ve seen a lot in Estabrook Park, but this is our very first spotted eagle-owl (Bubo africanus).
We saw several secretarybirds (Sagittarius serpentarius), but they tended to be out in the field a bit, and the air wiggling over the ground heated by the midday sun really made clear pictures hard, if not impossible, to get. This one, thankfully, found something closer to the road so that I was finally able to get a presentable picture.
This next beauty really needs no introduction, but here are the specifics, just in case. She is a female lion (Panthera leo), and we were lucky enough to be just the second vehicle to come across her resting in the shade maybe 50 feet from the road. As you might imagine, word soon spread that a lion was visible not far from the road, and we were glad to be gone before the crowds showed up. I will give Etosha credit, however, for very strictly enforcing both the “no driving off the roads” and “no getting out of cars” rules.
This stunner, a cape starling (Lamprotornis nitens), was right on the lawn outside the headquarters to grab a drink of water from the leaky irrigation system. Clever bird! I normally don’t crop out parts of birds, as you may have observed, but I was standing so close to this one, that my lens only captured the front half of it. I could have used one of the several other pictures I took, but this one was the crispest, by far, so here we are.
On to Walvis Bay, where the lagoon and wetlands did not disappoint. One of the highlights has to be the huge number of greater flamingos (Phoenicopterus roseus) feeding in the shallow water, but I thought it might be easier to get a sense of the numbers in this shot of them flying by. The image has plenty of resolution in reserve, so if you wanted to click on it so you could zoom in on flickr, it would be worth your while.
Finally, back in Swakopmund, we hiked to the south end of town to see where the Swakop River would empty into the Atlantic, if there was enough water in it. We saw a few nice sights yesterday, including Cape teals, and a three-banded plover, but the highlight of this afternoon was this handsome pair of South African shelducks (Tadorna cana). They are huge ducks, and when we first glimpsed them, I figured that he was an Egyptian goose, which we had seen up at Etosha, and my best guess for her, with that white head, was a hybrid with some white, domestic waterfowl. Thus, you can imagine my joy at discovering that both of my guesses were wrong and they were fine specimens of their very own species instead. Woo hoo!
Tomorrow, we’re scheduled to go check out “Dune 7”, which gets ranked among the top 10 highest sand dunes in the world, so that could be interesting.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 