Page 57 - Discover Botswana 2021

Anew day is dawning in Africa. In the early morning light a black backed jackal saunters across a clearing to a waterhole where he arranges himself into a motionless fur-ball under a lone tree. The winter air is still and chilly, the sky just beginning to pale on the horizon. This is the tableau before us as we sip our coffee in the secrecy of the underground hide where we have settled ourselves, our cameras at the ready. An hour or so earlier, as we made our way here from camp, a solitary cheetah had strolled out
of the pre-dawn gloom – an auspicious start to our day!
As the sun begins to appear over the horizon, its warming rays light up the grassy plain. The stillness is about to be shattered as guinea fowl start chattering their way down to the water, kudu bulls step out of the foliage, and soon masses of turtle doves are fluttering in for their morning splash in the water.
This is the mighty Kalahari, Southern Africa’s largest semi desert, home to hundreds of species of birds and animals, some not found anywhere else in the world. I am a guide and
Previous Pages: A flock of Red-billed quelea are one of the other prominent bird species that visit the waterhole. The jackals don’t really bother with them but the small birds of prey have learnt exactly how to dive into the beating mass of birds as they fly up from the waters edge.
Facing Page: With the sun’s rays only just bursting through the low Kalahari brush, the family of jackals are the first to arrive on the scene.
Below Inset: A jackal whips along in full flight, past the nose of a surprised Impala and into the flock of drinking doves.
WORDS AND IMAGES: DANIEL CROUS
KALAHARI
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