A Sunrise With Hippos - 08:30 pm

11 Mar 2010

Heading east from our camp to follow up on the lion (Panthera leo) roars heard during the night, there were numerous large splashes as we passed a now full pool. The splashing was being made by a pod of hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) returning to the water from their nightly grazing excursion.





The hippopotamus has a unique skin: it has a thin epidermis and no sweat glands. This means that hippos lose water at far higher rates compared with other mammals and being out of water during the day can cause them to dehydrate or overheat rapidly.





This pod was very inquisitive and approached the vehicle. The dominant male (pictured above) took the lead, with the cows and calves following behind. He quickly lost interest and headed back to the deeper water in the centre of the pool. Some of the calves were more curious about us and moved even closer to get a better look. Their mothers followed closely and as soon as they felt uncomfortable they moved the calves back to a more agreeable distance.






As the morning drew on, the remaining hippos lost interest and they all moved to the deeper water. We continued on and located the lion that had been roaring earlier. It was one of the Xakanaxa pride males and he looked in good condition, having been feasting on buffalo (Syncerus caffer) in the mopane (Colophospermum mopane) forests further east. I presume that this lion had moved west to investigate the roaring of the rogue males, who we saw 2 days ago on Mboma Island.


- Jason Loughran

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Creating Timelapse Video In The Okavango - 01:23 pm

11 Mar 2010

Whilst here in Moremi I have been playing around with shooting timelapse video on a stills camera.  The main advantages of shooting timelapses on a Digital SLR, compared to a standard video camera, are that the resolution and colour rendition are far better.

Dead Tree Island (or Goaxhio lagoon as it was originally known) is one of the most atmospheric places in the Okavango.  It is a large island covered with the still standing, long dead remnants of an old, flooded forest.

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My main issue with shooting these timlapse videos is that it involves wading through murky, fetid, crocodile infested water to set things up.

- Chris Harries

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Fish Trap Provides Easy Meal. - 07:30 pm

10 Mar 2010

Our afternoon was spent on Dead Tree Island. We were hoping to find the female leopard (Panthera pardus) who has made Dead Tree part of her territory. We filmed this leopard mating in September last year (see the video clip) and she should have given birth by now. It was not to be as we did not find any signs of recent leopard activity.

The summer rains have now ceased and the once overflowing pans are beginning to dry out. This creates natural fish traps which attract many different bird species, who are after the relatively easy meals hidden in the shrinking waters.





This pan was a calm scene with not much squabbling between the birds. It was interesting to see the different techniques employed by the different species.
The yellow-billed storks (Mycteria ibis) would slowly move through the water chasing a potential meal towards the edge of the pan.





While the lone african spoonbill (Platalea alba) was more vigorous, frantically combing the water for prey. Both species rely on their sensitive bills rather than their eyesight to locate the prey.





A little egret (Egretta garzetta) stayed on the periphery. This small bird seemed more interested in feasting on the many insects on the water’s surface, but did manage to capture some of the smaller fish.





The storks had the most success, with one stork managing to catch 3 common platanna (Xenopus laevis) in only half an hour.
Moremi will continue though this drying process until the floodwaters arrive in about 2 months’ time, the bird activity becoming more manic and the creatures trapped in the remaining pans will stand less and less chance of surviving.


- Jason Loughran

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Following A Lion Hunt - 09:09 pm

09 Mar 2010

Early this morning, whilst making our coffee, we heard the distinct noise of distant lion (Panthera leo) calls.  They appeared to be coming from the western side of Third Bridge, over on Mboma island. numerous buffalo (Syncerus caffer) tracks have been seen in this area so we decided to spend the day trawling for signs of activity.

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We headed out to find the huge herd of buffalo that is currently grazing this area, hoping that where you find prey species, you will also find predators.  After an hour of searching we started to get a little despondent at the lack of buffalo activity.  Then, much to our surprise we rounded a corner right into a pair of sleeping male lions.

We didn’t recognise these males but they looked like they were quite young and had probably been kicked out of their pride very recently.  We stayed close to them as they snoozed their way through the midday heat. With us spending many hot hours staring at the trees waiting for some action.

As the afternoon wore on we started to pick up the sound of buffalo in the distance.  As the noise of their calling got louder the lions suddenly rose and started to stalk off into the mopane....This had real potential to get interesting!

The buffalo were still a way off so we decided to get ahead of the Lions and try to anticipate their movements.  The dense mopane in the area had really muffled the buffalo calls and we were surprised to find them only a few hundred meters away.

We sat with bated breath waiting for a site of the stalking lions.  They appeared on our left, only about twenty metres away from the resting herd.  As they slowly stalked closer and closer it become very apparent that they were masters of manoeuvring between cover, always taking great care to be hidden from the buffalo.

As the distance between predator and prey closed, the tension mounted.  I was convinced that the lions were going to make their move at any minute but the buffalo must have sensed their presence and suddenly started to amble off out of the Mopane and onto the nearby floodplain.  The lions did not give chase and seemed fairly unbothered by the outcome...This was going to turn out to be a real waiting game.

We stuck with the lions through the mopane and noticed that they were showing great interest in one of the trees that the buffalo had been resting under.  As we got closer we could see them licking the ground and it became clear that one of the buffalo cows had quietly given birth whilst we were watching them and the lions were now eating the afterbirth.

The presence of a newborn calf among the herd would surely excite the lions so we decided to get out into the open and try to stick with the buffalo as that is where the action would happen.  However, ‘en route’ the filming truck started to make some very strange, hot smells.  This was not Brad’s dinner reoccurring but the car overheating.  After poking around under the bonnet we found the problem.  A piece of mopane had completely severed the pipe carrying water from the bottom of the radiator so we had lost all our coolant.  Thirty minutes of bush mechanic magic and Brad had managed to fix it with a couple of pipe clamps and a piece of hosing we found lying around in the back of the truck.  Five litres of water later we had managed to refill the radiator and were back on our way to the buffalo.

The buffalo had moved out onto the open plain so we set ourselves up towards the back of the herd and waited for the action to happen.

As the buffalo moved over the plain it quickly became apparent that the lions were nowhere to be seen.  They had obviously either lost interest or had found another prey species to target whilst moving through the dense mopane.

People often perceive lions as being the “king of the jungle” or the “ultimate predator”.  The fact of the matter is that very few lion hunts actually end with a kill.  Although frustrating, today really demonstrated this fact to me as we saw the lions within a few metres of their perfect prey species - with no attempt at a kill.  After a long uneventful day, the only thing left to do was kick back and watch the beautiful African sunset.

- Chris Harries

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A Welcome Return To Moremi - 10:05 pm

08 Mar 2010

I’ve been on leave and I’m always excited to return to Moremi.
There was plenty of rain in my absence and there is now water everywhere, but the season has started to change and the once lush green landscape is starting to turn brown.





It was awesome to spend my first morning out with a herd of African buffalo (Syncerus caffer). Buffalo were a rare sighting in January and it is great to see them returning to the Xakanaxa area of Moremi. It was a large buffalo herd of about 300 with many young calves.
As the buffalo herd moved towards a pan to drink and wallow, a pair of blacksmith lapwings (Vanellus armatus) prepared to defend their nest.






The fearless lapwings stood their ground and when a buffalo approached too close they would squawk with outstretched wings, causing the buffalo to spook and immediately back off. The lapwings were very attentive and only relaxed once the buffalo herd had moved on.


- Jason Loughran

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Rain Of Fire In Botswana - 09:42 am

08 Mar 2010

We were in Maun over the weekend to pick up supplies for the coming weeks.  Driving in late yesterday afternoon we were witness to the most spectacular sunset.  The Earth-Touch marine crew were recently raving about the spectacular sunrises in Pomene, Mozambique but I really feel that Botswana is the place to be if you want a fiery, atmospheric sunrise or sunset.

Just before the sun reached the tree line it started to light up the rain falling from a nearby storm cloud, really giving the impression of liquid fire being poured from the heavens

- Chris H

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Sharing An African Sunset With Impala - 08:00 pm

03 Mar 2010

This evening was a real eye opener for me.  After spending a few weeks immersed in this environment you can quickly become complacent about certain things and Impala (Aepyceros melampus) are one of them.  You see these animals just about everywhere so within a few days you start to almost disregard them. And yet impalas are actually incredibly beautiful animals with very definite, dainty personalities. 

The incredible sunset we witnessed this evening really helped to emphasise the intrinsic character of these impala, especially the calves, who seem to form very specific bonds.

The combination of deep shadow and intense highlights meant that getting the desired photographic result from the scene was tricky, but I found that by stopping down by about 4 f-stops I managed to really get some beautiful results.

As the evening drew on the quality of the light was constantly changing leading to some beautiful light reflecting of the pools of water that litter the ground.

As the herd moved off into the distance we sat and watched the sun on its daily voyage across the horizon.

- Chris Harries

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The Worlds Worst T-Shirt Tan - 09:24 am

03 Mar 2010

Seeing as I have been posting here for the past few weeks I though it was probably about time to introduce myself and my quite appalling t-shirt tan.  My pasty english skin is not ideally suited to life in Botswana so I have to be careful to stay covered up as much as possible.  The result of this can be quite devastating as I’m sure you can see below.  The picture was taken (much to Brads amusement) whilst cleaning off after a particularly muddy incident involving our filming truck and a big, deep, sticky, wet river crossing where we managed to get stuck badly...Life here is far removed from my former life in Manchester UK...but is definitely more fun!

- Chris Harries

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Shooting High Dynamic Range Hippos - 02:35 pm

02 Mar 2010

Many of the images I have posted here lately have used a relatively new photographic technique known as High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography.  This technique produces some very interesting results and I thought I would share some tips and tricks with you using some of the photos of Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) that I took today.

If you want to learn how to shoot and process HDRs there are many places online that you can go and find them.  I would however recommend the two episodes of Pixel Perfect (an awesome video tutorial podcast created by Revision3) that I have embedded below.

Once you are familiar with this technique you should immediately see that the major drawback is that you need a completely static scene (ie no with no movement) to produce a quality result.  I have been playing around with the software and have found a way to produce some very interesting HDR results from a single RAW photograph.

Most modern digital cameras should give you the option to shoot in RAW mode.  This format records only the pixel brightness values from the sensor of the camera.  It does not apply the normal adjustment (ie tone curves, colour saturation etc) that are added to the image when you should in JPEG mode.  This means that you have to make these adjustments to your images manually in post but it also gives you an incredible amount of latitude to play with.  You can follow the instructions given in the video tutorials above but instead of having to go out a sequence of images you can take a single RAW image and export 5 copies of it each with a different exposue value.  I use Adobe Lightroom to process my images and have found the following exposure settings work the best.

If you are using an image with an exposure compensation of 0 then you will to export copies of the image with the following values.

-2, -1, 0, +1, +2

You can then load these images into your HDR processing software and follow the steps outlined in the video tutorials above.  If you have a play with this and would like to send your images into us please with Chris Harries HDR in the subject of your email.

P.S.  If you use a Mac there is a brand new FREE piece of software that makes processing HDR photos really easy.  see Ohanaware

Happy snapping!

- Chris Harries

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Back In The Okavango Delta - 04:26 pm

01 Mar 2010

We have left Savute and are now back in the Okavango Delta.  It is a real change of scenery to the open marsh of Savute with thick, dense foliage and a serious amount of water on the ground everywhere!

Our main aim is to hunt down our regular pride of Lions (Panthera leo).  We are unsure as to what the Xakanaxa pride has been up to in our absence as the thick, dense foliage present at this time of year has meant that the resident lodge guides have really battled to find them.  As soon as the film camp was sorted and all our luggage unpacked we headed straight off to see if we could locate the Lions.  However, things did not start off quite as we planned as within minutes of leaving camp we were stuck in the boggy ground.  Very stuck!!

Half an hour later, with logs piled underneath the sunken wheel and a serious amount of high lift jack work, Brad calmly reversed the vehicle out of the hole and we cautiously navigated our way off.  If there was one lesson I learned from this it was to not panic and to keep thinking rationally.  Brad goes through this sort of thing on a daily basis and it is just part of his job (in a strange way he almost seems to enjoy the process of getting out of a sticky situation like this).  Anyway, once back on track we started scouring the bush for the elusive Xakanaxa pride of Lions.  After an hour or so we got a call on the radio from some of the guides at Camp Moremi (the Desert and Delta lodge close to our film camp).  Apparently they had seen two lionesses that were eating from a fresh Giraffe (Girrafa camelopardalis) kill quite close by.  Could these be our Lions?  Could there have been a major upset in the Xakanaxa pride structure in our absence?

As we closed in on the apparent location of the kill it became obvious that we were in the right place.  At least 15 hooded vultures (Necrosyrtes monachus) could be seen resting high in the trees around one small clump of dense bush.  This is a major indication of their being a kill close by and we quickly located the lionesses.

They were tucked away, fairly deep into the bush.  Initially we were sure that these were two of the adult Xakanaxa lionesses but on closer inspection we came to the conclusion that they were not as they were slightly larger.  They were obviously very full after gorging themselves on the juvenile Giraffe they had killed but they definitely looked like they could also be quite heavily pregnant. They appeared to have a very close bond and were very amicable to each other, even when feeding.

As the afternoon wore on their was a stunning, dappled golden light filtering down through the foliage making for some very intricate imagery.  It is unfortunate that we are still unsure of the location of the Xakanaxa pride but will be focusing on catching up with them over the next few days.

We are fighting the elements a little here in Moremi and the water appears to be rising fast.  I know there is a huge debate going on at the moment regarding climate change and global warning but seeing the changes that have happened here in Botswana this year (such as the Savute marsh being flooded and the incredible amount of water on the ground here in Moremi) you can’t help wonder if there are some serious changes to the climate happening right under our noses and at quite an incredible speed.

- Chris Harries

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