Okavango channels

In the Delta, you move by boat more than by vehicle for wildlife, and I’m grateful for that. The channels are a different kind of photography — low water levels, reed walls, lilies. Hippos in every deep pool.

Our first morning we found a pod of seven hippos in a bend. They were watching us more than we were watching them, which is the whole point of hippos. We stayed far. You stay far from hippos in the Delta — they kill more people per year than lions.

Beyond hippos: an African Fish Eagle called from almost every corner. Pied Kingfishers hovered over the boat. A pair of Saddle-billed Storks worked a shallow lagoon. Malachite Kingfishers — small and absurdly colored — kept posing on reeds. A Giant Kingfisher showed up for ten seconds and I got one frame.

In the evening, a walking safari with our guide. We found Red Lechwe, an African Fish Eagle at a nest, a distant Sable Antelope (rare and wonderful), and an African Harrier-Hawk dismantling a weaver nest for nestlings — that was the brutal ten minutes of the day.

Back at camp there were genets around the dining tent at night, running across the rafters. I didn’t try to photograph them. Some things are better at memory than at camera.