Okavanga Delta Dawn

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I drift between sleep and consciousness, only vaguely aware that something has woken me. My clock shows an hour well before my intended rising, but I lift my head to peer through the mosquito net's misty veil out over the oily calm water beyond. My head drops back to the pillow and sleep rushes in. A tugboat hoots into the night, a sound that has been a warm friendliness to me ever since my youth, spent in a port city, and filled with its comfort I drift back to sleep ...

A tugboat? Here in the Okavango Delta, Botswana thousands of kilometres from the coast? Impossible. Tense with anticipation I wait, now bolt upright, in the darkness. And then it sounds again, a deep, drawn-out booming. It is the call of the Pel's Fishing Owl. The bird is very close and as its call drifts into the still of the night, another answers from further away across the channel. My delight is complete, for hearing its call is more to me than seeing this shy, retiring bird, at best glimpsed in the distance, skulking in the deep shade of some canopy or flying away, frightened by the intruder to another secret, leafy sanctuary. By comparison, its call at night is bold, mysterious and compelling. For others, the call of the African Fish Eagle, the distant grunting of a lion, or the eerie whoop of the spotted hyaena is the Delta's anthem, but for me it is the call of the Pel's Fishing Owl that epitomizes the vastness, the wildness, and the majesty of this place.

I am not sure when sleep claimed me again but when the shrill trilling of the alarm clock woke me, the sense of delight remained. Stepping from my bungalow, the cold of dawn brought an edge of sharpness to my sleep-fuddled brain. I stumbled down the jetty under the weight of cameras and tripods and although it was still mostly dark, I could see that I was not the first awake for across the orange crease of the coming dawn, flocks of Burchell's Starlings were making their vociferous way to their feeding grounds and beside the campfire a blackened kettle was already hissing. Jumping down from the jetty into the boat I hauled my equipment after me. I returned to the fire, where the perfect teeth and shy smile of Phuraki greeted me as he poured steaming cups of coffee. We were joined by Len, our boatman, and in silence huddled by the fire as we sipped from our mugs. Unseen, a pair of Swamp Boubous began their duet in the trees behind us. They cut it short however, and out of the corner of my eye I saw them flit across the clearing in which the Nxamaseri Lodge stands and land in a waterberry tree beside the jetty where I heard them begin again.

In the boat, the motor was ignored as Len used the traditional ingushi to pole us silently into the channel. An ingushi is the long, flexible punt with a forked end that prevents it going too deeply into the bottom and is used to propel the flat-bottomed dugout canoes, or mokoros, which carry the local people, and now tourists, through the myriad shallow waterways of the Okavango Delta. The sun had not yet risen and above our heads a Pied Kingfisher hovered, silhouetted against the pre-dawn sky. Through the camera lens I marvelled at how still his head remained while his wings beat at a frantic tempo. He dropped a little lower and hovered again, his gaze intent upon the water. Suddenly he plunged like a dart into the calm surface and I shivered involuntarily at the cold that must have greeted him. He came up with an empty beak and, shaking the water from his head as he flew, he climbed rapidly to take up his hovering station a few metres further on. He dived again and this time emerged with a wriggling, silvery fish clamped firmly in his sharp, pointed beak. He flew with it to where a few mokoros were drawn up on the bank and, sitting on the prow of one, beat the fish senseless on the hard wood before swallowing it whole. I have often wondered what effect this beating has on the kingfisher, but he seemed fine and as another flew overhead they exchanged a brief but loud, chattering call before continuing on their morning's hunt.

Beside me I heard a more subdued calling, more like a whine than a call and, peering into the tangled mass of the papyrus stems, I saw two young bitterns - all yellow and black - perched in the depths of the papyrus bed. Len backed the boat up a few metres and we waited. We were lucky and had not waited a full minute when I saw a Little Bittern approaching, flying fast and low over the channel. It saw us only at the last instant and flared in its flight, veering up and dropping into the papyrus bed from above, obscured from our vision. It called its chicks to it and through the forest of green stems I detected slight movement as the chicks moved toward the parent, deeper into the thicket. I peered between the papyrus stems, hoping against hope for an opportunity to photograph these shy creatures, when Len tapped me lightly on the shoulder.

The very first rays of the sun had just touched the top of the papyrus heads and in the midst of this suffused world of green and gold, not five metres from where we were, a Copperytailed Coucal sat with its wings spread and the feathers of its back raised to the warmth of the sun. Ever so slowly I swung the tripod head towards it. Through the magnification of the lens the blood-red eye stared back at me, contrasting sharply with the shiny blackness of the beak. Several times the shutter clicked before I persuaded Len, against his better judgement, to take us a little closer. Without a ripple or a sound the boat edged forward through the lily-pads, but for the coucal even this small movement was too much and it closed its wings, stared at us for a few moments and then with a heavy and laborious flight, winged its way across the channel to land in the matted tangle of grass and reeds on the opposite bank, into which it disappeared with its curious, waddling shuffle.

All about us now birds were moving. A Lesser Jacana, which I initially dismissed as a juvenile African Jacana, followed the edge of the papyrus by walking on the lily-pads. It paused to peck some unseen insects from the underside of a leaf, but the lily-pad on which it was standing was too small and it sank slowly into the water, flying up just before its belly touched the surface. In the distance behind where the jacana had been feeding I saw a pair of Pygmy Geese. Gently Len edged the boat forward and although the geese did not take flight they swam away, keeping about 25 metres ahead of the boat. No matter how Len tried, they kept the same distance between themselves and the boat and I had to content myself with watching them pluck the delicate blossoms of the water-lilies from a distance.

A Malachite Kingfisher whirred past the front of the boat to alight abruptly on a papyrus stem hanging out over the water. Then, disturbed from its perch, the malachite flitted away on its bright, tiny wings, flying low and fast over the water, twisting and turning like a fighter jet through the confines of the channel before breaking away into some narrow gap between the reeds.

A Squacco Heron flying low over the water beside me squawked and disturbed my reverie and I watched as it flew a little further on to a point where a great number of others were perched or wading about the shallow edge of the channel. They were squabbling and fighting amongst themselves, jockeying for the best position as they stabbed at the water with their beaks, emerging with their wriggling, silver quarry which they swallowed hurriedly before another tried to rob them of their catch. With some urgency, I pressed Len to take me closer. He was cautious but there was little need, for the birds were absorbed and ignored our approach completely. The waters of the flood that annually cover the delta were receding; as the floodplains begin to dry up so the fish that have bred and fed in their spreading expanse are forced to retreat to the permanent water of the channels. The herons had found a point where these returning fish were forced briefly into shallow water and were making a meal of it. More and more herons arrived and the verdant green of the floodplain became scattered about with the brilliant white of their bodies, as though a field of lilies had sprung into being.
Suddenly, as if a single command had been communicated to all of them, the egrets took to the air. I looked about, somewhat bewildered, to see an African Fish Eagle stooping low and fast from out of the trees towards the egrets. Frantically I twisted the focus barrel of my lens, finding the fish eagle as it swooped low over the ground. Although it jinked towards a tardy egret I realized that the birds were not its intended target and, as I watched, it dropped to the ground. Looking briefly about, it took a step forward and retrieved a small bream which one of the egrets had dropped in its haste to be away. In leisurely fashion, it held the bream in its talons and devoured it. Around it the egrets resumed their feeding, giving the eagle a respectful berth. Having finished its meal the fish eagle returned to its perch in a jackalberry tree. Several times while I photographed the egrets, the fish eagle robbed them of their larger catches and when its crop was full it returned to its perch and ruffled and preened itself for a long time before throwing back its head to deliver its singular, plaintive cry. I would like to have thought of it as an expression of thanks, but it seemed more to me an utterance of arrogant defiance.

Looking up to where the eagle perched I noticed a string of Whitefaced Ducks begin to circle and drop towards the floodplain. As I watched them disappear from view behind a bank of papyrus, I saw another group of 20 or more follow them in. Where they landed seemed to be completely obscured by papyrus banks and reedbeds and turning to Len I asked him if he knew a way around. Silently he nodded yes, then poled the boat forward a short distance and turned it toward the seemingly impenetrable thicket of papyrus. Pushing aside a few papyrus stems, the boat entered the narrow channel of a hippopotamus path where a Moorhen, taken by surprise, uttered a short cry of alarm and pattered away across the surface into the safety of the thicket. Within a short distance we emerged from the confines of the papyrus into the expanse of the short grass floodplains.

I was completely unprepared for the sight that greeted me. Here was the Okavango that I had heard talked about, here was a phenomenon that seemed out of time and I felt as if I had, in passing through the papyrus bed, moved through a time warp to an earlier part of the century. Before me on an expansive plain of deep green, short grass were hundreds upon hundreds of ducks and geese, their heads all lifted, alert to our arrival. For the most they were Whitefaced Ducks and Spurwinged Geese but here and there I saw small groups of Redbilled Teal and the unmistakable colouring and shape of Knobbilled Ducks. The pure white of several Great White Egrets and Little Egrets punctuated the darker colouring of the ducks and in the muddy shallows of the far shore two Wattled Cranes continued to probe their stout beaks into the dark richness of the soil, seemingly unconcerned by our presence. More birds continued to fly in all the time we were there, plopping with heavy splashes into the shallow water. I sat transfixed, afraid to move lest I disturb the peace but as the birds relaxed and returned to their feeding, I crept forward and began to work.

I am not aware how long I remained there on the edge of the papyrus bed but it must have been some time, for Len was sitting and dozing when I saw the heads of the birds lift again to watch some approaching danger. I took my eye from the lens and looking about saw a mokoro approaching in the distance. I could not signal to them as the birds would have taken fright at the movement. Switching lenses, I prepared for the inevitable.

The mokoro drew closer and closer and, as it approached, the abandoned quacking of the ducks grew less, until only the clicking of the camera penetrated the silence. In the tense quiet the unmistakable donkey-like braying call of a Western Banded Snake Eagle drew my attention briefly away. I saw it perched high in a lone tree close to the mokoro, seemingly unperturbed by its presence. Then as if a cloud had detached itself from the land, the birds took fright and rose as one into the sky. The great, dark, seething mass of feathered bodies lifted into the air with the water which streamed from their flanks catching the early morning sunlight. Like some billowing cumulus pouring rain, the cloud of bodies rose higher and higher, until above the tops of the trees it tore apart and became separate birds again. For the briefest of moments all was silent and then the rush of wings rolled like a wave through the stillness of the dawn. Although it endured for only a few seconds I still count this, together with the sight of a massive animal migration, as one of the sights of a lifetime.

I knew that I did not wish to work again that morning and turning to Len I told him we could motor back to the lodge. He smiled at me and as he pushed us back through the papyrus bed I saw that in the entire morning we had travelled little more than a hundred metres from the lodge jetty. All in all I spent more than a week photographing on the Nxamaseri Channel but, as is so often the case, the first morning made the most indelible impression.

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