Africa Wild

Another remarkable feature of the delta is that, in the blazing heat of the desert, 98% of its water is lost through evaporation and transpiration (water taken up through plants and evaporating from their leaves). This is another paradox of the delta, that its waters remain fresh and not saline even with a strong sub-tropical sun. This is due to a complex set of interactions, only recently understood, which involve termites, trees and over 150,000 islands.

Most islands in the delta are thought to originate from tree saplings growing on termite mounds. As the trees grow, water and solutes are drawn up from the ground into plants and released through transpiration. This causes the water table to drop over time, which draws in water from the surrounding floodplains to replace it, and so keeps the area replenished with fresh water.

Salts concentrate under the islands creating zones of hyper-saline soils in which few organisms can survive, but as the concentrations of salts under the islands increases, the salts become sufficiently dense and heavy that they sink to the bottom, effectively ensuring a layer of fresh water above.

More here and also the beginng : https://theconversation.com/botswanas-o ... tion-28476

Very interesting.

Third day continued....

Lunch was just about ready:
It was hot so I went to the swimming pool, placed a deckchair where there was most shadow, took a dip and got comfortable. Luckily there was a slight breeze and the leaves were moving changing the view towards the sky. The idea was to read a few pages, but .....

Later, much later Vincent and I went out for our daily sundowner cruise. We moved ahead close to the shore hoping to spot some birds.
First “spot” a swallow-tailed bee-eater
Second “spot” a Malachite kingfisher. I have been looking for one of those for decades and all of a sudden I see them everywhere .....not that I mind
A nice tiny fish
Then a kind of dragonfly. I wonder if they usually eat those things or if it was a mistake It looked as if the bird did not quite know how to handle it
Shaking it
And then it was gone...the dragonfly

The third “spot” was a thick-billed weaver building a nest

And a finished nest, which I saw on the second day
The thick-billed weaver constructs a distinctive nest which is compact, woven with thin strips of reeds and hung between the upright stems of reeds. It is globe-shaped with the entrance (unlike other weaver nests) near the top and facing to the side. The male weaves the nest with fine material leaving a neat impression, but the weave is in fact not as complex or developed as that of other weaver species. The initial entrance is large, but when a female has chosen the nest the entrance reduced to a narrow opening. Thick-billed weaver colonies may involve a single male, or may contain several males, and is usually established in a reed swamp.
It takes about 10 days to finish a nest

Tree with decorations
The wire-tailed swallows used the boat as resting place from time to time
And the umpteenth sunset
A strange cloud on the other side of the lagoon
Last one

End of day three.

(I must have forgotten to take pics of the dinner )

Looks like a wonderful place, hopefully one day we will have the opertunity to visit Botswana too

Lis! The pics tick all the boxes.

Great healthy lunch...quiche?

And good kingfisher pics, looks like these hide less!


Never even thought those weavers built such fancy nests!

Great stuff indeed.

A very good quiche and there were always excellent salads and the right amount to choose from at lunchtime. Remember I had the whole place to myself

Very good series of the weaver busy building

I like the greenery with the Kingfisher and the fern leaves rolled up. Looks like the meal is a banded groundling.