Bird-Dogging, To Hyphenate Or Not To Hyphenate?

Day 3 dawns with a borderline white-out: thick mist filling the valley under heavy low cloud, and it appears to be even colder than the previous day. The drive is somewhat hairy, and also almost a wash-out: we find the cheetahs but they are asleep, and we find a small group of rhino, but they move away and clearly regard our jeep as an intrusion. Tyrone takes some time trying to find a reported male lion, but to no avail. One water buffalo is a bit more cooperative.

That’s about it for mammals. We fare slightly better with birds, getting good shots of several larger birds sitting in trees, but overall there’s not a great deal to show, emphasising just how much patience and luck contribute to wildlife photography.

Our afternoon and evening activity is another night hide session. No sooner are we settled in than it becomes apparent that this is the local avian dogging site. First a pair of Blacksmith Lapwings do a complex mirroring dance culminating in mating, and to make sure they do it again.

The Lapwings are replaced by a pair of small Three Banded Plovers, whose courtship ritual is less complex but completes with even more enthusiastic consummation. They fly away and, we think, return shortly for a second performance, but this ends with the appearance of a second male and a brief territorial squabble, so it’s also possible the lady is concurrently entertaining two suitors.

After that we are visited by a pair of Woolly-Necked Storks, who plod around for a bit, but if this is their courtship ritual it climaxes elsewhere.

About 10pm I am just getting off to sleep and Colin awakes me with the news that there’s an elephant near the hide. His night sight, honed by years of sailing, has spotted the large beast moving through the trees well beyond the reach of the hide’s lights. Eventually I tune in to where he is, and can follow by using my camera as essentially a night vision scope. Eventually he emerges from the trees, and I manage to get a couple of shots – handheld at 200mm and for 0.4s, using ISO 6400. It only works because elephants don’t move fast, and even so the hit rate is pretty low. My pics aren’t going to win any prizes, but after a slow evening they are still a reward in themselves, especially as that’s the last action of the night.

Maybe I need to channel my inner Peter Lik, produce a vast panorama entitled "Absence of Elephant" and see if someone will give me £4M for it.

And if you don’t understand the title of this piece, I suggest you Google both versions! Just use private browsing mode…