Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Let’s finish the job.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Usually wrong but never in doubt

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Let me file that under fuck it.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

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Kabecoo Botswana

On The Road – Kabecoo – Botswana 9

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This post concludes this series on the animals of Botswana. It has been quite fun searching the photos and putting these together, and I’m glad folks have enjoyed them.

About half way through our trip, we camped one night in an area with wifi. Also, I took a painkiller that night, forgetting that it would keep me awake.

I still hike and backpack as much as I can, so I read a few posts on a backpacking bulletin board. One post included photos of a pack of wolves hunting a deer, and there was some negative reaction. (I was also listening to the footsteps of something wandering through our campsite, hoping that it wasn’t a carnivore. The sound of grass tearing told me that it was an elephant.)

But the food chain was obvious every day in Botswana. Seemed that every animal except the pure herbivores were hunting something, and some of those herbivores were still quite dangerous.

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Central Kalahari, BotswanaMay 20, 2022

A beautiful, striking bird, this goshawk flew low looking for food we could not see. But it might be:

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On The Road – Kabecoo – Botswana 8

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With the possible exception of the crocodile, it seemed that every animal showed us some form of family or group structure.

We were five tourists thrown together for 17 days. Two members of the group were a delightful Dutch couple with whom we are still in touch. The value of having young, sharp eyes became evident on Day 2, when one of them spied a set of “Mickey Mouse” ears in the distance.

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Central Kalahari, BotswanaMay 17, 2022

This was part of a pride of five lions, out hunting springboks in the afternoon. These three siblings watched us approach but didn’t seem bothered by our presence. However, one of the males eventually moved to put himself between us and the matriarch.

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On The Road – Kabecoo – Botswana 7

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This is the seventh post of Botswana’s animals. Today it’s elephants.

My first question to our guide was breathtakingly foolish: “Will we see any elephants up close?” His response was a silent smile. He well knew that by the end of the trip we would have seen hundreds, many within spitting distance. For the most part, they tended to ignore us entirely, focusing on the task at hand: eating.

Elephants only sleep a few hours per day. The rest of the time is spent in search of food and water. They stay cool by getting wet in Botswana’s many rivers and pools, including a few that are maintained by pumps. When sleeping, younger elephants will lie down. Older ones often lean against something to partially support themselves, such as a tree.

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Moremi Preserve, BotswanaMay 20, 2022

Elephants begin growing tusks around their fifth to seventh years. The tusks are essentially elongated teeth, used for digging, moving objects, and defense. It was common to see one with a broken tusk, such as this older one. Our guide offered that tusks are often broken while digging in search of salt.

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On The Road – Albatrossity – Summertime and Baby Birds part 2

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It’s Baby Bird Monday!  Then we have the last 3 installments in Botswana from Kabecoo before Benw finishes out the week by taking us somewhere I have never heard of!  (In case you want to refresh your memory of the rest of the trip, just click on Kabecoo to see all of the Botswana installments.)  I am sad that this Botswana set is ending!

The second week of baby birds is here! And, if you want to see the images at their original size so that some of these subtle plumage details are visible, there is a link for that in every caption. As before, young birds are at left and adult birds at right in the images below.

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Near Manhattan KSAugust 31, 2022

We’ll start with shorebirds, where there are lots of plumage differences between hatch-year birds and adults, but most of those differences are pretty subtle. Shorebird gurus look at the patterns and colors on specific feather tracts, some of which are not easily seen without a good picture or a bird-in-the-hand. We can avoid all that in this species, the Solitary Sandpiper (Tringa solitaria), where the hatch-year birds have a distinguishing mark that can be easily seen in the field. The young bird on the left has plain gray/brown on the sides of the head, neck and upper breast. The adult bird (on the right) has obvious streaking in those same areas. Click here for larger image.

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On The Road – Kabecoo – Botswana

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Our Botswana travels began in the Central Kalahari, a “semi-arid desert” according to our guide. We saw almost no surface water there; as a result, we saw no large animals that depended heavily on daily water, such as elephants, hippos and buffalo. But as soon as we entered the Okavango Delta, streams and water holes were stunningly popular places to witness the routines of these wonderful creatures. We continued north through the Moremi reserve and Chobe National Park. Water was available everywhere.

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Okavango Delta, BotswanaMay 23, 2022

In the delta we took game walks rather than game drives. In single file we quietly followed local guides who were vigilant about keeping us safe. Each of us had to agree in advance to follow the local guide’s instructions. When he moved us into hiding, we hid. When he stopped us in order to “ask” snakes to move, we stopped. (One lesson, “What to do if a Black Mamba appears,” kept everyone in line.)

On our first walk, we took a short break along a marshy area. Our local guide disappeared for a few minutes; upon returning he said, “We will wait.” Two elephants slowly ambled into view across the marsh, then a third, then the rest of a herd.

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On The Road – Kabecoo – Botswana

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Every day in Botswana we saw hundreds of horned animals, most of which were within the antelope family. We saw them as we drove around, hiked, or sat in camp. Mostly they seemed a bit shy, turning away from us as we’d approach. But we were certain that they heard us long before we saw them, by focusing their enormous ears in our direction.

They were rarely alone. We would see a pair, maybe a small family group, everything up to hundreds of springbok. On occasion we would notice that despite our presence they would be looking elsewhere. That was our clue that something more troublesome than us was near.

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Makgadikgadi National Park, BotswanaMay 17, 2022

On our first game drive we saw several kudus. Males could be identified by the spiral horns. Females lacked the horns but shared the vertical white side stripes and small hump. It also seemed that the kudus would mix with large numbers of its relatives: in the middle of a group of impalas there would often be a female kudu or two, finding safety in the group.

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On The Road – Kabecoo – Botswana

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Kabecoo

Baboons and giraffes were never seen alone. We would stumble upon troops of baboons in the morning, traveling toward water. Clusters of giraffes, heads and necks only, would be poking above the trees. Giraffes handled the upper side of the “browse lines,” the part of a tree can safely grow because it is too low for the giraffe and too high for the impala or buffalo.

Giraffes seemed somewhat wary of us. Usually the baboons never were. Our guide would stop the vehicle and after a few moments the baboons went on about their daily tasks as if we weren’t there.

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Chobe National Park, BotswanaJune 2, 2022

The father of a young baboon, patiently waiting for us to leave.

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