African wild dogs are an endangered species. They also happen to be one of the most sought after species by safari goers to Africa. People go crazy about these guys. It reminded me of the wolf people in Yellowstone. The first camp I stayed at in Botswana is supposed to be one of the best places to see them. Even so, it took us three days of tracking to find this pack of 11. When we did come upon them they were resting but would occasionally get up and walk around before plopping down again. And they yawned a lot — like this guy.

The male lions of the Central Kalahari Desert are famous for their black manes. Typically, the mane gets blacker as the lion gets older. This lion was part of the pride of 10 that I saw that included another, younger male with a much lighter mane. These guys also tend to be larger than the lions in the rest of Botswana.

These were two of three cheetah brothers that I saw on my first two evenings in Botswana (the third brother was on the ground behind the termite mound). It was the end of the day and I was able to expose for the foreground while holding detail in the sky by blending several exposures.

I really liked these black-backed jackals. They look a lot like coyotes, but a lot more attractive. At least I think so. I saw them throughout Botswana, but especially in the Kalahari Desert. For the most part they ran when I approached, but this one was quite curious and approached me. In this photo, it was just getting up from resting and stretching like all dogs do.

I photographed many different antelope species in Botswana. This one is called a red lechwe. These guys always stay close to water and it can be quite a sight when a group of them dashes through the flooded Okavango Delta.

A week in the Kalahari Desert provided many opportunities like this with a big red sun on the horizon. On this particular occasion, the haze in the atmosphere worked to my advantage by lessening the sun’s brightness and allowing me to easily capture a non-silhouette shot of the two oryx. Oryx, also called gemsbok, are a larger antelope species. Both males and females have long, straight horns that can be lethal at times — even known on occasion to kill lions.

Just a couple of meerkats lining up for a family portrait in the Kalahari Desert.

I saw three leopards in Botswana but only got decent looks at this one. We followed through the forest for about 30 minutes. It was very dark as the sun had already set, but despite the lack of light I was able to photograph her in a variety of settings. I kind of liked this one as she seemed quite curious about something up in the tree. This one goes out to another cat that I know that has had a rough couple of days.

This is the honey badger, also known as a ratel. Instead of me giving a long description on this most interesting species from the Kalahari Desert, best to leave it to an expert at the following link: http://youtu.be/4r7wHMg5Yjg

Back from Botswana today — a trip that was at times exhilarating while at others a bit disappointing due to a lack of animal activity. The local guides kept telling me that it was a bad time of year for wildlife, and that because of the extreme cold temperatures the animals weren’t getting up and about. That being said, after two straight weeks of game drives every morning and afternoon, a fair amount of good encounters started to add up. So although it wasn’t the bonanza I had expected based on previous trips to Africa, I was able to get decent to good looks at leopard (one adequate sighting), cheetah (encountered a trio of the same brothers on two occasions), civet, honey badger, elephant, zebra, giraffe, warthog, meerkat, mongoose, baboon, hyena, hippo, water buffalo, jackal, wild dog, wild cat, bushbaby, ostrich and many different bird and antelope species (steenbok, reedbuck, oryx, impala, red lechwee, kudu, springbok, tsessebe, etc) And of course… a few lions. For a while it didn’t look so good for me and lions and I thought I would set a new record by being the only person to ever take a two week safari to Africa and not see lions. This pride of ten (including six cubs, two adult females and two males) was spotted a week and a half into the trip. Up until then I hadn’t seen any. And it was in an area that I wasn’t really expecting to see any lions — the middle of the Kalahari Desert. I’ll upload a few shots of the majestic adult males in a future post, famous for their black manes.