Etosha National Park Things to Do

The wildebeest is a funny looking and (if you will) rather disproportionately formed animal. The most distinctive feature I find is its head which seems so big it is as if it's too heavy to be held up properly (which may go some ways to explaining the constant head down/"I'm just grazing" pose ;p ).

Elsewhere in Africa (eg. Kenya, Tanzania), the wildebeest is commonly found in large herds that counts its numbers in tens of thousands. The famed wildebeest migration that takes place each year between counts wildebeests in the millions! However, in southern Africa (eg. Namibia) wildebeest herds are far smaller. It is also not uncommon to find them alongside zebra herds. In contrast to the hardy Oryx (see my other tip), the wildebeest can't survive for more than five days without water, and will therefore migrate vast distances to track water down.

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The king of the animal kingdom is truly a magnificent beast. These territorial cats will fiercely defend their territory, which can be anything from 50 to 400 sq. km! Lions usually hunt in the night and the rest of the day simply spent lazing around. If you want to catch them in action, your best bet is the very hours of the morning, at dawn. Sunrise was at about 5.30am in August and September, when I visited).

Diet-wise, even though lions can virtually hunt anything, the most common dishes on their menu are wildebeests, zebras, and buffaloes.

Fun fact: a lion’s roar can be heard from as far as 5 miles away!

Fun fact 2: young male lions are usually kicked out from their pride from as young as 2 to 3 years-old. From then onwards, they begin a period of nomadism, which ends when they’re about 5 years old, when they are old enough to take over their own pride.

I had the fortune of running into a pride of 11 lions on my last day in Etosha National Park. Our jeep found them at a waterhole, and it was the most fascinating thing to watch a group of cubs play with each other, forming the lion’s version of a train (or a conga line!) Also noteworthy was that they seemed engrossed with all things related to buttocks

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It is easy to overlook these creatures because they are so abundant in numbers throughout Etosha National Park. However, from a scientific point of view, the impala is actually a unique antelope with no close relatives.

They are easily distinguishable by their horns, which always have a sharp-angled turn in them. The impala is also known for their speed and ability to leap - in one single bound they can cover 10metres across land or leap 3metres vertically up in the air! Hard to tell given its lithe body, eh? Never judge a book by its cover.

Once widely hunted for their horns, the rhinoceros is now Africa's most critically endangered large animal. At Etosha, you'll commonly see the White Rhinoceros, which is a bit of a misnomer because this species is actually gray in color. (The name is actually a corruption of "wide-lipped rhino", for they have a wider, square-ish jaw compared to the Black Rhino, which again is anything but black but has a triangular jaw). These White Rhinos typically use the broad mouths to crop short grass.

Rhinos in general have spectacularly poor eyesight, and have been seen charging at trains or at elephant carcasses.

On my safari tour of Etosha, I noticed that the rhinos appear particularly shy compared to the other wildlife. Whenever a jeep pulled up it would, more than any other animal, tend to back away into the bushes and disappear altogether. (Or maybe they just see us as massive, moving ugly blobs) The shot here was taken at a waterhole at dawn.

Photography/general tip: Instead of trying to spot one during the day, you have a much better chance of seeing them for extended periods of time if you visit one of the waterholes near the established campsites in Etosha, such as the ever-popular Okaukuejo.

Kori Bustard's are known as the heaviest flying bird on earth. Unsurprisngly, however, its weight restricts its flight distance severely. It is not uncommon to see one take off into the air and then see its swoop back down again after a hundred metres.

These birds are omnivorous and will eat anything from insects to small mammals, snakes, berries, and even carrion.

Fun fact: the Kori Bustard belongs to the minority of about 10% of the bird kingdom that are considered polygynous.

The Lilac-Breasted Roller is known for its brilliant colours and for the way it enrolls from side to side during courtship flights. These birds are commonly found throughout Eastern and Southern Africa and are known to inhabit acacia trees. You can always tell between the fully grown and the adolescents by the length of their tail feathers. The adult rollers tend to have a long, full length tail feather while the adolescents have a short, stunted tail feather.

This birdie commonly feeds on grasshoppers, beetles, and sometimes even lizards and crabs! Like the vast majority of birds, the Lilac-Breasted Roller is monogamous. It is also highly territorial. To hunt, the birds typically perched on a dead tree and survey the area for prey. As you see from the photo above, this particular roller is just taking flight from the dead tree, most likely because it spotted something for lunch!

Photography tips:
To capture a shot of a bird in flight, don't trying to track one while it is already airborne. Sure, you can do it that way with enough patience and work, but it's far easier to catch a bird while it is still perched atop a tree branch. Set the shutter speed to 1/4000 or something similar fast, and try to zoom in as much as possible. The shot above was done at 200mm zoom. Also, train your lenses patiently at the bird and be ready to snap in the direction it is likely to fly off in. You will have to take a guess at the direction but that's not too difficult since, more often than not, it is going in the direction it is already looking while perched atop the tree!

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Regardless of sex, giraffes would have "horns". These are effectively short protrusions of skin-covered bones. Surprisingly, despite its incredibly long neck, the giraffes only has seven cervical vertebrae, which is the same number as all mammals, including humans. (Perhaps someone had simply taken one by its neck in infancy and stretched it a lot? :p) Male adult giraffes can grow up to 5.2m while the females are about 4.5m on average.

Photography Tip: after you get a shot of a giraffe and its incredible body, don't forget to zoom in on its face, for its horns as well as long eyelashes make for incredibly fascinating details in a photo.

Found only on the African continent, the secretary bird is notable for what I like to call "its flamboyant head gear" and long legs. As you can see from the photo above, the resulting look is almost comical -- it's as if the 1980s leggings fashion has made a comeback amongst the secretary birds!

These birds are not migratory and are commonly found in open grasslands / savannahs as supposed to dense shrubbery / forests. The secretary bird is also largely terrestrial, meaning that they mostly hunt on foot as supposed to doing so by flight. (May have something to do with their relatively heavy and less aerodynamic bodies!)

Fun fact: the secretary bird is found on South Africa's coat of arms and is also Sudan's national emblem. Another random fact about these birds is that they appear fractricidal, as the youngest in the brood of reading almost always dies of starvation.