Make sure to check out the Sand Rivers blog for
Mark's excellent post on the rare African Skimmer. These birds earned their name because of their habit of flying just inches over the water with their lower mandible (a fancy name for the bottom half of a beak) dipping into the water, ready to reflexively snatch up any snacks they come across in the shallows. There are few places better than the Selous for seeing these birds and few places better than our flycamp sites for watching them skimming.
I caught this one on camera last week when I was flycamping with my guests. For the whole hour that we enjoyed the sunset over the lake, this skimmer made passes along the lake shore just in front of our camp fire. A few times we even saw it lift small fish out of the water right in front of our noses! So kudos to Mark for his pictures of the skimmer chicks, but there's no picture quite like a skimmer actually skimming.
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