How you define a highlight of an already glowing trip?
A pack of African Spotted Dogs in near-ideal conditions. That’s how.
On our final morning in the Okavango Delta, just a couple of hours before we headed to the airstrip for the flight to Maun, our safari guides caught wind (with the help of the CB) of a pack of wild dogs. After a brief chase, and a quick hyena sighting (who was also, likely after the dogs) we found the pack.
There were about 15 of them, and they’d made a kill shortly before. The animals, satiated and content with their meal of young impala, were doing what any well fed dogs would do: lounging, playing, resting, wrestling, and watching out for the Okavango’s bigger predators.
We spent an hour or more watching and photographing, and I can’t imagine a more perfect situation. The dogs were hanging out, in a patch of open, green meadow, mere yards from the track. And the track itself dipped low where we parked to watch which put the animals at nearly eye level, a rarity on safari. Overcast skies softened the light, despite the late morning hour, and rain fell intermittently providing interest and texture the negative space on many images.
I purred through images, making portraits of resting or watchful dogs, then switching to action shots as the pack’s pups played with, and bickered over the remains of their kill.
As we watched, I was struck by just how dog-like, these wild, African Spotted Dogs were. The pups, played like you’d expect domestic dogs to play. At one point two raced around and around a patch of shrubs a dozen times, until the chaser wised to the game, doubled back and pounced on the first as it rounded a corner.
Dogs, it turns out, are dogs. Even if they are African Spotted Dogs.
The images that resulted from that encounter are unquestionably some of my favorites of the trip. But the image atop this post, gruesome as it may appear, might be my single favorite image from my three weeks in Africa.
Over the course of this trip to Botswana, we encountered Spotted Dogs on four occasions. As this species is one of the rarest large predators in Africa, and their populations are dwindling almost everywhere, this is notable indeed. Few places in the world offer this kind of opportunity to see and photograph African Spotted Dogs. If you are interested in photographing this species (and many, many, others) I’m not sure you’ve got better odds than by joining me on my Discover Botswana workshop coming up in Nov/Dec of this year (2020). Find out all the details.
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