After we leave Botswana there will be no more hippos because they don’t do so well in the desert. Fortunately a family with a mom and baby came out to our campsite to say goodbye.
![image_thumb[9]](https://www.kerrimatt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/image_thumb91.png "image_thumb[9]")
The baby looks basically the same as Mom but smaller and cuter.
![image_thumb[10]](https://www.kerrimatt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/image_thumb101.png "image_thumb[10]")
It is hard to tell the babies apart sometimes because hippo height changes a lot when one stands up and the other crouches. These are both adults.
Before bed they waved goodbye to us and then headed out to find dinner.
The termite mounds in Africa are even bigger than the ones in Australia.
This mound is about 80 years old and was there before the trees. The birds like to perch on the top of termite mounds and deposit seeds, which roll down to the bottom, forming a ring of trees around the mound in an otherwise empty plain.
The termites also seem to be responsible for these strange structures.
They seem to be dirt encased around old branches, which have since rotted away leaving these fragile towers.
This is an ant lion. His digging parts are on the other end, so that he always has his jaws sticking upward ready to eat.
He digs cone shaped holes in the sand to trap ants. Then when they fall in he kicks sand out at them so that they can’t escape and fall down to the bottom of the cone where he is waiting. Then he uses those big jaws to suck all the guts out, leaving only the shell.
There were more fish eagles in the delta.
![image_thumb[3]](https://www.kerrimatt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/image_thumb311.png "image_thumb[3]")
They circled very high searching for fish.
![image_thumb[4]](https://www.kerrimatt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/image_thumb411.png "image_thumb[4]")
This is a carmine bee-eater. They are very brightly coloured.
There were tons of other birds in the delta, but most of them didn’t sit still so we could take a picture.
This is a sable antelope.
By this time we were pretty overwhelmed with antelopes.
They are all really just food for the interesting things anyway.
When you read old books talking about beautiful women having the eyes of a gazelle, think of this. It’s rather weird.
These are waterbuck. And a cut off elephant. We really aren’t sure why Kerri picked this picture.
