Fifteen hundred kilometers finds us booked into Hotel Onganga in Windhoek having driven, what Fred calls, the runway. The Trans-Kalahari is a real road trip, endless flat grassland plains, broken with scrub and thorn trees, dotted with goats, donkeys and the ubiquitous cattle of Botswana.
I relaxed back and watched the verge, pylons and telephone poles for raptors and added the Greater Kestrel and Pale Chanting Goshawk to our Big Birding Year List and watched a Red-crested Korhaan creep over the road.
Our stopovers in Gabarone and Ghanzi were less about birding than recovering from hours in the car but I spotted some of the common birds of the west - Red-eyed Bulbul, Red-headed Finch, White-browed Sparrow Weaver, Black-faced Waxbill, Shaft-tailed Whydah, Crimson-breasted and Lesser Grey Shrikes and Pied Babblers, always a good indication that we have travelled.
