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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kitefarrago" data-source="post: 3169025" data-attributes="member: 91670">Bustards, francolins, cranesA very straight-forward story here. We had White-bellied and Black-bellied Bustards on two-thirds of our days, but it took us a long time to find a Kori Bustard(I had seen that species before so I wasn't too fussed about that). Then we found two very cooperative individuals right towards the end of my stay.By and large bustards aren't easy to photograph since they tend to keep moving, and of course they won't just stick to the tracks. I think when one finds Kori bustards there's a higher chance that one gets closer to those, or at least that was my experience.We saw Coqui Francolin almost every day, and the same was true for Red-necked Spurfowl. You can get lucky and find them close to tracks allowing for good photo opportunities, but quite a few encounters with the francolins were at dusk when the light was fading. We saw Crested Francolin only on three occasions.One of the birds I'd really hoped to see was Grey-crested Crane, and I was told that there had been quite a few around a couple of weeks before I arrived. It turns out that these birds are only around if there is sufficient wet grassland around, so they are ample in the wet season, and then their numbers dwindle as the birds move elsewhere. Interestingly, when we visited the marsh one more time towards the end of my stay when there had been significant rainfall for a couple of nights, we found that the marsh had got much wetter in what seemed like a surprisingly short period. Presumably water cannot run off easily. In any case, during that last visit we did find two Grey-crowned cranes. This was a windy day (unlike most of my other days), and photographic opportunities weren't as good as maybe they could have been. Still, I was very happy to have seen these.Andrea1. Displaying White-bellied Bustard2. Black-bellied Bustard (all our encounters with males were in appalling light and the photos are correspondingly nothing much)3-5 Kori Bustard</blockquote>

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