Photography Safari in Botswana and Namibia
In March Sherry Schmidt took a break from teaching biology at Mount San Antonio College to do something she’d wanted to do for a long time: travel to Africa to photograph the wildlife. Sherry will present her best photographs at our September 6 Chapter meeting at the San Bernardino County Museum, 2024 Orange Tree Lane, Redlands, near the California Street exit from Interstate 10. The meeting starts at 7:30 P.M. 
Sherry based her Botswana adventure at three camps in the Okavango Delta, which is known for its outstanding wildlife. At the first camp she saw lions numerous times, had a couple of leopard sightings, and saw two cheetahs, which was one of the highlights of the trip for her. She also saw baboons, elephants, zebras, and interesting birds including several hornbill species, bustards, bee-eaters, and several species of vultures.
One of the magical moments of her trip was at the second camp where she photographed red lechwe and kudu in the early morning light jumping over a deep pool of water. Other sightings included wild dogs and saddle-billed storks. At the third camp, she saw great birds, such as a goliath heron, a hamerkop, helmeted Guinea fowl, a water thick-knee, a tawny eagle and a white-fronted bee-eater. She also saw wild dogs, spotted and brown hyenas and hippos fighting outside her room.
The Namibia adventure was a self-drive in an SUV with a GPS pre-programmed by the tour company. One highlight was two early morning visits to Deadvlei, a surreal landscape of tree skeletons in a white clay pan backed by impressive sand dunes. Sightings on other days included ostrich, gemsbok, springbok, social weaver birds and many dune animals, including Namaqua chameleons and sidewinding adders. In and around Etosha National Park, she sighted both white and black rhino, zebra, elephant, giraffe, the endemic Damara dik-dik, secretary birds and other beautiful bird species. A last magical moment was watching a leopard hinting in the tall grass in the late afternoon light.
Sherry earned her B.A. at University of Montana and her M.A. at CSU Fullerton. She conducted the research for her master’s thesis in the Cottonwood Basin of the southern Sierra Nevada, comparing the ability of two species of shooting star (Dodecateon) to control water loss.
She started teaching biology full time at Mount San Antonio College right after graduate school. She has taught a number of courses, including zoology, botany, natural history of California, and conservation of natural resources. She is currently teaching general biology, marine biology, and conservation biology.
Her primary academic interests today are the natural history of desert and mountain ecosystems and conservation biology. In her free time she loves to camp, hike, and travel. She also loves photography. She traveled through the eastern half of Australia for four months as part of a sabbatical. She has also traveled to Costa Rica, Mexico, the Galapagos, Antarctica, Madagascar, the Peruvian Amazon, Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo, Brazil, and Patagonia.
