Log in
Join travelers community
Your Profile
Logout
Up at 4:30 and on the road by 05:00 with only a cup of coffee and a biscuit in out stomachs. The wildlife experience starts as soon as we are in the vehicles - this is Tzetze fly country, and they are out in force. Luckily it is not far, a 20 minute drive brings us to a hide overlooking the swamp. The hide is built in a tree and we all climb up the wooden ladder to the platform 60ft above the forest floor. The dawn is rising and the view is magnificent.
Day 4. Tue 24th September Kasanka national Park.
DaveMidgley2005-10-22 12:02:41
Displayed times (last time: )
Up at 4:30 and on the road by 05:00 with only a cup of coffee and a biscuit in out stomachs. The wildlife experience starts as soon as we are in the vehicles - this is Tzetze fly country, and they are out in force. Luckily it is not far, a 20 minute drive brings us to a hide overlooking the swamp. The hide is built in a tree and we all climb up the wooden ladder to the platform 60ft above the forest floor. The dawn is rising and the view is magnificent.
We have primarily come to see the rare African antelope known as the sitatunga, and sure enough, the breaking dawn reveals several females grazing in the swamp below us, including two right under our tree. Unfortunately they are all either too far away or too well camouflaged to get any decent photographs - even Nathan has difficulty. A Ross's Loerie, a large black bird with magnificent red wing tips, settles in a tree, and across the swamp we can see vervet monkeys frolicing. Then, suddenly, several sitatunga are spooked, and, pointing our binoculars in the direction from which they are running, we see, briefly, a cerval cat stalking through the undergrowth. This is a rare sighting indeed, and it is a real shame that it is too quick and too far away to photograph.
We leave the hide at about 07:00 and head off through the forest. All visitors to the park must be accompanied by a guide, and ours takes us on on a good walk through the trees and onto the plain, where we see several herds of puku (an antelope of the kob family) including a large male who tried to run around us and lure us away from his harem. We also see a great many birds. During the three week trip we see so many birds I soon give up trying to identify or list them. Nathan and Amanda do pretty well, although even they find it impossible to identify the hundreds of sub-species, with the additional variations of male and female, young and mature. Ken, however, has an encyclopeadic knowledge of all the birds and
...
See photographs from:
Zambia Gallery
