BWT Travel Guide
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MALAWI<br />
MALAWI<br />
MALAWI<br />
SOUTH<br />
AFRICA<br />
If you don’t want to miss out on some wonderful sights, then<br />
consider this lovely African country for your next birding trip<br />
WORDS: DOMINIC COUZENS<br />
I<br />
t was late afternoon at a guest<br />
house in one of Africa’s less<br />
well-known capital cities,<br />
Lilongwe. I was sitting opposite<br />
my guide, Abasi Jana, reviewing the<br />
day’s birding with cup of tea in hand.<br />
The last of the sunlight twinkled on the<br />
garden pool and a gecko roused itself<br />
from slumber to scuttle across the wall.<br />
Our attention was caught by a small bird<br />
in one of the garden shrubs.<br />
“Collared Sunbird,” called Abasi after<br />
the briefest scan with his binoculars.<br />
“That’s a new one for the day”.<br />
He was right, it was yet another. Much<br />
as I always think it’s rude of a new bird<br />
to appear when you are actually tallying<br />
your day-list, this intrusion was, in a way<br />
symptomatic of the happy profusion we<br />
had experienced in the last few hours.<br />
Collared Sunbird was species 109, on<br />
a curtailed day – we hadn’t even started<br />
at dawn. Malawi, you might say, was<br />
showing off. Perhaps, though, it needs to.<br />
This small republic in south-central<br />
Africa, a third submerged under the<br />
eponymous Rift Valley lake and its<br />
southern half surrounded by<br />
Mozambique, is far from a famous<br />
birding location, seemingly outshone by<br />
the safari centres of neighbouring<br />
Zambia and Tanzania.<br />
Yet it punches above its weight<br />
bird-wise, 650 species cramming into<br />
a country smaller than Greece, owing to<br />
A wealth of great wildlife<br />
can be enjoyed in Malawi,<br />
including Hippos<br />
a rarefied mix of different habitats and<br />
high number of localised species that<br />
make even hardened Africa-philes<br />
salivate. As to this opening salvo of<br />
birds, it happened that we had seen most<br />
of them in relatively unusual<br />
circumstances – in miombo woodland,<br />
a well-defined habitat made up from<br />
modest-sized trees without much<br />
understory, on poor soils.<br />
Miombo hosts a profusion of birds,<br />
but seeing them can be far from a doddle.<br />
Success depends entirely on finding<br />
roaming bird flocks that come and go as<br />
they please. At Dzalanyama Forest<br />
Reserve there’s 100,000 hectars of the<br />
stuff, plenty in which to hide.<br />
In the end, it took all of 15 minutes to<br />
find our first flock. Just beyond the<br />
entrance gate, Abasi stopped the car and<br />
declared “Pale-billed Hornbill”.<br />
A scramble led us to a clearing and<br />
a great view of this decidedly scarce<br />
species; it was perched resplendent on<br />
a treetop and making a sound like a very<br />
panicked Green Woodpecker.<br />
Within seconds<br />
we were<br />
distracted by<br />
movement in the<br />
greenery a few<br />
metres away at<br />
eye level, and<br />
were amazed to<br />
see one of<br />
imageBROKER/Alamy<br />
John Warburton-Lee Photography/Alamy<br />
Dzalanyama’s most sought-after species,<br />
a Souza’s Shrike. In contrast to our own<br />
shrikes, which are generally birds of open<br />
areas, this small grey and olive-brown<br />
shrike specialises in feeding low down in<br />
the shade of the woodland, making it<br />
easy to overlook.<br />
Souza’s Shrikes habitually join bird<br />
parties and, sure enough, the sunlit<br />
canopy was soon<br />
White-backed<br />
Night Heron<br />
alive with flitting<br />
shapes. This is<br />
always a thrilling<br />
spectacle, eliciting<br />
a wholesome mix of<br />
excitement and<br />
panic, and here in<br />
the heart of Africa,<br />
exotic names came<br />
thick and fast –<br />
Yellow-bellied<br />
Hyliota (like<br />
a colourful Pied<br />
Flycatcher),<br />
Green-capped<br />
Eremomela (yellowish, warbler-ish),<br />
Black-eared Seedeater (sparrow-like)<br />
and African Paradise Flycatcher (caramel<br />
brown, opulent long trailing tail). My<br />
notebook was hot for half an hour, before<br />
the feeding party ghosted out of sight.<br />
“Good start,” I remarked to Abasi.<br />
“Stierling’s Woodpecker!” he replied,<br />
eyes fixed behind me. This was another<br />
“mega”, hardly found anywhere else in<br />
the world. It looks like a cross between<br />
a Great Spotted and a Green Woodpecker,<br />
with a bold black stripe through the eye,<br />
8 December 2016