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MALAWI MALAWI MALAWI SOUTH AFRICA If you don’t want to miss out on some wonderful sights, then consider this lovely African country for your next birding trip WORDS: DOMINIC COUZENS I t was late afternoon at a guest house in one of Africa’s less well-known capital cities, Lilongwe. I was sitting opposite my guide, Abasi Jana, reviewing the day’s birding with cup of tea in hand. The last of the sunlight twinkled on the garden pool and a gecko roused itself from slumber to scuttle across the wall. Our attention was caught by a small bird in one of the garden shrubs. “Collared Sunbird,” called Abasi after the briefest scan with his binoculars. “That’s a new one for the day”. He was right, it was yet another. Much as I always think it’s rude of a new bird to appear when you are actually tallying your day-list, this intrusion was, in a way symptomatic of the happy profusion we had experienced in the last few hours. Collared Sunbird was species 109, on a curtailed day – we hadn’t even started at dawn. Malawi, you might say, was showing off. Perhaps, though, it needs to. This small republic in south-central Africa, a third submerged under the eponymous Rift Valley lake and its southern half surrounded by Mozambique, is far from a famous birding location, seemingly outshone by the safari centres of neighbouring Zambia and Tanzania. Yet it punches above its weight bird-wise, 650 species cramming into a country smaller than Greece, owing to A wealth of great wildlife can be enjoyed in Malawi, including Hippos a rarefied mix of different habitats and high number of localised species that make even hardened Africa-philes salivate. As to this opening salvo of birds, it happened that we had seen most of them in relatively unusual circumstances – in miombo woodland, a well-defined habitat made up from modest-sized trees without much understory, on poor soils. Miombo hosts a profusion of birds, but seeing them can be far from a doddle. Success depends entirely on finding roaming bird flocks that come and go as they please. At Dzalanyama Forest Reserve there’s 100,000 hectars of the stuff, plenty in which to hide. In the end, it took all of 15 minutes to find our first flock. Just beyond the entrance gate, Abasi stopped the car and declared “Pale-billed Hornbill”. A scramble led us to a clearing and a great view of this decidedly scarce species; it was perched resplendent on a treetop and making a sound like a very panicked Green Woodpecker. Within seconds we were distracted by movement in the greenery a few metres away at eye level, and were amazed to see one of imageBROKER/Alamy John Warburton-Lee Photography/Alamy Dzalanyama’s most sought-after species, a Souza’s Shrike. In contrast to our own shrikes, which are generally birds of open areas, this small grey and olive-brown shrike specialises in feeding low down in the shade of the woodland, making it easy to overlook. Souza’s Shrikes habitually join bird parties and, sure enough, the sunlit canopy was soon White-backed Night Heron alive with flitting shapes. This is always a thrilling spectacle, eliciting a wholesome mix of excitement and panic, and here in the heart of Africa, exotic names came thick and fast – Yellow-bellied Hyliota (like a colourful Pied Flycatcher), Green-capped Eremomela (yellowish, warbler-ish), Black-eared Seedeater (sparrow-like) and African Paradise Flycatcher (caramel brown, opulent long trailing tail). My notebook was hot for half an hour, before the feeding party ghosted out of sight. “Good start,” I remarked to Abasi. “Stierling’s Woodpecker!” he replied, eyes fixed behind me. This was another “mega”, hardly found anywhere else in the world. It looks like a cross between a Great Spotted and a Green Woodpecker, with a bold black stripe through the eye, 8 December 2016
SPONSORED BY AfriPics.com/Alamy Racket-tailed Roller African Paradise Flycatcher View from the Zomba Plateau robertharding/Alamy and two of them pecked away at close range, adjacent to a plain-faced Cardinal Woodpecker. The woodpeckers were part of a new flock, and we were rapidly immersed again in shifting shapes. Several species, including the hyliotas, had disappeared, while new ones appeared such as Southern Black Flycatchers – no flock in miombo woodland is exactly the same. The variety kept up: we clocked the scarce and smart Rufous-bellied Tit (African tits are languid creatures, seemingly robbed of the family effervescence by the heat), plus Blackthroated Honeyguide, the bird that leads people to bees’ nests and waits for the comb to be extracted as its reward. Flock three turned up about 40 minutes after that (with one of my favourites, Spotted Creeper, one of the few land birds that inhabits both Africa and India), and flock four just before lunchtime (with Violet-backed Starling, a bird of salivating gorgeousness). By the time we were settling into what was packed-lunch enough for eight, it seemed we had seen almost every top quality bird – except one. “We should see Anchieta’s Sunbird by the dambo,” Abasi reassured me. But I was twitchy. You see, Anchieta’s Sunbird is, to Malawi, what a completely gorgeous Spotted Creeper actress or actor might be to a film – worth the entire spectacle. I remembered seeing the plate in Birds of Africa depicting this gem, years before, and taking a sharp intake of breath. The bird has a glittering blue head and a brilliant yellow breast, but it looks as though somebody has taken a dagger to the latter and there is a splash of vivid crimson flowing down the front. The dambo, a wet area within the forest, delivered, of course, with a male sunbird in a flowering protea. And this being Africa, a habitat shift offered another spike of new species, including Scaly-throated and Pallid Honeyguides, Flappet Lark and, presumably embarrassed by the plenitude, both a Red-faced Crombec and a Red-faced Cisticola (tiny warbler-like birds). Despite the wonders of miombo woodland, to many birders the biggest joy of Malawi is in its remaining patches of highland forest. Continent-wide, this is now a very scarce habitat, and the feathered gems associated with the Afro-montane biome seem to be diminishing by the day. You could actually see this at two of our next destinations, on the Zomba Plateau a few hours south of Lilongwe and further south at Thyolo, where FLPA/Alamy the vegetation is almost completely denuded, leaving only remnant patches to hint at the riches of the past. We saw a number of woodcutters even during our short visit to Zomba. Admittedly, it does make forest birding easier, and over the next few days we caught up with almost all the specialities, including such sought after species as Bar-tailed Trogon, Whitestarred Robin, African Broadbill, Square-tailed Drongo and a host of sociable, thrush-like birds called greenbuls, which are bewitchingly difficult to identify. We also scored a hat-trick of gorgeous mini-finches: Red-faced Crimsonwing and both Green and Red-throated Twinspots, each of which has white dots on the underparts. Several inhabitants of these forests are rare even within Afro-montane biome, and are currently confined in this small corner of Malawi and neighbouring Mozambique. Arguably the two biggest stars are the colourful White-winged Apalis, a small, long-tailed canopy species with bold Joe Vogan/Alamy birdwatching.co.uk 9
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