Today we took a 25minute flight to Shoebill Island to look for this iconic bird. The pilot was staying with us so the trip was easy, we went in two waves again. John and I left with Catherine first and on arrival we went to the tented camp to wait for the others to arrive......as they could leave later they had gone to see the dawn bat experience.
It's unbelievable that in May these now dry plains are full of water and birdlife. We saw fishermen leaving on their bicycles as they are nomadic and follow the fish but the landscape was dotted with the small straw huts that they live in when the water is in. The dryness also enabled us to see the manmade banks and fish traps where they place their conical baskets to catch the fish.
Once the others arrived we headed out in search of the shoebill. Enroute we saw enormous herds of black lechwe (500+) - we could see them from the air but on the ground we realised they were all males - the females go closer to the marshy areas where they are preparing to give birth. This year they have delayed their births as the rain has been slow coming.
I also saw a beautiful rosy breasted long claw - a first.
Eventually after a very dusty ride we came to a large fishing village - and all the youngsters and many of the young mums ( too young) came out to see us. They were all excited and happy to have their photos taken. We now had to walk 30-40 minutes with a fisherman who had seen a shoebill earlier in the day. I was sceptical but shouldn't have been as today's photo shows - we did find a lovely young shoebill almost adult sized but he had only started to fly in the last month and he was still blue/ grey he will become greyer as he ages - don't we all!
We were accompanied by the village elder, an older lady. As they are paid by Africa Parks to look after the birds she rightly wanted to make sure everything was ok.
After a late lunch at the tented camp we flew back to Kasanka for an evening bat experience. Tonight we went to the BBC two tier hide - it was the one the BBC erected for filming. It was 18 meters to the top which did take some focus to get there!
It was a very different and closer view than last night - it's amazing how many false starts the bats can have before setting off to eat that 3000tons of fruit they consume every night! The false start can be caused by predators or just being unsettled but the mass exodus seemed to happen at 6.10pm and was over by 6.30pm.
While we were on the tower we saw a fire on the edge of the forest - we later discussed this with Chris, the camp manager, they suspect it had been set by locals as recently several were imprisioned for poaching. Poaching is a real issue as there is an insatiable demand for bush meat. While we were there this wasn't the only fire - staff were preying for the rains to help put them out and make the fire-lighters lives more difficult.