Birds - Zambia/South Luangwa


The Zambian avifauna counts some 750 species including some 100 migrants from the Northern hemisphere. As a Southern part of 'East Africa' it is well covered by the excellent field guide "Birds of East Africa' of Stevenson and Fanshawe whichs accounts for just under 1400 species. All in all, East Africa is a 'paradise' destination for any nature-lover-cum-birder (like myself).

While on foot or on a drive in an open safari vehicle, (binocular) viewing of birds is a wonderful part of the safari 'wildlife' experience.
Most of our South Luangwa guides were pretty bird-savy and all members of our five persons group enjoyed birdwatching.

Viewing birds is one thing, taking quality photos while on the move has its limitations. The most obvious one is time. Holding up your safari companyons, however bird-minded, for (over)extensive bird-shoots is not on. So much of the bird photography was done opportunistically on-the-fly so to speak. The proverbial 'sitting ducks' got shot readily during short walking and driving halts. Waterholes of course proved particularly (bird) photographer-friendly places. If not sitting, most of their feathered 'frequent-flyer' guests were slow-mo waders.

The shooting gets readily tougher for the category of (much) smaller songbirds. Besides being small, many of these are on top of it pretty shy characters. Being there in August past the breeding season there was no more stationary pole singing and the birds were much more on the move.

This means that the bird galleries below are surely very modest in their numbers of species 'shot'. The focus has been more on quality of  the few within good reach than on scoring species. I am anyway not one of these 'chase-and-tick' the (species) list birders/photographers (of which the numbers and their fanatism appear to be growing rapidly world-wide).

So here are some of these birds we all enjoyed watching, ........all of us on-the-fly in South Luangwa.

Using Format