Day Fifteen - Mkuze

6:00am start with an hour long drive up to the game reserve. We passed through a lot of rural villages with simple mud houses and where goats, cows and chickens freely roam.

Driving around Mkuze park was similar to Kruger but the bushveld is much thicker and makes the animals harder to spot. Our first good sighting for the day was Eastern Nicator, a notorious skulker, but I spotted him. I have become the spotter for the group, I seem to pick things out quite quickly, mostly I think because I've had lots of practice in similar habitats, the bushveld is not unlike north-western NSW and the grassland is similar enough to home. Our guide was pretty pleased with the views we got of this bird, he said he'd never seen it so low down in the vegetation, about eye-level with us. 

We stopped at the camp for breakfast, packed for us by the lodge. Once we were fed we continued to Kumasinga hide. We heard a Gorgeous Bushshrike calling and headed off into the scrub to find it. Of course we were all looking up, but Travel Buddy was looking down and spotted some very big paw prints. Our guide had seen them too, he has 14 year’s experience with tracking big game and wasn't concerned, so we kept birding. So far on this trip he has been very persistent with the birds, calling them in with playback and waiting until everyone gets a clear view before moving on. Today he suddenly called it quits on the Bushshrike before anyone had seen it and we headed for the fenced-in hide. Later that afternoon he told us that he initially thought the prints were from the previous night but that lions leave a very distinct scent when they have been quite recently in an area and when the wind changed he caught that scent. Cool.

An unmistakable paw print (Photo Credit: Travel Buddy)

Nyala at Kumasinga hide (Photo Credit: Travel Buddy)

Purple-crested Turaco (Photo Credit: Travel Buddy)

The hide itself was situated over a waterhole and gave us an amazing view of what you imagine Africa to be. From our position we watched a troop of about 25 baboons going about their daily business, saw impala and nyala (in-yarl-a) come in to drink. Of course there were plenty of birds too, the highlight a Purple-crested Turaco. It is a place I could've sat all day, watching the comings and goings of creatures great and small. Fascinating.

For a couple more hours we drove around, stopping at another hide where we spotted a few hippo, and then headed back to the camp for lunch. The wind was picking up by this stage and the animal activity quietened down to almost nothing but on the way out of the park Travel Buddy spotted one of my most wanted birds for this trip; Crested Guineafowl. They are darker than the Helmeted, with black necks, red eyes and groovy permed hair-dos. Fun. A flock of thirty or so, including a few half-grown chicks, entertained us for a while before tearing across the road and into the scrub.

Crested Guineafowl (Photo Credit: Travel Buddy)

After leaving the park we checked out one more wetland and then headed back to the lodge.

By this stage everyone was a bit worn out, birding this intensely for this long is tiring because it requires a lot of focus, and all the lightweights took the afternoon off. This meant that only two of us were left to go on a walk around camp with our guide, finding a couple of new birds like African Yellow White-eye and Yellow-bellied Greenbul.

For dinner we had butternut soup, steak and veggies, and chocolate cake with custard. We are eating a ridiculous amount of food on this trip.

After dinner Travel Buddy and I went for a quick spotlight around camp and found a Greater Galago (aka Bush Baby).

Big Sis

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