Birding and Bird Ringing in Zimbabwe: The Bats of Kasanka: Part One

During my two month stay in Zimbabwe last year, my dad and I decided to go on a 10 day African road trip, as we had done many times before I moved to Australia.
Where to go was a big decision. The range of options was limited to a certain distance from home (up to roughly 1000km, I decided) - we didn't want to be doing too much driving as we had only 10 days to work with.
This still left quite a few choices. The Okavango Delta in Botswana (I've been there before, but would happily go again) and Kruger National Park in South Africa were two possibilities.
Chizarira National Park in Zimbabwe, closer to home, was another maybe.
Mozambique offered Gorongosa Mountain and National Park as well as the Zambezi Delta.
Malawi has Liwonde National Park and Mount Mulanje.
Zambia in particular has a lot to offer; Lochinvar National Park supports tens of thousands of waterbirds (another place I've been, but would definitely go again). Kafue National Park is another place worth seeing. South Luangwa National Park is a fantastic game viewing destination, and this was very strongly considered.

What an excellent selection, and all within roughly 1000km of Harare!

At some point I vaguely remembered seeing a David Attenborough documentary about a fruit bat migration somewhere in central Africa. A quick search told me that the place is Kasanka National Park in northern Zambia, a small park which is nowhere near as famous as the big parks of Southern Africa (Kruger, South Luangwa, etc.).
It didn't take much to convince me this was the place to go, above all the other exciting places - just the simple fact that eight million fruit bats migrate to the Kasanak at the end of every year. What!? Eight million? That's right...

Kasanka is 1050km away from Harare by the route we drove. We avoided the slightly shorter route via the awful border post at Chirundu.

Southern and Central Africa. The red rectangle outlines the map below.

Click Here for full size.
This is the route we drove, starting from Harare. We went through the border post at Kariba, then on to Kasanka National Park in the north. On the way back we spent a few days in the incredible Mana Pools National Park.

With our main destination chosen, plus a few days in Mana Pools National Park on the return journey, we set off on just before lunch time on Friday the 18th of October, 2013. The reason for our somewhat tardy departure was a lack of Police clearance for taking the vehicle out of the country! Luckily, we had only budgeted to get to Kariba that day, so we still had enough time to get there after waiting all morning for Police clearance.

Harare to Lomagundi Lakeside, on the shore of Lake Kariba, about 360km.

In Kariba at last, we stayed in a friend's holiday cottage in the Lomagundi Lakeside complex. We arrived in good time for sunset on Friday evening, and I managed to sneak in a bit of birding around the cottages and the shoreline.

This is the view from the bar at Lomagundi Lakeside. Take a moment to notice how many people there are at the edge of the water, then notice the crocodile lower left, one of many on the shores of Kariba. Scary stuff!

I saw 69 species there including Goliath Heron, Glossy Ibis, Marabou Stork, African Openbill, African Harrier-hawk, Little Sparrowhawk, Water Thick-knee, White-crowned Lapwing, Black-winged Stilt, African Mourning Dove (new bird for me!), African Green-pigeon, Meyer's Parrot, White-browed Coucal, Square-tailed Nightjar, Broad-billed Roller, Southern Red-billed Hornbill, Bennett's Woodpecker, Yellow-bellied Greenbul, Ashy Flycatcher, Meves's Starling, White-browed Sparrow-weaver and Lesser Masked-weaver.