Often birdlife is overlooked when booking a safari, it is only when you are actually out there on safari that you realise exactly how diversified and amazing the bird population is in Africa. In particular the birds of the Luangwa Valley are mesmerizing. Their colours, size, quantity and habits never fail to impress even the most unlikley of ornithologists.
This season especially the number of quelea have been remarkable! The sight of thousands of these tiny finch like birds suddenely flapping around in a previously uninhabited tree is an amazing spectacle.
However a strong contender for a bird fanciers attention is sure to be the huge concentrations of Yellow-billed Storks to be found in the Nsefu Area of the South Luangw. Each year they decend on the Nsefu region to lay their eggs, hatch them, and teach their wobbly legged offspring to fly. It is an incredible sight and one definately to include in any trip to the South Luangwa.
As thousands of the stork babies squawk and flap in an attempt to fly there are of course those that dont make it and they tumble through the branches into the clutches of the large Marabou Storks and crocodil that sit waiting patiently below. After a month or so of nature and luck deciding which baby storks ’make the cut’ the trees are empty and simply white stained with the birds droppings.