Kiswahili words learnt on the trip
Animals seen
Birds seen

Thursday 1st November

Up 6am, shower, European style breakfast. Taxi to airport. We walk to small plane; there are seven of us. 2500 feet, cloudy, some minor bumps, buzzed the airstrip in the Selous, by the Rufiji river, then circled once more over lake with hippos and crocodiles and landed. We are met by Ezra our guide with a driver.
We get into a big open sided landrover and we are off to Impala camp. Ezra announces that our programme says we are to do a game drive on the way. This is unexpected and a treat. On this drive we saw our first of many impala. Rutting season is getting underway; herds are generally all females with young, or all males (bachelor herds). Males have horns, females don’t. Males are now trying to corner their harem of females. A family of warthogs not the ugly things of repute, but caring parents and sweet babies, giraffes – they are fantastic like some friendly dinosaur from Jurassic Park with the bump of the nose, the small horns and the gentle gaze before they lope off trying to control four enormous spindly legs like stilt-walkers trying to run. Ezra is good at birds too, pointing out various rollers etc. We reach a small lake with a better clear view of giraffes plus some Egyptian geese. We see some quail-like birds. A small group of vervet monkeys is in the trees.
The landrover wanders around the bush, off-road whenever we see something interesting. The roads are just tracks, seriously bumpy so progress is casual. We come out on to a long broad clearing. This is a disused airstrip.
As we get nearer to the camp, we wind through bushes 40 yards off the track to get close to the carcass of an old male giraffe which Ezra says probably just died of old age. It is covered with vultures with more flying in. The giraffe’s neck stretches out along the round with the head nearest us, the eye socket is empty and a pack of vultures is tearing at the body cavity. There are 2 sorts, white backed and hooded.
There are 40-50 vultures around. The body has been here only a day or so. No sign of other predators, but vultures see corpses first and their wheeling sometimes attracts others.

Ezra teaches us 3 Kiswahili words – Jambo which means hello, everybody says it to everybody all the time. Karibu means welcome and is associated with many things – welcome to your food, welcome to our camp, welcome to Tanzania etc.: we are not expected to master these. The response to this though is Asante (thank you). Finally, Mzuri means good or well in response to how are you, how did you sleep, how was your lunch etc.

We are met by Micol, the camp manager and her assistant Chloe, who proceeds to give us a briefing about the way the camp works and the things we can do.

  
Selous Impala tents

A Maasai takes our bags to our tent, No. 4, about 100 yards off and the nearest, handily, to the restaurant/bar building. The next tent is about another 30 yards away through the trees. Our tent is large with a flysheet, sturdy canvas, set on a wooden platform raised about 4 feet off the ground on poles. There is a wooden veranda with two deck chairs and a table. It overlooks a short stretch of river about 70 yards away.
A bit of unpacking then off to lunch in the very large, open-sided thatched building which is about four feet from the cliff edge overlooking a side channel of the main Rufiji river with a hippo directly beneath us. A spectacular setting with long views to the small BehoBeho mountains in the distance. Lunch is lovely, the food is very good. There is a young English couple and two other couples.
It is 3pm now back in our tent and Marie is asleep. We are doing a boat safari at 4pm.

To the restaurant at 4pm. We go with Ezra and our boat driver Gerhard to a covered flat-bottomed boat, which can take 6 people, but there are just the two of us plus Ezra and Gerhard. We go upstream, to the right. Impala Camp is on the north bank of the river, but because we are only about 10 degrees south of the equator the sun is nearly directly overhead all the time so it’s difficult to work out which is north and which is south. All the safari camps in the Selous are north of the river in the northern part of the park.

 

Our river safari is very pleasant. There are two thermos flasks of cold water for Marie and I and a coolbox with cans of Tusker beer, coca cola and fanta. Cooling breeze, lovely views, we meander along the river near the bank, spotting a large variety of birds and many schools of hippos, which are territorial and spend their days in the river cooling off and their nights ashore eating large amounts of vegetation. Each school has a dominant male. Frustratingly they sink completely below the water, closing their ears as they go, just as they get into camera range. Gerhard is really keen to get me into good positions to take photos of all the birds we find. Ezra tells us that some previous English guests christened him with the Kiswahili for Brother Fish Eagle because he has such good eyes for everything. There are white-fronted bee-eaters, golden palm weavers (really spectacularly yellow the size and shape of a greenfinch), kingfishers and a tiny electric blue bird which turns out to be a malachite kingfisher a lot like our kingfisher but smaller.
We heave to at a sandbank in the middle of the river because Ezra spots a herd of elephant in the distance at the water’s edge. I see a medium size crocodile slip off the sandbank into the water five feet from us. It takes me a second to register what I’ve seen.

  

Elephant haven’t been seen this week so Ezra is pleased we have seen some.
As the afternoon progresses we see more of the same as we move upstream and into a large side lake – crocodiles sliding off sandbanks into the water their eyes and noses above water just as hippos do, hippos submerged, a wonderful family of elephants 9 or 10 of them up close including young with a dominant matriarch drinking at the water edge. She makes an aggressive display, ears wide, trunk up as she shepherds them back into the woods.
Herons, egret, spoonbill. greenshank, common sandpiper, fish eagles, tiger fish leaping from the water and at the end of the afternoon as we watch a terrific sunset, three black and white Colobus monkeys including a young one, up in a tree. On the way back the number of palm trees which are now growing out of water or fallen over into the water indicate that erosion of the banks continues and the river gets wider each year. The Rufiji delta is large enough to see on google earth and sheltered a German cruiser in the 1st World War.

Prepare for dinner and when you want to get there you stand on your veranda and yell Jambo, Maasai ! with as much volume, politeness and command as you can manage short of sounding like a dyspeptic colonel.
Very soon a Maasai appears complete with robes, long spear, long knife and wooden club wearing trainers and with a flashlight and escorts you to dinner lighting your path and sweeping the bush with the beam in case of lion, hippo, hyena, elephant etc. All of which wander among the tents from time to time.
At dinner I am able to buy two more films off Chloe – they think of everything here. Discussed tomorrow’s programme with Kieran who likes to plot what everybody is going to do so he can schedule vehicles and guides etc.
Tim tells us of the fish that got away. Tim says their first night he slept right through a noisy fight between two hippos right outside their tent. The hippo was slashed on the leg badly and later on in this vulnerable state was attacked by hyenas who killed it. The camp staff dragged the corpse further off into the bush because of the smell.

Friday 2nd November

Slept Ok despite the strange bed and noisy frogs. Marie heard hippo and hyena in the night. Hippos grunt and hyena have a high pitched bark. As we awake, vervet monkeys are scampering over the flysheet and into the trees.

  

After breakfast (muesli, corn flakes, boiled eggs, coffee, juice, water, bread) back on the boat at 8am with Ezra and different driver Abdallah.
We go downstream because I asked if it was possible to see hippos on land and apparently the sandbanks downstream are our best chance.

Kingfishers, lots of storks, herons, waders, egrets all together in the same spot. Fish eagle, big bird much bigger than an osprey waits on the shore looking for prey. Takes off with great flaps of its wings. I photo it in flight. Many schools of hippos. We tried to find one on dry land to get a photo. We come across one suddenly, hidden by flotsam on a small sandbank. He charges off splashing into the water. I am not ready of course and miss the heaven-sent photo opportunity. Eventually we found one or two on a bank who didn’t immediately run into the water the moment we got even remotely in view.
Back via kingfishers, blue monkeys and a lone old male cape buffalo on the bank in vegetation. There was a red-billed ox pecker on its back.
I know that cape buffalo are the most dangerous animal in Africa and kill more people than lions. Hippos are also very dangerous if you get between them and their refuge – water. Abdallah gets the boat right up to the bank, right below the buffalo. I think it could probably jump into the boat if it wanted to. They look evil animals with their massive boss of horns (hence cape like a cloak, not cape as in Cape of Good Hope or Capetown) and piggy eyes. Old lone males are particularly dangerous Ezra says. I just trust him and Abdallah to know what they are doing.

After lunch, 3pm game drive with Ezra and a French couple who have been put with us for the afternoon so their landrover and driver can take a departing couple to the airstrip. One of the really good things about our time at Impala is that apart from this afternoon Marie and I are on our own with Ezra and a driver, usually Ramuju or Gerhard. We get to look for the things we want to see and Ezra always finds them, he has the best eyesight of any human being I have ever met. About as good as my binoculars. He doesn’t own binoculars, but borrows mine from time to time to confirm what his eyes have already seen or to get a really close look at something that interests him and when we have found them we get to spend as long as we want photographing them or just watching. The camp also uses open-sided landrovers so you can see 360 degrees around and don’t have to stand up.

We see baboons which are stringy monkeys, but fascinating as their behaviours seem to have more of an element of thought and intent and play. We see a kindergarten herd of giraffe, four young ones, their mothers somewhere close by. Giraffes are 1.8 metres long at birth and put on growth rapidly in the first few weeks as they are easy prey for predators. Ezra tells us he saw a mother trying to protect her young calf that was lying on the ground. Hyenas were around and she lashed out at them, but unfortunately kicked and killed her own calf. She didn’t leave the spot for 3 days.

Off to the find hunting dogs which have been seen by other groups in the morning.
We go a long way to where they are supposed to be, without success. As we continue Ezra is preparing us I think for dogs disappointment, saying that of course you can never guarantee to find what you are looking for. Suddenly we see one under a tree, and then close by the road five cubs and then three more adults in some shrubs near the road.
All are lying in the shade and apart from the cubs which are so close you could get out and stroke them they are a bit hidden by foliage and it’s getting late afternoon so it’s difficult to get a clear photo. Three other landrovers join us. Apart from raising their heads to look (which gives me a chance to get a slightly more interesting photo) all the dogs are unfazed and continue to lie there.

 

They are mottled in colour, browns, white and black. Largish ears and about the same size as an Alsatian. It is good to see them as they are the Selous’ trophy species and are very rare and good that they have raised five cubs who all seem healthy and well on their way to adolescence. Apparently this pack has 4 or 5 more adults who may be off hunting somewhere, they hunt at night and it is now late afternoon. Our lot may just be looking after the cubs. They don’t move and Micol and Chloe said later they watched for as long as they could into the evening and they didn’t move off. The girls had taken time off specially to go and see the dogs so I guess it was a special sight.

I said it was lucky that the dogs were right by the side of the road or you could look all day and never find them. Their camouflage, like most animals here, is really good and you need to be an Ezra to be aware of the sort of terrain and the spots that animals like in order to find them. Micol said that actually the dogs use the roads to get about, no thorns for their feet and easy to make progress. This is probably true of other animals as well as we see a lot of animals on and near the road during our stay – giraffe, impala, elephant, baboons, warthog.

Radio traffic tells of a possible leopard location and we leave the dogs. The leopard is supposed to have crossed the head of a lake near where there are some buffalo skeletons. Ezra takes us to where he thinks that might be, but we can’t see any leopard
or any other landrovers. We give up and find a nice spot in the open where it is safe to get down from the landrover and have a drink and something to eat from the supplied picnic basket.
The French couple have been on many safaris in many countries and on this trip have already spent time in two other parks – Ruaha and Mikumi. She says she has never seen a male lion and of course Selous is the place for hunting dogs. So their main aim of our drive is to see lion and hunting dogs.

Drive back to the camp through the gathering dusk and on the way we see a family (over 10 of them) of banded mongoose, courtesy of the French man. They are on the ground at a fork in the road and scatter when we pass. Quite gloomy now as we race to beat the 7.30pm deadline, but we see three hyenas by the side of the road.

Dinner tonight is not in the restaurant, there is a big group at a long table in there, but at tables set up in the bush nearby with hurricane lamps and candles and noises and millipedes and insects, but our liberal covering of deet keeps them at bay. So far on this trip neither of us has been bitten by anything, but we take an antihistamine tablet each morning which will reduce the irritation/inflammation in case we are bitten and of course malarone each evening in case the biting insect is a mosquito carrying malaria.
There are just two other couples, Tim and Emma went this morning. We are just past the high season of October, the end of the dry season when animals are easier to see in the low foliage cover, but although it rained here last week (the short rains are due any time in November) and some fresh green sprouting is evident, the rains didn’t come while we were at Impala and we were able to see everything we hoped for, except perhaps the skittish eland.

Saturday 3rd November

6am up early for a walking safari. Tea and a snack delivered to the tent. We meet Ezra and a ranger carrying a rifle that looks quite old and well used. I ask if it’s a .303 and he says no it’s a .428, which sounds big. It can cope with buffalo and elephant if need be. I wonder if it’s actually loaded. We did a leisurely 4 hour walk ending with breakfast by the lake set up by Abdallah, full breakfast of bacon, sausage, boiled eggs, cereal etc. very welcome.
The walk started from our tent and meandered off through the typical low scrub woodland, easy walking, not dense vegetation. We looked at tracks of giraffe, two parallel lines of cloven hoof prints. Ezra explained how they walk, both legs on one side go together (why don’t they fall over?) except when they break into a canter when diagonal legs go together.

There are other tracks around of impala, warthog, hippo – big round mark with 4 toes, elephant – big front foot, much smaller oval hind foot, hyena. We go across the disused airstrip and I momentarily, and for the only time this morning, have some sense of where we are.
We come to a big baobab tree with lovely flowers and up on a big bough is a bee’s nest. We can see two or three combs about a foot in diameter glued to the underside of the branch and covered in bees. Marie says it looks like the whole thing is alive and moving. Ezra says there is a bird called a honeyguide which guides other animals to the nests which they destroy for the honey and so the honeyguide gets some honey. And woe betide the man who tries to steal their comb for the birds follow and attack, going especially for his testicles for some reason.
We come on a couple of columns of marching ants – long lines of ants about 4 or 5 across stretching for many yards and purposefully heading in pursuit of something. They carry food items and pupae. Soldiers with big jaws guard the line. Ezra pays them great respect (they have been known to kill sleeping drunkards even in the towns), but disturbs the line with a stick. There is an instant milling about and the ants spread out into a circle about a foot or two wide before reassembling the line and carrying on as before.
The brief rainfall of last week has brought out the fireball lily. This one has a large globe head about 6 inches in diameter where the flowers are a vivid pinky red with yellow stamens at the end. You only see it after rain so we are lucky they had some.
We came across a hyena lying in the bush, warthog and 3 giraffe, but nothing dangerous.

Many types of tree including ebony, zebra, acacia. There is a shrub that elephant love even though the plant has huge spines growing from bulbous bases on the branch. When you shake the plant an ant issues forth from a small hole in the bulb and these sting the elephant’s tongue – a real escalation of survival traits.

We looked at various piles of dung, apparently you can tell the sex of the depositor sometimes and discussed the difference between animals with multiple stomachs that chew the cud e.g. giraffes and buffalo and the more copious dung of herbivores that don’t – elephant, hippo. We looked at dung beetles doing their work, smaller than the ones you see on TV though!
Ezra tells us he had to study self-funded for 6 months before taking his level 1 guider certificate. There are no government grants. When he has saved up enough he wants to go back to a better (and more expensive) college to get further qualifications for guiding. He seems to know a large range of zoological, technical stuff as well as identification, tracking, observation, ethological and ecological info on animals, birds, flora of all kinds. As well as being a nice man.

We come across a giraffe skeleton, huge neck vertebrae and Ezra suggests I might like to take a photo of the skull. I group Marie, Ezra and the ranger with his gun standing behind the skull and take their picture. In sepia it would look like any such safari group from the 1930s having just shot something.

After breakfast Abdallah takes us back to camp by boat arriving about 11.30. Time for a swim in the small pool the other side of the restaurant. Loungers, towels, shade –lovely and Chloe thoughtfully provides us fruit juice. Soon the pool is invaded by 3 small noisy children and then their parents. We can’t tell what language they are speaking, not Italian or German or Russian. Turns out they are part of a party of 10 Estonians who flew in for one night and a day safari and are off soon. They did the same thing 2 years ago. In 24 hours this time they saw more things than most visitors see in a week – very lucky. We go for a quiet lunch.

The two French people are on an all-day safari, the Estonians will leave this afternoon and six more people are due to arrive. A constant stream of guests mean the staff all work hard. Towels and cold thermoses of water appear, clothes are washed, lamps are placed on verandas, beds turned down – a lot of attention to detail makes the stay easy.

Marie quite tired after our long walk so a short boat safari again this afternoon is called for. We set off at 4pm and return at 6.30 with plenty of time to get ready for dinner. You think with only 2 drives a day you will have lots of time on your hands, but that’s not how it turns out somehow. As soon as breakfast is over, it’s time for the morning drive. Get back with just enough time to get ready for lunch at 1pm, after lunch and some looking up of reference books to settle queries, or a walk back to the tent and feet up for 5 minutes it’s off on the afternoon drive which gets you back with just enough time for a shower and get ready for aperitifs at 7.15 and bed straight after dinner.

Anyway our leisurely boat drive this afternoon is back with Gerhard and we see more different things. A monitor lizard, about 2 feet long is digging into the sandy bank. After some listening and digging in a couple of places it makes a quick lunge and has a cicada in its mouth. The insect is fat and about 2 inches long and is quite a mouthful for the monitor. Further on a mother and young waterbuck are grazing by the water edge. We watched them for a long time. They have a striking marking on their rear which looks like one roundel of an archery target. Must be the source for the Gary Larson cartoon where one antelope is looking at a complete target on the rear of another antelope and saying, ‘bummer of a birthmark Hal’.

Tilting my head back to get a sip of beer, the wind catches my golf cap as we speed along and off it goes into the river. By the time Gerhard has circled round to where it was, it has sunk and despite efforts with a pole can’t be found. Ah well it was on its last legs anyway. Saw two more old lone male buffalo. A yellow billed stork, big white and black with a big yellow bill with red at the base. Marie switches her allegiance from the golden palm weaver, this stork is now her favourite bird. It was working the shoreline in concert with its chum, a little egret. Nearby, a flock of cattle egrets. Towards the end of our drive we see a dominant male hippo guarding his school against an intruding male.

Sunday 4th November

Our last day in the Selous. We are having an all-day game drive after yesterday’s more restful programme. We start at 7.30am. I ask Ezra if it would be possible to see a male lion, a pride of lions, a leopard, a kudu, and an eland.
First thing we see is a hyena lying in a bush. Passed the usual suspects. Lovely family of baboons grooming, playing, carrying babies slung under their chest or sitting on their rump.

  

On the way to a reported leopard sighting, Ramulu spots one sitting under a tree some way off, 150/200 yards. A good observation. We stop and watch. Marie looking through the binoculars spots a cub in the bush to its left. Ezra very excited, says it’s rare to see cubs. After some tentative forays out from its bush and back again the cub joins the mother and off they go stalking some impala 400 yards away. Another landrover appears and the cub returns to its bush and the mother returns to her tree. After a while they resume the stalk, the mother walks forward four or five paces and stops, but the cub keeps walking past her for another 4 or 5 paces before it stops too. The mother doesn’t seem to mind. They continue like this for a while. A vervet monkey about 500 yards away has seen the leopards and is running for all his worth away from the danger. The impala still don’t take fright although they are on the alert. We lose sight of the leopards behind trees and scrub. The impala eventually scatter and the stalk is over. We wait around for a while, but the leopards do not re-appear and we leave. We have had a wonderful view of a mother leopard and cub actually doing something.

Radio traffic talks of lions and soon, after carefully threading our way through bush, Ezra spotted a male lion. In trying to get near, the lion moved away and we got a bit stuck in bushes, but a five-point turn got us out. As we steered round more bush trying to intercept where the male might have got to we came across 3 females lying under trees in more open ground being watched by a landrover. Ezra spotted the male again and we left to see him. After a while he got up and walked right past our landrover to a spot nearer to his females. He was no more than 12 feet away as he passed on Marie’s side of the truck. They tell you lions never attack landrovers, seemingly perceiving them as one object rather than a vulnerable platform full of easy prey. Marie’s head told her that, but her thumping heart said something else. Like a professional wildlife photographer though, she got a good photo of it as it went by. No zoom lens required.
Ezra describes the ways that lions use to kill their prey.
We followed it and watched first the lazing females for a bit, then the male before giving up our parking space to another landrover containing the French couple so she got to see a male lion.
We had a bush lunch (i.e. lunch taken out in the bush) under a sausage tree by our lake, a crocodile skull near by. With palm trees, waders, hippos and the view it was lovely.

We set off again and soon see the tip of a large termite mound poking above the small trees. We go take a look on foot. It is about 12-15 feet high. Marie takes the classic picture of me standing by it to give the scale. It is a slim, reddish, tapering cone. Further on Ezra spots a large male kudu, brown antelope with spiral horns and distinctive white stripes down its body. It moves off behind trees, but we circle round and watch him feeding for a while.
We begin to take a route over to Lake Manzi where we are due to have bush tea. At the entrance to Lake Manzi camp Ezra says he sees something, maybe a lion. He asks me if I see it. I have become used to being the last to see things, Marie is much better at picking up on what Ezra has spotted. This time I am really stumped. There is a clear view of an extensive area stretching away with only a few trees around, but I can’t see anything. We drive towards what Ezra has seen, I have faith there is something there, but only after a while do I see the lion under a tree. How on earth Ezra saw it at the distance he did beats me. This sighting becomes the highlight of the whole week for me.
First we see some lionesses, four in all and then we see the male, much closer by than usual. They are always in the vicinity of their females, but not always visible or near. This one is lying in thorny bushes in the shade under a tree. As we approach we see that he is guarding, on the other side of the tree, the carcass of a medium sized giraffe. Much of it has been eaten already, the head has gone and most of the body, but the hind legs and neck are still there. We watch for a while and Ezra says the kill is recent, maybe this morning and they are resting after eating which can be a hot business. The male has first go at the kill and the females get a go when he is done.

After a while he carefully extracts himself from the spiky undergrowth to go and check on the nearest of the lionesses. She then gets up and walks over to a small pool of water about 150 yards away. He follows her and we follow the pair of them to watch them drinking from the pool. Another classic wildlife scene. Or they may just be cooling off with sloshing water into their mouth.

The female goes back towards the kill. We follow and find that the other three lionesses have taken the opportunity of the male’s absence to come and eat the kill. They are all tearing at the skin and flesh while trying to stake possession of one area of the carcass by laying a leg over it. The returned lioness does not attempt to join in, there is no room. The male finishes his drink and takes a circuitous route back, but when he gets there he joins the group, snarling and driving away one of the females to get a space at the carcass.
We watch for a bit more and then leave. It has been just us there, as close as we liked and watched a whole sequence of lion behaviours. Wonderful.

We continued on to Lake Manze for our bush tea. Another scenic setting, lapwings, a black heron dramatically using its wings to shade around its head and reduce reflections on the water to spot fish. A bit like Dracula whipping his cloak around him.
On the way back to Impala camp we see a group of four kudu, two groups of zebra, one with giraffe, another wildebeest and then a herd of 12 or so elephant grazing on the move, crossing the road ahead of us.
On the disused airstrip there are three warthogs, one moving along on its front knees so as to continually graze. You can clearly see the bristles on the side of its face which let it know how wide a gap is. Ezra says they enter their burrows backwards, he once saw a cheetah pursuing a warthog and when it got to its burrow it turned round as usual, the cheetah stopped momentarily thinking the warthog was about to retaliate, which gave the warthog the moment it needed to disappear down its burrow.

Ezra schools us in our phrase with which to impress Chloe, ‘Leo tuliona tui lamtoto na simba doomi’ (today we saw leopard cub and male lion). I extemporize, ‘and tembo sana’ (and much elephant).
We struggle through this back at camp and Chloe is duly impressed.

A fantastic day, we saw all the things we set out to see, except the skittish eland, plus the wildebeest. A great end to our safari week.

In the bar that evening we meet Mohammed the chef. He comes from Zanzibar and has heavy eyelids and a studied way of talking. He is relaxing at the bar. An interesting man. We are lucky he has been our chef, the meals have been of a high standard.

Kiswahili vocabulary learnt during our trip

Asante – thank you
Sana – very, much
Mzuri – good, nice, well
Jambo – hello
Karibu – welcome
Lala salama – sleep well
Lamtoto – cub
Habari gani – how are you
Leo – today
Tui – leopard
Simba – lion
Tembo – elephant
Dumi – adult
Maziwa yamoto – warm milk
Tafadhali – please
Tuliona – we did see (we saw)

List of animals seen

Giraffe - many
Impala – many
Kudu - 5
Waterbuck - 2
Wildebeest - 2
Warthog - many
Hyena - 7
Hunting dog - 9
Vervet monkey - 12
Blue monkey - 3
Black and white colobus monkey - 1
Baboon - many
Elephant – 3 herds of approx 10
Hippo - many
Leopard and cub
Male and female lions – 1 lone female, 1 male + 3 females, 1 male + 4 females
Cape buffalo - 3
Squirrel - 10
Banded mongoose - 12
Crocodile - many
Monitor lizard - 2

List of birds seen – 67 species
For Selous bird list click here

White pelican
Grey heron
Goliath heron
Green backed heron
Black heron
Night heron
Cattle egret
Great white egret
Little egret
Open billed stork
Woolly-necked stork
Saddle billed stork
Marabou stork
Yellow-billed stork
Hadada ibis
Sacred ibis
African spoonbill
White faced whistling duck
Egyptian goose
Palm nut vulture
Hooded vulture
White headed vulture
Bateleur eagle
Tawny eagle
African fish eagle
Osprey
Crested francolin
Helmeted guinea fowl
African jacana
Water thick-knee
Three banded plover
Blacksmith plover
Spur winged plover
White crowned lapwing
Common sandpiper
Common greenshank
Marsh sandpiper
African skimmer
Ring necked dove
Brown headed parrot
Grey go-away bird
Pearl-spotted owlet
Palm swift
Pied kingfisher
Malachite kingfisher
Brown-hooded kingfisher
Little bee-eater
White-throated bee-eater
European bee-eater
White-fronted bee-eater
Lilac breasted roller
Broad-billed roller
Green wood hoopoe
Von der Deckens hornbill
Southern ground hornbill
Spotted-flanked barbet
Woodpecker – unknown
Wire-tailed swallow
African pied wagtail
Common bulbul
Grey-headed batis
Red-billed oxpecker
Wattled starling
House sparrow
African golden weaver
White-browed sparrow weaver
Southern cordon bleu