Our (being H & I) first night was somewhat interrupted around 2am when a bat decided to do laps in our bedroom. It liked getting particularly close to H for some reason. I’m not a bat catcher so the only alternative was to turn the light on and hope it wouldn’t like that and go away (from wherever it came). It was a good strategy but that did mean that the rest of the night we had to sleep with the light on (which fortunately both of us managed to do).

We had decided to head out at sunrise (6:30am) and do a drive to the Nsumo pan which was about 20 minutes away and have coffee and rusks there and then head back to camp for breakfast. I was expecting a dry pan but it turned out to be more like a lake and definitely wasn’t dry. It was still fairly cool (around 15 degrees C) when we got to the picnic spot but we managed to enjoy our coffee standing in the spots of sun. I also fetched my scope as there were some birds on the pan that were too far away to ID just using binoculars.

After coffee, we visited one of the two hides that are on the pan. The hides at Mkhuze are absolutely beautifully done and in great condition. Definitely some of the best bird hides I have been to actually. Some more birds added to the trip list plus some lifers for some of the people. On the way back to camp we did a quick detour down the landing strip as my one bird app said it was a good place to find some rarities. We did again see a few birds (though not the ones the app suggested) and one of them was a lifer for all of us.

We got back late morning (a bit later than we had expected). There are a few bird hides nearby which I wanted to go to and so H, S and I ventured out. The first one which was only 2 kms from the camp, while the hide itself was nice, there was very little bird action. We decided to go to the other one which was 7 km from the camp. What a good decision that was. Birds everywhere, game coming down to drink. You honestly didn’t know where to look at times with all the action. I would be looking at something and then S or H would say they have seen something else. It was a battle to keep up. More lifers for all 3 of us and I passed the 200 birds for the trip point as well. Our short trip out turned into 2 hours out. It was so good that we suggested we go again at 4pm before the sunset. When we arrived with the others there was far less action and relatively disappointing compared to midday.

Our last braai in the bush was last night as we were leaving the game parks and returning to some level of civilization from now until the end of the trip. H and I were just hoping for a bat-free night …

Until later today

P, H, A (he did the braai 2 nights running on interesting wood), S (for joining us on the midday bird excursion), B & O