When birders head to Harare it is because they are on a mission to see some secretive ground-dwelling rallids (birds that live in marshy wetlands), namely Streaky-breasted Flufftail and Striped Crake. We were not any different and those were our two main targets as we entered Zimbabwe’s capital city. In case you missed it, we had just targeted two flufftails in South Africa and were on a mission to see our third. Unfortunately Toto did not sing it loud enough for the skies of Zimbabwe to open up and thusly the area has been exceptionally dry from lack of rain. We were told by multiple people that the flufftail and crake were simply not possible due to dry conditions, a huge disappointment for the guy and gal who were looking to all but clean up the Flufftail Family. (For my non-birder readers that means we want to see all 9 of them.)
After South Africa we were headed to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is an extremely poor, landlocked country just north of South Africa where approximately 47% of the population earns less than $3.20/day and 72% live below the poverty line. I remember visiting a London art exhibit and saw a piece with the words “It’s cheaper to print this on money than paper” written all across the Zimbabwean currency. But since the Zimbabwe currency essentially fell apart, and rightfully so as no one should be paying with a One-Trillion Dollar Bill; they have since issued “Zimbabwean Bond Notes” and those, along with the USD are used as the new currency. Even still, the bond is not worth much and once you’ve exchanged it over, you cannot exchange it back! No one outside of Zim wants anything to do with this play money!
Crossing the border into Zimbabwe went about as planned, we jumped through some hoops, stood in some lines and after two hours and forty-five minutes, were through. I’ll spare you all of the details of what it means to cross into a border, but if you want to read in great detail all about it, click here.
We crossed the border at Beitbridge and then drove for about 6 hours up to Zim’s capital city of Harare. It’s funny that on a birding trip that kind of drive time is normal. We were running out of daylight when we arrived, but we will use all of it if we can so instead of finding a campground/hostel, we just went directly to Marlborough Vlei.
The word “vlei” is a South African term used to describe what is essentially a wetland and grassy area. We did a little loop in degraded vlei habitat and had excellent views of Greater Painted Snipe and Marsh Owl. Common Waxbills were everywhere along with Yellow-mantled Widowbirds, Southern Orange Bishops and Zitting & Croaking Cisticolas. No luck with either of our main targets as we expected since there simply had not been enough rain.
The whole area smelled of sewage. One misstep and … disaster. 
Red-chested Widowbird 
Marsh Owl
We checked into a local hostel and camped in the backyard. That night the rains came down hard and we hoped that maybe, just maybe, in a few days’ time the flufftails and crakes might make an appearance, if they hadn’t already decided to breed elsewhere.
Fingers crossed that they could be back by the time we returned from Masoka Camp, our next destination.