“I just want to get this stupid Indigobird out of the way and get on with my life.” I’m sure you can guess who I’m quoting as we drove down into the valley to try once more for a small, dark-colored bird that looks very similar to every other indigobird. There’s small differences of course like which bird it paracitizes [to lay one’s eggs in another species’ nest so that bird will incubate and raise the young] and slight differences in bill color, leg color and body sheen color. But really they look alike. Zambezi Indigobird is an African endemic and we are targeting endemics so we will dedicate as much time as necessary to not dip our African targets, no matter what.
We were on a hurry to get to Zimbabwe because arrive too late and African Pitta might no longer be on a nest and therefore might not be possible! This is one of the mega birds of Africa and we hoped that early January wouldn’t be too late!
From South Africa we crossed the border and started on the road. Our first destination in Zim was Masoka Camp where we had two main targets, African Pitta and Zambezi Indigobird. Masoka Camp is not far (~250km/~150mi) from Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, but it takes at least six hours to reach due to the state of the road. The rains hadn’t come yet so the road was dry and we made quick time getting there. Masoka Camp is a wild place where 4 of “the big 5” still roams freely. We camped down by the river and did get to see a herd of elephants crossing not far from our camp. Mackenzie, the bird guide for the area, has a few African Pitta nests staked out and we were fortunate enough to see one display. He also carried a loaded gun in case we might run into a lion or elephant on foot while we were looking for the pitta. You know, as a last resort option for safety.
Ran into Cape Buffalo 
Had elephants cross not far from our tent 
View from our camp 
African Pitta 
African Pitta
But other than African Pitta, our next biggest target was Zambezi Indigobird which Mack says can be found outside of the village. Instead of spending our time wandering in the remote forest, we had the pleasure to simply drive back and forth through the villages in search of the indigobird. And did we drive. On one day in particular we clocked 150km just going back and forth through a small village at a very slow pace. It takes a special kind of person and I’m sure Mack thought Ross was crazy. The people in Masoka do not have running water and we often saw them down by the well collecting the precious liquid and then transporting it back to their homes by balancing it on their heads. They don’t have electricity or toilets, and many didn’t have shoes either. In fact, the people in Masoka don’t have much, they live in rounded huts with straw roofs that I’m sure have more spiders in them than they’d like to admit. And yet they were friendly and smiled and didn’t seem to be bothered by us despite no other cars in the vicinity. (Most people in Zim are too poor to afford a car and even if you could, getting fuel is a major undertaking as fuel has been in very short supply.)
Human civilization was not where I hoped to spend my time, but we were target birding and sometimes when you are looking for specific targets you have to do that sort of thing. Unfortunately we never turned up a single species of indigobird despite two nearly FULL DAYS of dedicated searching!! There are 10 species found on the continent and we couldn’t turn up a single one! We did at least get great looks at Bronze-winged & Three-banded Courser, Pennant-winged Nightjar, and Livingston’s Flycatcher. Even though we were target birding, we still saw plenty of common birds such as White-crested & Retz’s Helmetshrike, Red-headed Weaver, Meeve’s & Violet-backed Starlings, and African Wood-owl which serenaded us to sleep as we camped in our tent along the river.
While we were up at Masoka the rains came and both the Zambezi area as well as near Harare got some much-needed rain. We were thankful to have a straw roof over our heads otherwise our tent likely would have leaked as the rain came down in buckets all night long! We spent two nights at Masoka and the day we went to leave we woke up to find that the river had risen significantly! We had to delay our departure a bit so the water level could go back down but eventually we set off. Mack, who needed a ride back to Harare, was in the back seat which turned out to be a good thing because he has great familiarity with driving the road and was able to explain to Ross the best way to navigate through the stream crossings. Ross finally got to see what his trusty 4×4 could do. I had to close my eyes at times, almost certain that we were going to get stuck in a stream with no other vehicles available to pull us out but that didn’t happen. Ross couldn’t help but admit that the rush of adrenaline that comes in those “do-or-die” moments was rather fun. Getting stuck in the mud is a part of overlanding Africa. If you went via 4×4 and didn’t encounter extreme situations pushing you to the very limit, did you actually do it right? We didn’t get stuck …. Yet. But we made it to and from Masoka, ticked African Pitta and the rains came, so hopefully now Streaky-breasted Flufftail might be gettable! Stay tuned!
Me, Mack & Ross