No One Has Time To Get Sick — Birding Dzalanyama

Getting sick while travelling is no joke. Anyone who’s ever had to run to the bathroom might find solace in a clean, porcelain throne. Unfortunately a clean, western-style toilet doesn’t exist in rural Africa. We were just thankful that the composting toilets at Dzalanyama Forest Campsite didn’t smell. (But if you know anything about composting – it doesn’t smell when done right and personally, I am a HUGE fan of composting toilets and would install them pretty much everywhere if given the opportunity. I’m just a big fan of composting in general actually but I digress…) It’s hard to find the motivation to write anything up when you are feeling sick, as I am right now as I write this. In all of the travels that we’ve done over the years, this is only the second time we’ve ever gotten sick while travelling, so I really can’t complain. But being sick in one of very best birding sites in all of Malawi is not ideal. (EDIT: this was written in late Jan, so not Corona related at the time!)

Dzalanyama (good luck pronouncing it) is not far from Malawi’s capital so after a quick night over in Lilongwe we set off to bird some pristine miombo woodland with a plan to spend at least two, maybe three nights at the site. Birding in miombo, for anyone who is not familiar, can be difficult. It’s all about finding flocks and can be quiet outside of those frenzied moments. We had a handful of targets, most of which are very scarce with little known. We didn’t even have an audio recording for two of our top four birds, but we were ready to go. Or at least I was. Ross on the other hand was definitely out of it and not feeling so hot, but sickness isn’t going to stop him from finding some megas.

The road in was in decent condition and we were surprised to see so much pristine forest left! I’m not sure were it was coming from because we didn’t see much evidence of trees being chopped down, but we encountered no less than 100 men pushing a bicycle loaded to its fullest capacity with firewood. I’m amazed at what sheer determination can do. Did you know you could stack logs on the back of a bicycle so that they completely encompass you and then bend over at the top as if you were pedaling in a wooden cocoon?! Now you do.

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It was mid-day when we arrived but that’s the best time to find birds in this kind of habitat. Mornings are notoriously slow. We were fortunate to set up our tent and then go for a little drive and not 5 minutes later we ran into a mega-flock. And then when we finished with that flock, we ran into another one. Couldn’t birding always be like this?! Arguably our hardest target, Olive-headed Weaver, was accounted for before we even had a chance to look for it. A single female was spotted creeping on the side of a tree, picking at some lichen amongst a flock of Yellow-bellied Hyliota, Greencap Eremomela, Anchieta’s Sunbird, Pale Batis, and Red-capped Crombec.

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It was a mixture of Ross wanting to bird but not being able to even stand up due to intermittent waves of extreme nausea so we headed back to camp and he just laid down on top of one of the picnic tables. But only for a little while because we had birds to see! Some great habitat next to camp can only be reached by crossing over a very decrepit log bridge. With a steep drop and rushing water below, we decided it was best not to take our rather heavy hilux over it for fear the bridge might break, our car fall, and our trip be over. Truthfully, we probably could have done it once, maybe twice, and been fine, but we opted not to risk it and just walked the 1.2 miles (2km) to the Lesser Seedcracker birding spot. We walked there and it rained so we walked back. The following day we did it again. And again. And again.We’d walked that stretch of road so many times that by the end of the following day we tallied over 9 miles (14km) and that’s not including all of the ground we covered in the woods!

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But walking so much and birding along the way proved fruitful because we had Stierling’s Woodpecker, one of our main targets, on a few locations. We also had several big flocks and found plenty of birds such as Southern & Yellow-bellied Hyliotas, Green-capped Eromomela, Spotted Creeper, Rufous-bellied & Miombo Tits, and Anchieta’s Sunbird. Visiting this trusty spot at the end of the 1.2 miles turned up Lesser Seedcracker, another one of our mega targets, even though we had to walk into and all around the dambo to be able to see it. At least inside the dambo we managed photographs of Red-Chested Flufftail.

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Of our “big 4” targets, only Shelley’s Sunbird still eluded us. We decided to do a drive to search for it, but the spot that we had didn’t prove fruitful and, this is where birding can be funny, we were on our way back to camp to pack up our things when we found a sunbird calling in a tree next to the road. Don’t you know it was our last main target Shelley’s Sunbird! What luck! A very responsive male perched overhead allowing for excellent photos and even better recordings. As my father in law likes to say, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Despite sickness Dzalanyama was very good to us and we ended up only needing two nights instead of three! It’s not fun to go birding while battling stomach pains and extreme fatigue but you gotta do what you gotta do. We didn’t have time for a GI bug! From the pristine miombo we birded our way out and hit the road! We had ground to cover if we wanted to make it to Luwawa Forest Lodge by dark! (Spoiler alert: we didn’t make it there by dark. Not even close.)

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January 28, 2020