Let me tell you a little story. We’re at 2,200m (7,000ft+) elevation. It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s raining. We’re on the side of a steep slope. Ross hops out of the car and asks me if I want to go walking with him. Did I mention it’s 4:30 in the morning? I was in the car, out of my bed, yes, but I took one look at the conditions and declined. He ran off down the hillside. About an hour and a half later he comes back, soaking wet and says “that bird is an asshole.” I guess it didn’t cooperate. Good thing I stayed in the car. We drive a little bit further. It’s still dark, but less so. It’s still raining, but less so. It’s still cold. I still decline the invite to march around in a wet thicket of ferns. And an hour later Ross comes back with a big smile on his face and gives me two thumbs up. Turns out flufftails DO actually FLUSH! Up until this point, neither of us had been successful at making a flufftail fly up out of its thick hiding place. Ross told me the story about how he had played some tape and was just standing there waiting when he went to take a step, and boom, a Striped Flufftail flies up right in front of him. The sun was up by this point so he had excellent views. The hard work was worth it and he lets out a loud “BOO YEAHH” for the whole valley to hear and just like that a second bird flushes up and follows the same suit as the bird before it.
I was asleep in the car and missed it. This wasn’t the first, or second or even third or fourth time we had been down in those thick ferns. In fact, it took Ross over TEN HOURS to get that view. I had given it a fair shot, had it come really close, but never saw it and gave up. I couldn’t be bothered to do it again in the pouring rain and dark and cold. I would tell you that if you play stupid games you win stupid prizes, but in this case the prize is a rarely recorded SE African endemic subspecies of Striped Flufftail that likely will get split into a separate species someday. And only a handful of people have ever seen it – Ross was now one of them. I guess that’s not a stupid prize at all.
Nyika National Park is a beautiful place. It is Malawi’s oldest and largest national park and sits up at 2,200m elevation, with rolling green pastures as far as the eye can see scattered with the likes of Eland, Roan, Bushbuck and Zebra. Blue mountains off in the distance and perfectly placed rocky outcrops all through the valley round out the view. When the sun is shining and the sky is blue, I’m not sure a more stunning place could be found in all of Malawi.
We spent three days and two nights birding through the park and had a handful of bird targets to see. There’s a lot of birding by car, but if you want to risk encountering an elephant on foot, you can get out to walk along a few trails. We did plenty by car, plenty by foot. As we drove through the grasslands, we saw Montane Widowbird, Rufous-naped Lark, Churring & Black-lored Cisticolas, and the endemic subspecies of Red-winged Francolin. And no matter where we were, the view was lovely. We never encountered an elephant while walking the trails, but the evidence they left behind made it clear that they weren’t far away. We did however encounter Chapin’s & Brown-headed Apalis, Bar-tailed Trogon, Southern Mountain & Sharpe’s Greenbuls, and Olive-flanked Robin Chat.
One afternoon we parked the car on the side of the road and scrambled over these boulders. I didn’t think it would amount to much because from the road it’s just some weeds and rocks, but from the top of those rocks you can see out into neighboring Zambia and the view is breathtaking. I guess the sighting of Ludwig’s Double-collared Sunbird and Yellow-browed Seedeater made the view even better.
We had brought along with us our trusty Southern African Birdfinders Guide and there’s a forest listed in the book that is said to be good for Sharpe’s Akalat and apparently that forest is the only place in Nyika to find it. To get to said forest, we had to do a bit of detective work because no one outside of birders would really have any desire to go there. The “road” if you even want to call it that, was totally overgrown. We left the main dirt road and drove for 5km through thick grass, over small trees and shrubs, and wondered all the while if we would ever make it to the forest and if were even going in the right direction. The whole place was covered in fog so we couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of our car at any given moment. Great. The faint outline of possible tire tracks and satellite imagery was all that kept us going. Eventually we did arrive in the Manyenjere Forest and had to make a trail in order to climb through the thick vines that grow along the edge. Once you get inside the forest though it’s easy walking and the big trees are lovely to walk amongst. We found our targets Sharpe’s Akalat and White-chested Alethe rather easily and on the drive back out were surprised that the view into neighboring Zambia was one of the best we had seen yet. Oh wait, we were in Zambia. The edge of the park ventures from Malawi into Zambia and you are free to walk in between the countries. We had been in Zambia for the morning and all of the birds we had seen were technically on our Zambia list!
I’m not sure why more people outside of birders don’t visit Nyika National Park. It’s a beautiful place and the Chelinda Lodge set up in the middle caters to tourists and ranges from fancy accommodation to a campsite. It was the perfect place to end our Malawi adventure and we ended our 12 day trip with roughly 330 species for our Malawi list.
(But actually the following night that we spent camping on the beach of Lake Malawi was really the perfect place to end our Malawi adventure. It wouldn’t be right to come to the country and not see the crystal clear waters of world renown Lake Malawi at least for a little.)
But for now it was off to Zambia!
Selfies up in the mountains 
Sunrises at Lake Malawi