When there are so many beautiful sites and well-maintained trails, I find it difficult to want to walk through a swamp. It’s hard walking after all when you have to step up and down over thick grass and through muddy water, hoping that you don’t twist your leg in the process. When the grass is wet, the wetness transfers to your pants which eventually become soaked. That wetness then transfers down to your socks which also become soaked. You can’t tell if the sound of squishing mud is outside or inside of your rubber boots. It’s great. Ross, unsurprisingly, doesn’t find it so bad, especially not when one of Africa’s most difficult birds, Chestnut-headed Flufftail, is a possibility. I probably sound like a broken record by now because we had been trekking in this kind of habitat for weeks for various species. I don’t love it, but I’ll do it. I’ve also learned to just embrace it! We arrived to Mutinondo and headed into the dambo aka marsh aka swamp. Time to go find that flufftail!
One month in to our African big year and we headed to Zambia where a whole slew of possibilities awaited us. We had targeted a few flufftails thus far and so far had managed to photograph all of them. The only problem is that Chestnut-headed is supposed to be one of the most challenging of all the shy, secretive flufftails. People rarely see it let alone photograph it!
Mutinondo is a beautiful reserve situated in the middle of 10,000ha (24,000+ acres) of pristine miombo forest, and is one of the best places to visit if you want to have a chance at seeing Chestnut-headed Flufftail. That first night in Mutinondo we headed into the dambo and walked around. We tried one location but were unsuccessful so we wanted to check another place just before dark. Mutinondo had gotten so much rain that water was everywhere! We walked out into Big Chipundo Dambo dragging a rope, hoping that we might just flush a Blue Quail or Black-rumped Buttonquail in the process of getting to our flufftail. Zambia is the place to see Blue Quail and there’s no better place than Mutinondo to see it but no dice.
Just before dusk the flufftails started calling. We could hear no less than a dozen Red-Chested Flufftails and they sounded dangerously similar to our target. Eventually we did have a Chestnut-headed start calling. The slight nuances in call pitch and pace was enough for us to know it was different so we focused our attention there. We set up our speaker, moved a bit over in the grass, and then were lucky enough to watch as a single Chestnut-headed Flufftail FLEW TOWARDS US!!! That’s a big deal. This is a hard bird, and we had flight views of it not flying away from us, but towards us! Unfortunately no photograph. I was happy just to see it, but you know who was angry he didn’t get a photo.
We had set up our ground tent and slept under a shelter with quite a lovely view out over the hillside and a small campfire to keep us company. Earlier in the day we had purchased some raw peanuts from a street vendor and decided we might roast them up over the open flame. Delicious! (Don’t worry we grilled up a proper dinner too!)
We spent a total of two nights at Mutinondo. The birding was great, the trails were great, the views of the waterfalls, forest, and inselbergs (isolated hills/mountains rising abruptly from the plains) equally great. This is a place birdwatchers and non-birdwatchers alike would enjoy visiting. There’s pools in the streams perfect for swimming and trails up gigantic granite rocks! Overall, it was a very enjoyable place and one where, I think, we spent just a little too much time walking in the marsh. Don’t get me wrong, we did see birds such as Whyte’s Francolin, Bar-winged Weaver, Eastern Miombo Double-collared Sunbird, Collared Flycatcher, Souza Shrike, and Anchieta’s Sunbird, while we were birding the forests, but we were on a mission to find Blue Quail and Black-rumped Buttonquail, two birds that love moist/wet grasslands so we spent a lot of our time walking through grass. Seriously, A LOT OF TIME WALKING THROUGH GRASSLANDS. Unfortunately we did not see these two targets, perhaps just too much habitat was available this time of year due to the excess rain!
We also spent a lot of time walking around at night and found a number of the resident birds roosting which is always cool to see and I can’t forget about African Barred Owlet. There’s something about walking around the African bush in the middle of the night with Spotted Hyenas whooping in the distance to make you realize you’re not in Kansas anymore.
It was nice to unplug for a bit (no cell phone reception here although if you spend time at the lodge, which we didn’t do, there is WIFI) but it was time to move on to our next destination, Kasanka National Park.
Naturally we stopped in as many open grasslands as possible along the way trying to see these silly quails! I’m sure the locals thought we were crazy. Who jumps out of a car to go walk in a marsh? Maybe we are crazy… Crazy for quails anyway!
Thanks for your ongoing tales of adventures – and pictures! I know the feeling of pants getting wet, and then socks, etc. But wearing the tall Lacrosse boots Ross is wearing (I recognized them because I have the same ones), it should be OK for fairly tall grass. I guess for anything still higher, you would need to take waders along…
Yep, the Lacrosse have been great! (Although a bit of a pain to get off). Lots of times though the grass has been so wet that everything gets soaked anyways, but haven’t had the top of the boots get breached too many times!
Wow! You’ve been doing some tough stuff to get some awesome birds!
Are you all originally from Kansas? I’m from Kansas, but have lived in Bangladesh pretty much all my life. (you’ll have to come here sometime to get Masked Finfoot, right?)
Hi Seth. Thanks, yep been working hard for some of the birds, but it’s been a lot of fun too! Nope, not from Kansas. We are both from Pittsburgh, but currently live just outside of Philadelphia. And Masked Finfoot! that’s a great bird! You’re right we will have to come for it at some point. A great SE Asia mega!