CAPRIVI AWAKENING

The Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, spanning five countries, is the world's largest cross-border conservation initiative. In this threepart series, we explore the distinctive character of some of its parks, reserves and community-managed areas, soaking up the rich birdlife along the way.

- TEXT ANGUS BEGG

I was mildly astonished when two blokes told me they'd just flown from Cape Town, in their own plane, to see a White-backed Night Heron hiding out in the reeds of Africa's fourth longest river.

It was 1999 and I was at a lodge called Impalila on the Kasai Channel, which lies at the eastern end of what was known as the Caprivi Strip and feeds Zambezi waters into the Chobe River and its floodplain. Getting there had involved a flight from Johannesburg to Kasane in Botswana, a boat trip across the Chobe to a Namibian immigration post on a patch of sand beneath a large tree, and then another boat ride through papyrus-lined channels to the lodge.

Since then I’ve seen the night heron near Hammanskraal north of Pretoria, but at the time I thought those birders were nuts. I had no idea how remarkable the Caprivi region's birdlife was.

Namibian offshoot

The ‘Strip’ - a relic of German colonial times - is now officially Namibia's Zambezi Province, sparsely populated and still home to few safari lodges. In 1999, during the conflict involving Angola, South Africa and SWAPO, tourist occupancy in the Caprivi Strip averaged a bleak one per cent.

Yet this is where the blokes had flown to, in pursuit of a bird I'd never heard of. Birdlife, to me, was merely part of the broader wildlife tapestry, a pleasant distraction until they invited me to join them on a small boat one night. That evening changed everything. I started to notice the Large Rock Martins on the rapids outside Impalila with new eyes and began ticking off species in my Newman's Birds of Southern Africa.

What nature lover wouldn't be drawn to a place where African Skimmers, Pel’s Fishing Owls, Broad-billed Rollers, African Pygmy Geese and Long-toed Lapwings share a floodplain with hippos and buffaloes?