Country: Zambia
Area: Kasanka
10 million bats. Quite an eerie thought for some but for others it is an interesting experience.
Kasanka National Park is a wildlife park in Central Zambia bordering the DRC. It is a small park only 360 sq.km in size but it is host to a fruit bat migration. This phenomena takes place every year from mid-October to mid-December when the bats fly in from the DRC forests to feast on wild fruit.
These bats are gold in colour and have a one metre wing span.
The fruit trees are mainly loquats and waterberry.
Guests are accommodated in two camps consisting of huts and a third area for campers. The latter is a popular site for “birders”.
The camp where I stayed consisted of eight huts on the edge of a lake.
It was so peaceful with sightings of elephant, hippo’s, Fish Eagles, Sitatunga, monkeys etc.
The event occurs twice a day at sunrise and sunset. The sunrise event meant getting up at 03h30 and down a cup of coffee and a rusk. Then onto the back of an open Landy wrapped up in a blanket and wind our way through the forest to a hide.
The tallest hide, known as the BBC Hide, is approximately fifteen meters to the top platform. The ladder to the top was quite rickety that even the pilot that accompanied me was nervous to climb up this “thing”.
Come sunrise, one can hear the sound of the “sea” approaching. Then this black blanket appears overhead and circles for about twenty minutes. It is an unbelievable
experience of a lifetime. Of course, not everyone’s cup of tea. The other beauty was the colour of the sky, the clouds and landscape.
Sunsets were equally beautiful but a different beauty.
Only guests that had made reservation in the camps were permitted access to the hides.
I was very fortunate and honoured the one day that I was on my way to canoe up a river near the Congo to view kingfishers.
The head guide said that seeing we are the only ones in that area that day, he and the scout will take me into the conservation area.
This meant that I could come up close within touching distance of the bats.
My flight up from SA now became a thousand times more exciting.
My photographs below one can view vultures in the trees waiting for the branches to break under the weight of these colonies of bats so that they can “clean” up the bats that land on the ground.
Canoeing up the river I managed to get some good photographs of reflections on the river.