Zambia 2026

This Easter I spent a week travelling in Zambia with a group of friends, which was an amazing opportunity to see some entirely new wildlife compared to that which I have seen in the past. Having never travelled to Africa or south of the equator before, the diversity of new bird species was pretty overwhelming.
 
The journey began with a connecting flight via Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya. Despite feeling very groggy at 5.30am after the 9-hour stint, I was so eager by the prospect of the many new species that this trip would provide that I wanted to see if there were any lifers visible from the airport windows. It was here I saw my first Pied Crow and African Pied Wagtail (two species that I would see many more of across the trip), as well as a smattering of African Palm Swifts.
 
Upon our arrival in Lusaka on Friday morning, we were all very tired and birding wasn’t the top priority. We spent a large chunk of the day driving south to Kiambi Lodge where we would be spending the next few days. While the extreme tiredness was setting in on this journey, the drive wasn’t devoid of birdlife. In fact, 5 hours into our long journey we were treated to a Spotted Eagle Owl toying with a snake directly on the road in front of us, lit up by the headlights.

​Our three nights at Kiambi Lodge were absolute paradise for someone interested in wildlife, with birds seemingly everywhere you looked or listened. That said, as a first-time visitor to Africa, this abundance of species came with challenges. Almost everything was unfamiliar: songs, calls, silhouettes, behaviours etc. As such, confidently identifying species proved difficult and at times frustrating (especially when a bird only offered a fleeting glimpse before disappearing).
 
This was most apparent on my first morning walk alone, when I was suddenly surrounded by entirely new sounds and movements. However, over the following days patterns began to emerge, which was helped enormously by local guides, online and physical resources, and my friend who spends a lot of time working in Zambia. The more common local species gradually became more familiar. Following that first walk, and after spending some time with a field guide, I could say with confidence that I had a Village Indigobird, a Variable Sunbird, numerous singing Laughing Doves, and a Marsh Warbler in full song (the song was similar to the Reed and Sedge Warblers I know from the UK, but more complex and musical), though it’s hard not to wonder how many other species were present that I failed to identify!
 
Later in the morning, we visited a local banana farm, where I saw a number of new species among which included Common Waxbill, Bronze Mannikin, Southern Cordonbleu (a favourite of mine), Common Bulbul, Familiar Chat and Red-billed Quelea (which unknown to me at the time became the most common species across the trip).

​The day continued with a fantastic boat ride on the Lower Zambezi River, where we were treated to our first good views of the African Fish Eagle, Zambia’s national bird. One thing that struck me was its call, sounding halfway between the cry of a ‘typical‘ bird of prey and a coastal gull (which makes sense, given it’s a fish-eating eagle, an eagle that’s spent a bit too long hanging around with gulls?!). On the boat ride, we also had our first encounters with a colony of White-fronted Bee-eater, as well as Little Bee-eater and a single European Bee-eater (one of the few species across the entire trip that I’ve seen in the UK before). The kingfisher diversity was also striking, with numerous Pied Kingfisher and a single Brown-hooded Kingfisher (though I would see a number of other kingfisher species across the trip). On the banks of the river we also saw various Blacksmith Lapwing, White-crowned Lapwing, Water Thick-knee, Hadada Ibis, and singles of Goliath Heron and Hamerkop. As well as the avian diversity, we were treated to likely over 50 hippos which were gathered in large bloats (apparently the collective noun for hippos…) that were impressive but slightly intimidating, particularly when the guide cut the engine and we were left drifting silently among them.

Hadada Ibis

Water Thick-knee

​On Easter Sunday 5th April, I perhaps had the most enjoyable day of the trip during a full-day game drive in the Lower Zambezi National Park. We were treated to practically every mammal species that you are likely to see in the park (including Elephants, Wild Dogs, Warthogs, Chacma Baboons, Kudu, Buffalos, Waterbucks, Impala, Zebras and even an elusive Leopard), and the bird life was fantastic. The day brought with it 74 bird species – too many to list here but there were a few highlights.

Very early during the drive we had excellent views of an immature Martial Eagle, a hugely powerful bird of prey which perched perfectly in the morning sun for us to observe it for a few minutes before bounding away. A little further into the park we were lucky to see 3 Southern Ground-hornbill which were feeding away on the small prey in the grass, as well as a small flock of Helmeted Guineafowl, 2 White-faced Whistling Duck and a Grey Go-away-bird (possibly my favourite species name of the trip). We also had great views of a Red-backed Shrike (a species I’ve now seen in Zambia, Corfu and Scilly).

​As previously mentioned, the kingfisher diversity on the game drive was amazing, adding Woodland Kingfisher and Grey-headed Kingfisher to the trip list. A real highlight of the game drive was also stumbling upon a flock of vultures feeding on what may have been the leftovers of a successful wild dog hunt. In just one confined area, there were 4 species of vulture, 3 of which are critically endangered: White-headed vulture, Lappet-faced Vulture, Hooded Vulture and White-backed Vulture.

​In the same area, we had our first Eastern Paradise Whydah flying overhead, a bizarre bird whose males grow extraordinarily long tail streamers. These tails are a classic product of sexual selection: females preferentially choose males with longer, more elaborate tails, not because the tail itself is advantageous, but because it acts as an honest signal of underlying genetic quality (with beneficial genes linked to or indicated by those controlling tail length), driving their evolution even though they impose clear costs to flight and increase predation risk. It’s a striking example of how sexual selection can favour traits that would be selected against under natural selection alone. This was particularly obvious when watching them in their clearly awkward and laboured flight. Their flight looked so inefficient it prompted a friend to point out that it looked like the bird from Flappy Bird. Outside the breeding season, males shed these elongated feathers, making flight far more efficient again.

Eastern Paradise Whydah

A lunch stop near on the banks of the Lower Zambezi presented some familiar wader species which can be seen in Europe, including Common Sandpiper, Greenshank and Ruff, as well as the very unfamiliar sight of Saddle-billed Stork. Just before, we also had very nice views of a Squacco Heron, one of my absolute favourite species of the trip (though I’m not sure why…). Lunch was cut a little short however by the appearance of a buffalo, which prompted us all to rapidly get back in the Jeep due to their propensity to charge.

​Towards the end of the drive, we spotted a beautiful male Kudu. While in itself this is a highly impressive and imposing antelope species, I was mainly drawn by the fact that it clearly had a Red-billed Oxpecker feeding on its back. This is an ecological interaction that comes up when teaching school biology. Oxpeckers are a particularly useful example when discussing feeding relationships because they don’t fit neatly into a single trophic level. While they remove ticks from grazing animals and act as “cleaners”, they also feed on blood and other host-derived resources, meaning the relationship can shift between mutualism and parasitism. This makes them a nice, real-world case study for the complexity of food webs.

A final highlight of this day was seeing the many Cattle Egret. This is a species I am familiar with, seeing various flocks locally to Oxford, as well as a flock that frequent The Boathouse in Cornwall where I have spent a few days in the last two Autumns. However, my experience with them on this drive was very different given the fact that they were flocked close to a pair of mating Elephants!

​Monday 6th April was our final day at Kiambi. We took another morning boat trip which supplied a few more new species for the trip list (as well as lifers for me). This included an African Darter and the aptly named Cut-throat. A highlight were some nice views of a Malachite Kingfisher, which was both the smallest and most delicate kingfisher species seen so far, as well as being most similar to the species I am used to seeing in the UK, as well as a Little Heron​.

Little Heron

​We left Kiambi and proceeded on the long drive to Lake Kariba, where we had a fantastic 2 nights aboard a houseboat. The lake itself is man-made, created in the late 1950s when the Zambezi River was dammed to form the Kariba Dam, at the time one of the largest engineering projects in the world. Today, the dam remains a crucial source of hydroelectric power, supplying around a third of Zambia’s electricity.

Sunset over Lake Kariba

The change in habitat brought a change in species, with my first sightings of White-winged Black Tern and Grey-hooded Gull. The latter of these is the only regular gull species in Zambia, which is funny as I consider gulls to be one of the more numerous taxa of bird in the UK , and it wasn’t long ago that I was in Niagara Falls, often cited as one of the best inland locations for gull diversity, where double-digit species can be seen in a single visit. Lake Kariba was also the place to be for African Fish Eagle, where I counted 12 individuals along our ride from Siavonga to Lotri Bay.

​We docked on a very small island near Lotri Bay and spent the evening and following morning around this area. Though of course very different to the UK, it struck me as functioning in a surprisingly similar way to islands like the Isles of Scilly, where I’ve spent a lot of time birding. Small patches of land acting as natural stopover points, concentrating a high diversity of birds as they cross large expanses of water and pause to refuel. Species highlights from this area included Tawny-flanked Prinia, Lilac-breasted Roller, Trumpeter Hornbill, Reed Cormorant, Black-collared Barbet, Rattling Cisticola, White-bellied Sunbird, Southern Red Bishop, Red-winged Starling, Brown-necked Parrot (which took a while to pin down even though the calls were heard a number of times) and a wonderful Red-chested Cuckoo.

Wednesday 8th April was my birthday, which started with a drive back from Siavonga at Lake Kariba towards Lusaka (during which we had brief views of a Black-winged Kite). We had lunch at the Lilayi Lodge, a private reserve where we were treated to a Swainson’s Spurfowl, African Golden Oriole and a flock of White-crested Helmetshrike.

White-crested Helmetshrike

I left Zambia on 9th April, with one final addition to the trip list coming somewhat unexpectedly, a Cape Wagtail seen on the airfield during my layover in Johannesburg Airport (an understated end to a week that had been anything but!). The trip was without doubt the most intense period of birding I’ve experienced in terms of the number of new species encountered in such a short space of time. In total, I recorded 137 species, 116 of which were lifers. Full eBird trip report can be found here.