22 January 2024: Day 4, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe — Road Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari. Click here to see (generally) where I am today.

Today we fly north from Johannesburg to the town of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, a distance of 574 miles (925 km) — about the same as Atlanta to Pittsburgh. I’m looking forward to my first sight of Victoria Falls, a Wonder of the Natural World.

Locally called Mosi-oa-Tunya [MOsee O TOONya] , “The Smoke That Thunders” is well named in the Sotho language. Its thundering noise can be heard 25 miles away while its mist rises to 1,300 feet. When David Livingstone was scouting the Zambezi River in 1855, looking for a trade route to the sea, guides helped him get to an island near the cliff edge where he looked down on the cascade and named it for Queen Victoria — Victoria Falls.

While it is neither the highest nor the widest waterfall in the world, the Victoria Falls is classified as the largest, based on its combined width of 1,708 metres (5,604 ft [more than a mile]) and height of 108 metres (354 ft), resulting in the world’s largest sheet of falling water. The Victoria Falls are roughly twice the height of North America’s Niagara Falls and well over twice its width.

— Wikipedia: Victoria Falls

Before I saw an aerial photo of the falls I thought its entire span could be viewed from a distance as we do at Niagara Falls, but it’s impossible to see the complete sheet of water from the ground because Victoria Falls plunges into a crack!

This is due to its unusual geology, illustrated on this National Park marker in Zimbabwe. Take a look and I’ll summarize it below. (I have divided it into two pieces so it is readable.)

The origin of Victoria Falls began in the Late Jurassic during the time of the dinosaurs.

• 150 million years ago a volcano erupted and poured a lake of lava at the site of Victoria Falls. The lava hardened into basalt rock. The rock cooled and cracked into fault lines.
• Sand blew in and deeply filled the faults and covered the basalt. The Zambezi River was far away as it flowed south to join the Limpopo.
• 5 million years ago the south land in present day Botswana rose up and divided the Zambezi River from the Limpopo, forcing the Zambezi to go east.
• The Zambezi eroded the sandy surface and flowed widely over the basalt. When it found a fault it fell into the crack as a waterfall.
• The river is wide on the flat basalt then zigzags after the falls as it follows the fault lines, as seen in this photo from the International Space Station.

• The present day waterfall is the 8th location since the falls began. Erosion continues up the watershed. A marked up map below shows the first seven falls in yellow, the current waterfall in blue, and two future fall locations in pink.

The big question as I write this article a month ahead of time is this: How much water will be coming over the falls? October to March is the wet season so the river should be running high. However this is an El Niño year and one of its global effects is to lower rainfall in this part of Africa. So we shall see …

Five years ago the dry season in 2019 was so severe that the falls slowed to a trickle.

21 January 2024: Day 3, Marievale Bird Sanctuary — Road Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari. Click here to see (generally) where I am today.

Today we’re birding at Marievale Bird Sanctuary southeast of Johannesburg. In the third week of January it’s mid-summer in South Africa, similar to July in the U.S.

Many of the birds at Marievale are similar to those in Florida. For instance, the African spoonbill pictured above resembles our roseate spoonbill. (I prefer the roseate spoonbill because it is beautiful pink.)

There are also several species that are native in both places: fulvous whistling duck, common moorhen, cattle egret, great egret, glossy ibis, barn swallow and peregrine falcon. At Marievale not every bird is a Life Bird for me.

See Marievale’s birds in the 8-minute video below and you, too, may conclude that South African marsh birds are the same as Florida’s and yet they are different. After the video I’ve provided a table with the names of similar North American species.

List of Birds in the Marievale video above and their familiars in North America.

(credits are in the captions)

20 January 2024: Day 2, Arrive in Johannesburg, South Africa — Road Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari. Click here to see (generally) where I am today.

Barring something unexpected, I’ll arrive in Johannesburg today at 4:05pm South Africa time (9:05am Pittsburgh time). I’m sure to see a Life Bird right off the bat, even from the airplane window. There are a handful of birds at the airport that I’ve already seen — rock pigeons, cattle egrets, common mynas (seen in Hawaii) and house sparrows — but all the rest are new to me. Crossing an ocean and changing hemispheres guarantees that nearly every bird is a Life Bird.

O.R. Tambo International Airport is an eBird hotspot, perhaps because so many (compulsive?) birders pass through here. Here are five birds that everyone sees at the airport — birds of the Old World, not the New World, so even if they resemble a North American bird they’re not in the same genus.

Laughing doves (Spilopelia senegalensis) resemble mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) but their throats are fancier when they puff them in courtship. Instead of mourning they laugh.

Little swifts (Apus affinis) are similar to our chimney swifts (Chaetura pelagica) though slightly smaller with white throats and rumps. The white features are not easy to see against the sky.

You can tell that the pied crow (Corvus albus) is a crow but he looks mighty different. He wears a white vest and is heavier then our American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos).

We don’t have the southern masked weaver (Ploceus velatus) in North America. His beauty and size put the house sparrow to shame.

House sparrows were imported to South Africa just as they were to North America. Why did someone bother to bring in house sparrows when South Africa has a more beautiful native — the Cape sparrow (Passer melanurus) also called “mossie.”

By the time I’m on the road to the hotel I’ll have seen at least five Life Birds.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)

19 January 2024: Day 1, Fly to Johannesburg, South Africa — Road Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari

Today I’m on my way to Road Scholar’s Southern Africa Birding Safari: From Zimbabwe to Zambia & Beyond. The tour begins tomorrow in Johannesburg, South Africa but it will take me 24 hours to get there.

Africa is huge — more than three times the size of the continental U.S. — so we will see only a small part of it. For most of the trip we’ll be inside the red circle (below) in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana. All four countries meet at the only international quadripoint in the world, the Four Corners of Africa.

After Johannesburg we will fly to Victoria Falls to begin our regional tour of birding hotspots and national parks in safari vehicles, by boat and occasionally on foot. Late January is the rainy season and the height of summer with highs as much as 100°F and lows in the 60s.

We hope to see the Big 5 mammals at Hwange, Chobe and Mosi-Oa-Tunya National Parks — elephant, lion, leopard, Cape buffalo and rhinoceros — plus assorted other critters on our travels. Here a just a few from my Wish List.

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We’ll also see birds! Up to 400 species and nearly all of them Life Birds. Most are unique to Africa. Some have migrated from Europe or Asia to spend the winter. I hope to see the endangered gray-crowned crane (Balearica regulorum), at top, and the birds in this slideshow below plus many more.

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Because of the 7-hour time zone difference and the on-the-go birding schedule I’ve written all 15 days of articles in advance. I’ll post to Facebook and X (Twitter) when I get a chance but I can’t guarantee it. If you don’t see me on social media, look for my latest posts here on the blog’s home page.

For the next two+ weeks I’ll be mostly off the grid.

UPDATE on 2 Feb: The only bird in the slideshow that I did not see was the white stork.

(photo and maps from Wikimedia Commons and Road Scholar. Click on the captions to see the originals.)