The birds…

After Kapamba, I stayed at Zungulila in South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, from 1 to 5 August. This was the last stop on my tour and, according to the website, it was supposed to be ‘a remote, classic tented safari camp that delivers an authentic safari experience in eminently peaceful surrounds’.

I’m not sure there’s much difference between a ‘remote, classic tented safari camp’ (Zungulila) and a ‘remote and romantic camp’ (Kapamba), but what do I know…?!

Anyway, Zungulila was pretty similar to all the other bush camps. I did see a leopard and a small pack of African wild dogs crossing the river, but there was generally very little wildlife around, so I had to rely on the malachite kingfishers again.

My last remaining challenge was to photograph one of them exploding out of the water with a fish in its mouth. Let’s see if I could do it…

The Camp

Misheck drove me the short distance to Zungulila, which The camp consisted of a main area with colonial-style seating and décor, a boma (or circle of seats around a firepit) and four Meru-style tents that looked very similar to wooden chalets.

Alec Zulu (or ‘AZ’) took me round the main area (without showing me where the power socket was!), and Foster showed me my tent. It was a spacious double room that had two sofas and a separate toilet and bathroom with two showers and a free-standing bath. I was glad the tent had proper walls as it made it a bit warmer. However, there was still no air conditioning, and what is it with safari lodges and scatter cushions…?! There were 12 in my room…

It would’ve been nice to take advantage of the facilities and have a ‘bush bath’, for example, but I can’t do any of those things when I’m working 16 hours a day! I’m either eating, sleeping, photographing the wildlife or rating my pictures, so I don’t have much time for R&R…

Finally, there was no Wi-Fi again, which meant I sometimes struggled to amuse myself. I had a playlist of 253 of my favourite songs lasting 17 hours and three minutes, and I must’ve listened to them all at least three times!

The only good thing about it was that I could finish rating and naming all my pictures. Once I’d done that, I started inventing headlines for my old four-star files just to pass the time. There’s not much you can do with no Wi-Fi…

Daily Routine

The daily routine at Zungulila was similar to what I’d found at all the other bush camps. I could’ve done a bit of yoga on the mat provided, but I couldn’t get beyond Downward Dog…!

• 0545 Breakfast in the boma

• 0600 Morning game drive with AZ (and sometimes Misheck) in the Land Rover

• 1100-1200 Brunch in the main area

• 1530-1600 High tea in the main area

• 1600-1830 Afternoon game drive with AZ and Mischek or Elijah

• 2000-2100 Dinner in the main area (on my last night with Julie and Hank)

On my last day, Steve drove me to Mfuwe Lodge with Benson and George. He managed the journey in only two hours. Result!

I had a layover of a couple of hours at the lodge before getting my transfer to Mfuwe Airport, where I was due to start my journey back to London.

The Wi-Fi router at the lodge needed rebooting, but I could then do most of my online chores—except download all the Telegraph editions for the previous two weeks. For some reason, each one disappeared as soon as I’d downloaded it!

In Africa, nothing’s ever easy…

Food and Drink

The food at Zungulila was slightly better than I expected. One day, AZ and I had lunch together, and I liked the beef kofte, mushroom tarts and the sauce for the dessert—although it was chopped apples again!

During one game drive, we had the same bacon rolls I’d liked so much before, and for high tea one afternoon, I had a delicious cinnamon pancake that Alec said he’d recommended to the chef. He offered me another one, but I resisted the temptation…!

We also had brunch in the bush one morning. They tried to force me to make my own pizza, which was the last thing I wanted to do, but my meat feast with bacon and chorizo was pretty good. And they brought my usual Coke, and there was ice cream and chocolate sauce to follow!

Yes, the food was definitely better than in the other bush camps—but not quite as good as at Chikunto…

Staff

I got along pretty well with the staff at Zungulila, and Alec’s heart was certainly in the right place. When he asked me what I wanted for breakfast, I told him either fruit or scrambled eggs on toast, but he said he’d prepare both so I had a choice. That was nice.

However, there was still the usual lack of attention to detail I’d noticed at all the other Mfuwe bush camps:

• There was an annoyingly long walk from the car park to the main area.

• I was forced to have lunch with AZ—even though we had nothing to talk about really.

• The path to the main area wasn’t lit by lanterns on the first night.

• The wooden planks in the toilet still had the dealer’s mark on them (York N5).

• The toilet seat lid had a couple of bits missing.

• Everyone left the toilet seat lid up.

• On my first night, there was no hot water bottle in my bed.

• One morning, Alec made me two slices of toast even though I’d only asked for one.

• Alec made my first gin and tonic with soda water by mistake.

• Foster had an odd habit of saying ‘You’re supposed to…” rather than “You can…”

• The sheet, blanket and duvet didn’t reach the same point at the head of the bed.

• The duvet had a bizarre concertina fold that meant you had to reach underneath to pull the top edge all the way up!

Guests

The only guests I saw in camp were a nice American couple called Julie and Hank, who arrived for lunch the day before I departed. Julie was interested in photography, but we ended up talking mostly about her charity work providing sanitary pads to women in Zimbabwe!

Later on, I sat down to dinner with them (although I didn’t eat anything myself), and we mostly talked about politics. I remember thinking it was very rare to see two Republicans on safari…

Wildlife photography

When it came to wildlife sightings at Zungulila, it was either feast or famine. My evening game drives turned into extended sundowners, and on one occasion, I didn’t take a single photo!

On the other hand, I did have a couple of good leopard and African wild dog sightings. I saw a male leopard lying in wait for a warthog coming out of its burrow. After a few minutes, it gave up and walked down to the river, lying down in the open for a while before crossing the causeway and disappearing on the other side. That allowed me to take the shot at the top of this article and a couple more.

The next day, I saw a small pack of African wild dogs cross the river. That was a nice bonus—and this time the sun was in just the right place for one of them.

When there were no animals to photograph, I had to make do with the birds at the middle crossing on the Kapamba river. I was getting to know them pretty well by now!

I’d taken plenty of portraits and pictures of malachite kingfishers taking off and landing on the bamboo marker posts, but what I really wanted were shots of one flying up out of the river—hopefully with a fish in its mouth!

Here are a couple of examples of the portraits:

As you can see, the background is far enough away that there are no distractions, but I wanted to show a little bit of definition, so I narrowed the aperture to f/8 and f/11 for these shots. Otherwise, it would’ve been a complete blur.

The next stage was to capture the birds taking off and landing. I mostly saw malachite kingfishers, but there was one pied kingfisher and one white-fronted bee-eater as well. I had to spend huge amounts of time hunched over my camera, resting the lens on the dashboard and making sure the bird was in the right place in the viewfinder.

I wanted it looking into the frame, so I constantly had to ‘follow the beak’ and reposition the bird in the top right or left corner so that I was ready whenever it decided to take off after a fish.

My last task was to photograph the malachite kingfisher flying up out of the river with a fish in its mouth.

It was a real challenge to get sharp, well-composed images—even using pre-release capture on my Nikon Z8. The main problem was that I couldn’t park close to the bird and get both the top of the post and the water in my viewfinder if I used my 600mm lens.

After a few attempts, I gave up. I was either missing the bird entirely as it flew down to the water, or it was out of focus. At that point, I decided to switch to my Sony ⍺1 with the 70-200mm lens.

The wider angle of the zoom range meant that I didn’t have to move my camera much, if at all, when the bird dived into the water. I could focus on it when it perched on top of the post and, by putting it in the top left- or top right-hand corner, I could leave enough space for it to fly into.

I started out at 1/3200 and f/13, which agave me an ISO of 5000 as it was so dark. Later on, I was desperate enough to push it to 1/5000 and f/16! Once I’d taken a couple of good shots, I dialled back the shutter speed to 1/4000 and the aperture to f/10.

The next problem was that it was no good having the bird catching prey in the very corner of the frame as that would mean I’d have to crop in very tightly, so I had to move the camera to follow the bird more than I thought. 

To do that, the optimal focal length was just over 100mm (see below), and it was great to be able to ‘work the problem’ and end up with decent results.

In the end, I switched back to the Z8 but parked 10 yards further away. That gave me the benefit of pre-release capture and also enabled me to keep both the bird and the surface of the water in the frame. That was how I captured my favourite shot of the malachite kingfisher (see Wing Beat above).

Finally, I remembered to take a video! It worked out well as the malachite kingfisher caught a fish and even returned to its perch!

It’s always nice editing my images when I’ve had a good morning. I was excited to see what I had, and when I got back to camp, I must’ve worked for over an hour before I needed to take a break. I didn’t get any five-star shots, but there were a couple of malachite kingfisher images that merited four stars—with a bit of luck!

While I was struggling with all these problems, I had a few other issues to deal with:

• The ⍺1 kept losing focus–even when I was only five or 10 yards away and the green square was still showing over the eye!

• I exhausted the battery on my ⍺1—but I hadn’t bothered to bring a spare.

• For some reason, the embedded preview was much sharper and had warmer colours than the edited version of my Z8 files.

• I discovered my Z8 couldn’t go lower than 1/60 of a second in pre-release capture mode at 30 fps.

• The lowest shutter speed the Z8 could manage with blackout-free shooting was 1/8 of a second—which was pretty poor.

• The attachments for the strap were digging into my inner thighs, so I had to turn my camera 90° when it was between my legs. (It’s the little things…!)

• The volume button on my AirPods stopped working.

• My fingers and nails always take a beating on safari. I cut my left middle finger on the jeep, and I only realised when I accidentally got sun cream in the gash, which stung a bit. Meanwhile, the skin on my right middle finger became infected and wouldn’t heal properly.

• And I’d lost all my fingernails, obvs!

As AZ and I sat in the jeep together in the middle of the river, I was letting out my frustrations the whole time, swearing under my breath and crying out whenever something didn’t go to plan. However, AZ just waited patiently and didn’t seem to mind…

Verdict

My whole Zambia trip started badly but kept getting better as I started to take better shots. I didn’t see many African wild dogs or leopards, so I had to make a virtue of necessity, but I was content in the end.

I got used to the lack of good sightings, and I made the most of what I had. It turned out to be a great opportunity to test out the pre-release capture feature on my new Z8, and it was also a rare chance to see the malachite kingfisher. I’d only ever seen it a couple of times before, so being able to photograph it every single morning was a great blessing.

It just goes to show that Forrest Gump was right. A safari’s like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get…!

Species

Animals

African bush elephant 

African wild dog 

Cape buffalo 

Common warthog 

Common waterbuck

Crawshay’s zebra 

Greater kudu 

Hippopotamus 

Impala

Leopard 

Puku

Roan antelope 

Scrub hare

Spotted hyena 

Thornicroft’s giraffe

Tree squirrel 

Yellow baboon

Birds

African fish eagle 

African hoopoe 

Bateleur 

Black-winged stilt

Blue waxbill 

Brown snake eagle

Brown-hooded kingfisher 

Dark-capped bulbul

Emerald-spotted wood dove

Fork-tailed drongo 

Great egret 

Green-backed heron

Grey go-away-bird

Grey heron 

Hadada ibis

Helmeted guineafowl 

Lilac-breasted roller 

Lilian’s lovebird 

Little bee-eater 

Malachite kingfisher 

Marabou stork 

Meves’s starling

Pel’s fishing owl

Pied kingfisher 

Ring-necked dove 

Saddle-billed stork

Swainson’s spurfowl 

Trumpeter hornbill

Water thick-knee

White-crowned lapwing

White-fronted bee-eater 

Wire-tailed swallow 

Yellow-billed kite    

If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.

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