The Bats of Kasanka NP

I had a brief but exciting outing this week to Kasanka National Park, a seven hour drive (supposed to be 5, but I’m not that fast on these roads…) north and east of Lusaka. This is a small park formed in the 1970’s, whose wildlife population is not high, but gradually increasing after significant poaching ended with the introduction of private management by a non-profit trust starting in the 1980’s. The park is known, however, for two special features: 1. a regular herd of the rare sitatunga antelope, and 2. a large migratory colony of straw colored fruit bats which come to the park for about 6 weeks every year. I had a great time, and as you can see had a hard time choosing which pictures to share with you.

I left Lusaka on Tuesday morning and met up along the way with some VSO volunteers I know and their out of town guests. We arrived at one of the two small lodges in the park just after dark and watched bats flying over head. The next day was spent on a long game drive including a day time view of the bats in their favorite grove of trees (see pics), some lovely views of fields with termite mounds and puku (see pictures), various birds, and a brief glimpse of some sitatunga (sorry no good pics). After a lunch break at the other lodge in the park and an attempt at a canoe outing (hard rain foiled 2 attempts), we headed back to see the bats again. On the way we had a great view of a python crossing the road. At about 3 meters long the guide said this one wasn’t too big, but even so we all (including the guide) were impressed. We were also impressed by the beautiful site of all the bats rising into the sky at sunset to go search for fruit.

Our guide said that although the bats are hard to count, the current estimate of the colony size is 15 million bats! The individual bats can reportedly have wingspans up to 1 meter in length, but from our distance they didn’t seem that big (maybe half a meter?). They enjoy roosting in a rare evergreen woodland found at the park and eating the variety of fruit also found in the area, and then after about a 6 week visit they head off to somewhere in the DR Congo. Their travel route is not well understood, but they seem to be attracting more attention lately by researchers and the public. While we were there, the lodge guests included some folks working on a BBC documentary.