Want to know more about the Shoebill?
Imagine an enormous blue-grey bird, up to a metre and a half tall (60 inches) and armed with a massive, clog-shaped bill: the Shoebill Stork. Put it in a wild green landscape filled with antelope herds and their predators and you have the Bangweulu Wetlands, just part of a magical Zambian wildlife safari run by the highly experienced team at Robin Pope Safaris. The itinerary also takes in game viewing in the South Luangwa and Kasanka reserves and although the Shoebill is often the key sighting, this is a chance to see an extraordinary diversity of wildlife.
There’s only one scheduled trip a year – enquire now to avoid disappointment.
Want to know more about the Shoebill?
The only living species in its family, the Shoebill is one of the world’s most sought-after birds.
In serious bird watching circles, the Shoebill Stork (Balaeniceps rex) is known as a ‘Mega Tick’ or even a ‘Lifer’, conveying the magnitude of such a sighting on one’s life list of recorded species. Birds like these are hard to find: they are rare – the Shoebill is listed as Endangered – and restricted to hard-to-reach places – in this case the remote Bangweulu Wetlands in northern Zambia.
Shoebills in their classic wetland habitat – great for other birds too.
But the reward is a view of one of nature’s strangest-looking birds: the colour of a battleship and stork-like in appearance but with a broad brush of the prehistoric. Its large shoe-shaped bill is used for grabbing catfish, frogs and water snakes and its broad wings carry it between hunting sites in the swamps.
There aren’t many left – fewer than 10 000 individuals in Africa – but they are protected in Bangweulu and their numbers are increasing there, thanks to the interest they attract and the resulting economy built up around them. Another example, perhaps, of the power of making conservation profitable for all role players.
