The Crowned Crane

By Maripet Koipa, Scout - Chada Katavi 

This is a very tall bird with long legs, and can be found in short grass areas, swampy areas and near rivers.  Crowned cranes are beautiful birds, very attractive to people.  They normally live in pairs.  They have a long, yellow crest.

I can see them every day if I leave the camp and search for them along the river, especially in dry season, when they like to stay near water to search for insect along the riverbanks.

It is the colours of this bird that make it so attractive, and which make it such a well-known bird.

Flowering meadows

By Gabriel Mushi, Guide Chada Katavi

This is not a thing someone expects to find on safari in the bush.  But it is exactly what you will find if you come to Katavi in January. 

Sometimes we stop the vehicle and spend long minutes looking at flowers so even for me being a guide this is a new experience like I’m one of the guests.  Except I know most of the names of the flowers now from studying them recently. 

The nice thing with flowers on safari is even when guests expected to see elephants and lions, a savanna with pink, yellow, white, orange, purple and red decorations is a great surprise.

One guest asked me if he could take a flower for his wife’s hair, and I was nervous because it is just a flower, but it is protected by the laws the same way a leopard’s skin or an elephant’s ivory.  When I explained this to them, they laughed because flowers are flowers and elephants are elephants, but we were able to drive away sparing the life of the flower, my job and their happiness.

This flower is a wild ginger.