he bird was an afterthought, an anticlimax. A quite small shorebird just standing by itself at the muddy edge of a watering hole. It was a three-banded plover, Thinornis tricollaris, funny-looking, red-eyed and bleary, as if sleep-deprived. Which, come to think of it, I was too. I was wrapping up an intense 10+ days of birding, general nature study, and cultural immersion in the Kavango–Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA, or KAZA for short). More on KAZA at the end.
Anyhow, to the extent that I was tired, it was a “good tired,” as they say. And it wasn’t physical exhaustion per se, but, rather, more along the lines of having been emotionally overwhelmed. It was starting to sink in for me that I had just experienced the most intense several hours of nature study in my whole entire life. And we hadn’t yet even had breakfast.
The day had started, as per usual for us, at the break of dawn, with an African scops-owl singing from camp and a freckled nightjar still going off at the edge of the woods just beyond. A Verreaux’s eagle-owl got a few last words in, and one of the pearl-spotted owlets would soon put in an appearance. And other crepuscular birds: bronze-winged courser, double-banded sandgrouse, and the resident kori bustard. But it was time to get on the road.
The jaunt over to the watering hole wasn’t far, and the dirt tracks are decent and the vehicles more than adequate at Hwange National Park. But we were easily distracted, Sarah, Angus, Ophious, and I. At one point, we scored the fantastic hattrick of scimitarbill, African hoopoe, and green woodhoopoe, exemplary representatives of the clade Upupi. All around, there were Tockus hornbills, relatives of the Upupi: African gray hornbill, southern yellow-billed hornbill, and northern red-billed hornbill.
Birds weren’t the only distractions. We saw rainbow skinks, two species of plated lizards, a colony of bush hyraxes, petrified wood (how do you iNat that?), and my personal fave in the NAO (“non-avian organisms”) category: monstrous brown armored corn crickets, Acanthoplus discoidalis, marauding about in the wheel ruts of the two-track. They were like miniature AT-ATs. We hopped out to take a look, and Ophious quickly got real interested in some pawprints in the sand. They were very recent, and Ophious suspected that something was afoot. Moments later it all went down.
A cheetah burst in front of us. I will never forget that very instant in spacetime. The animal was going at full speed, almost perfectly horizontal at maximum stride length. I will never forget the storm of dust, the powerful snarl, and, most of all, the impossible speed. A stride or two behind, two more cheetahs. In no time at all, they had taken down a roan antelope, in a maelstrom of dust and snarling and horrific squealing.
The drama was just getting started. A lioness, and then another, popped up from the tall grass directly opposite, and the cheetahs abandoned the kill. The lionesses quickly dragged the carcass under a tree to prevent the vultures from seeing it, and then they inexplicably, to me anyhow, went away. In their absence, a magnificent black-backed jackal inspected the carcass, whilst bateleurs and tawny eagles came in low for a close look. Meanwhile, something was up in the thicket just beyond. Lion cubs! So that’s why the lionesses had withdrawn—to go get the whole family. And, never one to let an iNat lifer get away, I made due note of an impressive jumping spider, Hyllus treleaveni, on the frame of our vehicle.
We weren’t done yet.
A stone’s throw from the site of the roan takedown was a classic African oasis: a bit of water, a sliver of shoreline, and patchy vegetation just beyond. By itself, not much. But the oasis wasn’t by itself. The wildlife there was staggeringly diverse.
A troupe of chacma baboons were messing around the water’s edge. Farther back, a pair of southern giraffes poked their long necks above the tall shrubs. Still farther back, a memory of African savanna elephants. And right in front of us: a marvelous Nile crocodile. Not only that, but a bird actually on the crocodile: a whiskered tern. Also in the immediate vicinity: spur-winged geese and blue-billed teal; a sacred ibis and a striated heron; and shorebirds. As to the shorebirds, there were species typical of the region like water thick-knee, blacksmith lapwing, African Jacana, etc. But it was also cool—not gonna lie, it was extra-special—to see migrants from much farther north: Marsh and wood sandpipers, ruff, common greenshank, little stint, etc. And the landbirds in the “bush” ringing the oasis—where to even start? Iconic lilac-breasted rollers and raucous arrow-marked babblers; strange and wonderful gray go-away-birds; yellow-billed oxpeckers riding a giraffe and tawny-flanked prinias pounding out their sharp songs; snazzy magpie shrikes, white-winged widowbirds, and fork-tailed drongos; parti-colored Meves’s and dazzling violet-backed starlings; and absolutely ridiculous long-tailed paradise whydahs.
And returning to the mudflat, on the near side of the crocodile, and walking conveniently closer and closer: a quite small shorebird, funny-looking, red-eyed and bleary, as if sleep-deprived. Nobody will ever be accused of calling the three-banded plover of being as iconic as the lilac-breasted roller, as blisteringly fast as a cheetah, or as blazingly beautiful as a violet backed starling. But the bird was beautiful in its own way, as interesting and “worthy,” whatever that means, of anything else out there. I was “in the present moment” with the plover, mindful and engaged and, more than anything else, grateful.
It was time for breakfast. 
For more on KAZA . . .
Stay tuned for additional content in ABA publications. My editor’s note in the July 2025 Birding provides a brief overview of the overall philosophy of this ambitious and imaginative multinational initiative. A longer article, appearing in the Oct. 2025 Birding “Travel Special,” will go into detail on the rewards and challenges of birding in a region in which ecoregional limits are not well reflected in political boundaries. And to whet your appetite, check out this eBird Trip Report for my entire visit to four countries in the KAZA region: ebird.org/tripreport/347021.
Ted Floyd is the longtime Editor of Birding magazine, and he is broadly involved in other programs and initiatives with the ABA. Ted has written 200+ magazine articles and 5 books, including How to Know the Birds (National Geographic, 2019). He is a frequent speaker at birding festivals and has served on several nonprofit boards. Join Ted here for his semimonthly spot, “How to Know the Birds,” celebrating common birds and the uncommonly interesting things they do.
