Small moments often have more enduring impact than big sights
By Mike Unwin
Sometimes the story you’re hoping for is not the one you end up with. Nature sets its own agenda. On one memorable morning walk in Kafue, Zambia, my anticipation of something big was hijacked by something much smaller — but which has loomed large in my imagination ever since.
All night, we’d heard elephants crashing and trumpeting from across the river. Soon after dawn we were on their trail, charting our course by broken branches, fresh dung and dinner-plate footprints. Our guide strode ahead, rifle over shoulder, as we filed through the bush. Senses were on high alert. Nobody spoke. The only sound was the crunch of mopane leaves underfoot and the twittering of some small bird.
The twittering grew steadily more insistent. Soon it was un-ignorable. From the flash of white outer tail feathers, I recognised its source as a greater honeyguide, but I hadn’t heard this particular call before. Frenetic, incessant, like a child’s wind-up toy. And the way the bird flitted from tree to tree, always a few metres ahead but never leaving our sight, seemed peculiar. Almost as though it wanted us to follow.
We reached a fork in the path. The honeyguide flew to the left, but our guide, still following the pachyderm prints, turned right. Our feathered friend was not happy. It reappeared in front of us, hopping from branch to branch in shrill outrage.
And then it dawned on me. Of course! The honeyguide was performing its celebrated party trick: it had found a bees’ nest and wanted us to follow. I’d often read about this but never actually seen it happen. Could we check it out? The group held a brief confab and, yes, we would leave the elephants for now and follow the bird.
So we returned to the fork and took a left. Our diminutive pied piper led us to a clearing, where a statuesque baobab thrust its gnarled limbs at the sky. The chirping stopped. The bird had flown up into the branches and fallen silent. And in the silence, we could hear another noise: a soporific hum, coming from the tree itself.
Cue a quick scan with binoculars and — sure enough — bees were swarming like smoke around a hole in the trunk. So it’s true, I thought. This really happens.
I knew the deal. We were now expected to climb the tree and extract the honeycomb, using smoke to dull the fury of the bees. Once we’d taken away our spoils, the bird would feast on the beeswax and larvae we’d left behind. A human-avian win-win.
Today, however, the honeyguide would be disappointed. It had picked the wrong bunch of volunteers. Soon we were on our way once more, a stream of twittering abuse ringing in our ears as we marvelled at the miracles of nature.
Around the campfire
Mike set out that morning hoping to find elephants. Instead, he found a honeyguide. And somehow, years later, it’s the bird he still talks about.
It made us wonder… What’s the smallest moment from your travels in Africa that has stayed with you the longest? Perhaps it wasn’t a lion or a hyena. Maybe it was a bird. A conversation with a guide, or an elephant’s rumble. The smell of coffee before dawn. A honey badger’s footprint in the sand. Or simply sitting somewhere beautiful with nowhere else to be…
Let us know. We’d love to hear your story, and with your permission we may share some of our favourites in a future Shamwari, or in the magazine itself.
