Kasanka Fruit Bat Migration Safari

Overview

For six weeks a year, one small patch of swamp forest in central Zambia holds the largest mammal gathering on the planet — around ten million straw-coloured fruit bats, packed into a single square kilometre. This four-day trip puts you in the Fibwe hide at first light and in an open clearing at dusk, right under the river of wings as the colony pours out to feed. It is a spectacle almost nobody has heard of, and there is nothing else in Africa quite like it.

Kasanka National Park protects a patch of mushitu evergreen swamp forest where the bats roost each year from late October, drawn by the wild fruit that ripens with the first rains. The numbers peak through November, when the emergence at dusk and the return at dawn darken the sky for the better part of an hour. Beyond the bats, Kasanka is a gentle, watery park of sitatunga antelope — best watched from the Fibwe treehouse — puku, blue monkey, hippo and more than 470 recorded bird species. Raptors and fish eagles work the edge of the roost, picking bats from the air.