The varied habitat leads to good birdwatching, and my explorations of the Boro River area from here were excellent. Old favourites spotted included saddle-billed storks, knob-billed ducks, night herons, long-toed plovers and spurwing geese. Very large flocks of red-winged pratincoles were congregating on the exposed sandbanks, where the grass had been cropped short thanks to the grazing lechwe. May witnesses the biggest pratincole colonies here, which first appear as the Boro River begins to rise. Before that, while the sandbanks are exposed, you’ll sometimes find African skimmers around.
In the area’s drier grasslands black-bellied khorans were highly visible, with their eye-catching courtship displays. The wild sage areas here are often burnt and, immediately after this, wattled cranes arrive in numbers to dig up snails and other creatures that are exposed by fires.
Raptors which are frequently seen here include various vultures; bateleur, fish and tawny eagles, and the occasional martial eagle. The opportunist yellow-billed kites and steppe eagles usually start arriving for the summer in late August, and whilst the smaller raptors are more scarce, black-shouldered kites are often spotted (and easily recognised because they hover in mid-flight).