Experience Highlights
- Duration: 3 hours (flexible)
During your stay in Berenty Private Reserve, you will be taken for three scheduled activities per day: after breakfast at the lodge, set out with your guide on a morning walk, to make the most of the dawn chorus. As trails are broad and well maintained, over flat ground, walking is graded as 'easy'. Excursions take 2 - 4 hours to complete, depending on how in-depth you wish to study the resident wildlife.
You should quite easily spot birds such as Crested and Giant couas, Lesser vasa parrot, Madagascar turtle dove, Madagascar hoopoe, Madagascar paradise flycatcher and vangas including Sickle-billed, Hook-billed and Chabert vanga, among many other birds. The reserve's lemurs are generally easily seen - Ringtails are bold and freely move about the lodge grounds, and the Verreaux's sifakas are very well habituated. You can also see Brown lemurs, which tend to keep more to the galllery woods. There is a roost of the Madagascar flying fox (fruit bat) in the reserve.
After lunch, you can make an afternoon walk, during which you can enjoy more quality wildlife sightings and also, take memorable photos. Finally, after dark, your guide can take you on a night walk during which you can seek the reserve's nocturnal inhabitants: key species include the White-footed sportive lemur, Grey mouse lemur, Greater hedgehog tenrec and birds such as Madagascar white-browed owl, Madagascar scops owl and Madagascar nightjar. Very distinctic invertebrates which visitors enjoy seeing are Madagascar hissing cockroach and Flattid leaf bugs.
Derek Schuurman
Travel Specialist