I had been in the Luangwa Valley just before the end of the dry season. A couple of months later I was back, just as the wet season was finding its stride – and it was a valley transformed. The earth and the grass were no longer lion-coloured: everything was green. Some places – green sward and mature trees –were so like an English park that I expected to round the next corner and find a bandstand and an ice cream van.

I’d have known the alteration with my eyes closed. The air was filled with the calls of cuckoos. A cuckoo has one idea for a call: very loud and very simple. The idea is to attract a female from distance, do the deed and move on; cuckoos don’t go in for domestic life.

We took tea under a tree in which a red-chested cuckoo sang out at terrific volume, somehow invisible in the vegetation: three ear-splitting notes. Emerald and black cuckoos were also hard at it, all different calls – no point in attracting the wrong species – each one equally capable of filling the bush with their din.

But the woodland kingfishers were even louder. They fly in with the rain and set up territories with ringing calls, a violent trill that slips down the scale again and again. And there was one displaying, spreading out his wings in an imploring gesture to show his mate-worthiness.

Sometimes these displays by a male bird look cocksure and arrogant, as if to tell the female: lucky you, to have me in your world. The striped kingfisher, to my human eyes, looked curiously humble as he displayed: here I am, it’s the best I can do, hope it’s enough. I suppose making a nest together is out of the question…

We moved on and there, in a classic coup de savane,  Mufuwe Lodge has set up a bush breakfast for 50 in the middle of the wilderness. As we ate we were surrounded by European swifts: they had flown all the way by themselves and seemed as pleased to be here as we were.

• I was travelling with Wildlife Worldwide. More trips https://wildlifeworldwide.cmail20.com/t/y-e-xididdd-thukydkiuh-r/