Top 10 Night Safaris: When the (Wildlife) Freaks Come Out

Northern Cape, South Africa

Aardvarks and Black-Footed Cats

Seeing an aardvark on safari used to be regarded as roughly equivalent to seeing a unicorn. I’ve talked to people who have been on dozens of African wildlife trips and never seen one.

The online mammal watching community, which shares sightings of unusual critters around the world, has changed that. While the aardvark is still not easy to spot, there are places where it’s much less difficult. And one such place is the Northern Cape of South Africa.

In a country with famous parks like Kruger, the Northern Cape is often overlooked. But it too has excellent parks, including Mokala (which offers irregular night safaris). And then there’s the ranch with a cult following among serious mammal nerds: Marrick Safari camp near Kimberley.

Marrick may be the best place on earth to see an aardvark (we saw two over the course of four night safaris). It is also a great place to see black-footed cats, the rarest and most difficult to spot of southern and eastern Africa’s felines.

The list of elusive and/or rare nocturnal species you can spot here include bat-eared fox, aardwolf, Southern African hedgehog, Cape porcupine, long-eared mouse, common genet and Smith’s red rock hare.

We saw them all, and more.

No, your family and friends will have no idea why you’ve gone to the Northern Cape. But among mammal junkies, this place is spoken of with the kind of reverence usually reserved for the Sistine Chapel.

Northern Tropical Queensland, Australia

Marsupial Madness

Travel guides and cruise ship companies like to emphasize how difficult it is to see Australian wildlife. They’re wrong, on many levels — much of the country is one giant naturalist’s playground.

And that’s especially true if you go out at night.

Fortunately, Australian lodges and nature reserves have well-developed night safari programs. In Northern Tropical Queensland, it’s possible to observe platypus at dusk, then go to Chambers Wildlife Rainforest Lodge to see pademelons cavorting on the lodge lawns, then move to a night feeding station to watch sugar gliders, bandicoots and possums. And finish by taking a walk to see antechinus and giant long-tailed rats.

There’s tremendous diversity here. In a 90-minute walk on the private Warrigal Highland Rainforest Reserve, owned by birding guide Jonathan Munro, we saw three possum species – and that was a slow night. In other places, you can see a tree kangaroo, a striped possum or spectacled flying fox.

And in some camps, like the venerable Lions Den near Cookstown, you can sit on your deck enjoying a cold one while watching a parade of marsupials stroll by.

Aubrey Valley, Arizona

Return of the Black-footed Ferrets

Get your ferret kicks on Route 66.

The restoration of the black-footed ferret ­– an animal once feared extinct — is one of the great North American wildlife successes.

Arguably the best place to see that success is just outside Seligman, Arizona. Biologists love to have people interested in ferrets. In fact, one of the best opportunities to see them is during the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s annual spotlighting surveys. They need volunteers to run the program.

I visited a few years ago with mammal watcher extraordinaire Jon Hall during a wild road trip across the Southwest. About 10 minutes outside of Seligman, our spotlights picked up the telltale green eye-shine of the ferrets. We approached slowly, as area biologists had advised.

The ferrets were curious and climbed out of prairie dog holes to view us from about 5 feet away. Fantastic.

Kanha National Park

Giant Ox Alert

India’s reserves offer many wonderful opportunities to see nocturnal wildlife, but usually not in tiger reserves. That’s the case in Kanha, one of the most famous of these reserves.

But if you stay inside the national park at the budget Baghira Log Huts, just walking to the dining room in the evening is an adventure. The trail lights up with the eyes of sambar deer, Asian palm civets and wild boars.

And perhaps: a herd of gaur, the world’s largest bovine. A big male gaur can stand 10 feet tall and weigh 3,000 pounds. Seeing this wall of giant ox in your flashlight beam should give you pause — especially when you realize they can run faster than an Olympic sprinter.

Amazon Rainforest, Peru

Night Swimming?

I was lying on a wooden platform, waiting for a tapir to show up at a mineral lick. The mosquito net was suffocating, and I was soaked with sweat. Clothes-destroying sweat. The tapirs were not showing, perhaps because of how badly I stank. It dawned on me that this is not what most people would consider a fun vacation.

But I feel positively wimpy compared to biologist and author Vladimir Dinets, one of the world’s most accomplished wildlife watchers. He believes that to really do an Amazonian night safari, you have to swim rivers. He calls this “a comfortable and relatively safe way of getting around, and one of the best ways of seeing wildlife.”

Sure, the night trips run by lodges might turn up some interesting spiders, and even the occasional mammal.

But the Dinets swim expeditions seem to turn up the really cool stuff, day and night: bush dogs, harpy eagles, ocelots and tapirs.

I have no doubt of this. I also have no doubt I won’t be following him.

Pantanal, Brazil

Starry, Starry Eyes

During the day, the Pantanal is a birder’s bonanza and probably the best place to see a wild jaguar.

At night, the wildlife fun continues, with tapirs, small cat species, crab-eating foxes and giant anteaters. One of the world’s great wetlands, the Pantanal is traversed in the north via the Transpantaneira road. You’ll see critters all along its length, day or night.

Caimans are one of the most visible animals during the dry season, when they’re concentrated in small pools of water. At night, in the right spot, a spotlight will reveal enough caiman eyes to make you think you’re looking at star-filled sky instead.

Bat Caves, Worldwide

Flights of Millions

You don’t need a flashlight for this. Just show up at the entryway of a cave. (Please follow all rules to protect North American bats from white-nose syndrome).

There are good bat caves and roosts around the globe. You could even scope out a local barn or abandoned building.

At caves like Bracken and Frio in the Texas Hill Country, you can see 10 million or more Mexican free-tailed bats — one of the world’s great wildlife spectacles.

And whenever you have that many animals, you’ll also have others looking to feed on them. Depending on what cave you visit, look for raptors, giant frogs and snakes feasting on the bounty.

Sabah Rainforest, Malaysian Borneo

Flat-headed Cats and Clouded Leopards

This is one of my top dream destinations. It’s also one where you get the depressing feeling that it’s slipping away fast, as much of the forest is blitzed with palm oil plantations.

The reserves here are undoubtedly one of the most intriguing night safari destinations, with such unusual critters as binturong, slow loris and giant flying squirrels. Boats cruise the Kinabatang River at night in search of flat-headed cats, and new safaris are being offered focusing on one of the most elusive wild felines, the clouded leopard.

There’s even the remote chance of catching a glimpse of Sumatran rhinos — one of the world’s rarest large mammals. I wouldn’t count on it, but Vladimir Dinets managed to see one. Then again, he swims the Amazon.

Salt Licks, Kenya

Night Safaris in Luxury

If you don’t want to sweat in a night blind, or stumble around a rainforest, here’s a more luxurious option: stay in one of Kenya’s famous lodges built over salt licks.

These salt licks draw a variety of wildlife throughout the day and night. They are floodlit to allow easy viewing. You can even present the front desk with a list of animals you’d wish to be awakened should they show up during the night.

Lots of charismatic megafauna will show, including elephants, Cape buffalo and black rhinos. But you might get lucky and have great views of forest rarities like bongo and giant forest hog. Sign me up.

Your Backyard and Neighborhood

You don’t have to go on a far-away journey to enjoy a night safari. I’ve had some of my most memorable adventures on evening walks around the neighborhood, stumbling over skunks and once being charged by a red fox. On Halloween night, no less.

Just grab a flashlight and head outside. Scan the skies for bats at dusk, or enjoy an evening chorus of great-horned owls.

Catch fireflies. Set out a camera trap and see what wanders by. Head to a local park and look up for flying squirrels gliding between trees. Or watch underfoot for the sight of shrews and other tiny denizens. Listen for the reassuring peents of nighthawks.

As Richard Conniff says, the best wildlife watching is the wildlife where you are. When the sun goes down, adventures await — get out there and enjoy the night life.