A few years ago I posted several blogs under the title "The Good Old Days" which covered a number of rare birds seen in Sussex or the UK in the past. A number of birders informed me that they had enjoyed these blogs and asked if I would be publishing any more. Since then my time has been taken up with other matters, but now that I am in 12 weeks of look-down and other than work in the garden, we have no local birding sites to visit in Burgess Hill, and although I have done a number of sky-watching these have proved to be very unproductive.
I therefore decided to look at some of my birding trip reports, a number I haven't looked at for several years and the first one I looked at was the two trips Doreen and myself did to Kenya. In 1989 which was a private trip including a week on the coast at Malindi and the second trip in 1991 we decided to visit Northern Kenya near the Somali border which is a very dangerous area to visit. On checking the various Bird Tour companies we discovered Bird Quest had organised a full birding trip to covering the whole country to see how many species they could see in a single country. Luckily, we knew both of the leaders of this tour and it was agreed we could join the tour for the northern leg of the trip only, and that they had already arranged for an armed convoy to escort us in this area.
Doreen and myself had already drawn up a list of some of the must-seen species and although digital
photography hadn't arrived to Burgess Hill (at least not in my price range) I took my trusted Nikon SLR camera with my 300 mm lenses and 30 rolls of Kodak colour slide film. Looking at the trip report and my photographs it brought back so many happy memories in this terrible time with Covid 19 virus, I decided to transfer some of the report onto my blog which I hope others will enjoy as well.
Although we saw during the two trips many hundreds of new bird species and wild animals, I have just selected a small number of photographs with comments of some of our must-see-species on these two trips. I hope to publish a second blog on a further list of must-see species in Kenya very shortly.
Male Abyssinian Ground Thrush
Zoothera piaggiae
I have always been very keen on seeing new Thrushes especially with ones with Zoothera as part of their scientific name, this also includes Siberian Thrush and White's Thrush. The Abyssinian Thrush is an uncommon resident of forests between 2000 and 3300 m in Kenya and is also resident in other African countries. There are three species of Zoothera thrushes in Kenya and it tends to be solitary, shy and skulking bird and the chance of seeing one is very limited. When we were staying in a lodge on Mt. Kenya, we decided to get up early one morning and with Nigel Redman and we visited an area close by with large area of shrubs and thick bushes. We spent some time walking through this area when suddenly we all notice some movement low down in a thick bush and to our surprise it proved to be a male Abyssinian Ground Thrush. It spent several minutes near the outside of the bush allowing me to photograph it, before it moved into the thick bush and out of sight. We waited several minutes in the hope that it might show again but we failed to re-locate it. Returning to the lodge we were still in time for breakfast.
Winter plumage Caspian Plover
Charadrius asiaticus
We have twice before tried to see Caspian Plover, once at Eilat where we failed to see one, and the second was on Shetland which flew off before we left home, so we decided not to go, but it came back two days later and we would have therefore seen it if we had left on the original date.
In Kenya, they are widespread and locally abundant palearctic migrant chiefly on grasslands between August to April. On its northward passage, hundreds can be seen at Lake Turkana although generally scarce at other Rift Valley lakes.
So we had great hopes in seeing this must-see species and we found it on both of our Kenyan trips with a flock of 30 at Amboseli and 6 at the Masi Mara, and on our second trip we just saw 30 at the Masai Mara including a single bird in full summer plumage.
Camel train crossing the Dida-Galgalla Desert
Almost like something out of the bible.
View taken in the Dida-Galgalla Desert
now where do we look for Heuglin's Bustard.
Male Heuglin's Bustard
Female Heuglin's Bustard
One of our main reasons for travelling right up to Northern Kenya was to look for Heuglin's Bustard in the Dida-Galgalla Desert and in searching this difficult area we managed to locate three different Bustards. We had already seen most of the African Bustards in our first trip as well as a number of species of Bustards in South Africa so the Heuglin's Bustard was high on our list of must-see birds in Kenya but we knew they would be very difficult. Luckily, it wasn't too long before we picked out a pair of these magnificent Bustards, and by our driver carefully driving the vehicle with the light in our favour, managed to slowly manoeuvre the vehicle to be close enough for photography but not to flush the Bustards. To me this ranks as one of the best Bustards in the world, and was the best bird of our Kenya trips.
In Kenya, it is considered to be local and uncommon and is confined to the east side of Lake Turkana chiefly around the lava fields and thorn-bush northwest of Mt. Marsabit. It has also been recorded from Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Masked Lark
Spizocory reas
The Masked Lark with its heavy bill and the black mask around the eye. In the Dida-Galgalla Desert we found just a single bird which kept on the black lava type areas within the desert. Reasonably tame and they are locally common at 600-1400 m. in the N Kenyan deserts with little or no grass cover.
Although not on our list of must-seen Kenyan birds, I was still very pleased to obtain this species of Lark spending its time on the black lava type soil.
