Happy birthday Jenny, a weekend glamping and visiting Lake Manyara National Park

With Jenny's birthday on Monday we booked into Africa Safari Glamping tented camp (-3.39396, 35.87662) near Mto Wa Mbu (Mosquito River) for the Saturday and Sunday nights leading up to it.  It's a new camp with a range of tents from basic to very nice.  We chose very nice.  It is situated in a dense stand of enormous Fever Trees.  Click here for info and photos.  Jenny enjoyed the pool and I was happy walking the grounds watching birds.  Each evening we had Slender-tailed Nightjars swooping around our tent - a new bird for me.

This fellow (and a rather large Cape Buffalo) kept us stuck in one spot for quite a while.  He only moved when the safari car came.  We were very aware how small our RAV4 is.

Immature Martial Eagle (photo by Jenny)

A pair of Hildebrandt's Francolin (female in front).

Banded Mongoose - always fun to watch Mongoose.

On Sunday we we up early and through the gate into Lake Manyara NP.  We drove purposefully the 33 km down to the Hot Springs board walk (-3.61759, 35.73864) and then more slowly back taking side loop tracks as we felt inclined.  The park was very busy and we had to wait behind safari cars on several occasions while their clients snapped photos of whatever with their camera phones.  A word of advice - if you are going to come all this way and spend a large sum of money on safaris - buy a decent camera and learn how to use it.

About 25 Safari vehicles at the Hot Springs picnic site with another dozen or so parked along the road out of shot.  Our  RAV4 is in there somewhere.

Yellow-billed Storks and some of the 480 African Spoonbills I counted at the springs.

A magnificent Saddle-billed Stork (this photo is not cropped!). Photo by Jenny.

Zebra in front of hundreds of Great White Pelicans with Lesser Flamingos further out.

Birds in the bush and at the lake were abundant.  I counted 480 African Spoonbills at the Hot Springs alone.  We also saw about 50 Silvery-cheeked Hornbills in a small area of forest where there must have been fruiting trees.  All up we saw 104 birds species plus many mammals.  A great day!

Long-toed Lapwing

Kittlitz's Plover chick

Hippos at Hippo Pool (with a couple of African Jacana)

Wood Sandpiper just arrived from northern Europe.

A birthday highlight for Jenny was her residence visa arriving on Monday.  She can stay until July 2021.  Now I just need mine!  My current tourist visa expires on October 1st - not far off.

Purple Heron

Egyptian Goose - often neglected because they are common but beautiful birds.

African Swamphen

We are planning the future months assuming my permits come through.  We have assorted friends arriving for various reasons (volunteering, studying, tourism) from now until January at least.  In some cases we will catch up with them for a few hours. In other cases we will join them on safari.  Life is good!

Arusha National Park visit

Lesser Flamingos - Jenny thought this would make a good jigsaw.

Arusha National Park is often left off the itinerary of visitors to Tanzania's National Parks.  Other parks have lions, cheetahs, rhinoceros, wildebeest, crocodiles.  Kilimanjaro has a higher mountain.  Arusha has small areas of open grassland, large areas of wetlands, woodland and forest and a huge dormant volcano looming over all.  It has a selection of large mammals - elephants, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, assorted antelope but mostly it has birds.  With 550 species recorded it has more than Tarangire and only a few less than Serengeti.  I have now seen 141 species in 5 visits - plenty of work to do still.

Hard not to photograph Little Bee-eaters.

A Rufous-naped Lark singing away (The have rufous napes in other parts of Africa!)

A Giraffe posing nicely.

It is a small park and you can drive most of it in a day.  Yesterday we decided to take a track we have avoided on previous visits in an effort to get up high.  Mostly we keep below 1600 m but there are a dozen or so bird species that only occur above about 2000 m so after a drive to the Momela Lakes we climbed to about 2200 m to a picnic ground.  The road kept going up but some people driving down said it deteriorated badly from that point on.  We possibly would have walked further up but earlier we had seen several buffalo way higher than we thought they would be.  Birding along the road and at the picnic ground produced some lifers - Abyssinian Thrush, Bar-tailed Trogon and Brown Woodland-Warbler along with other forest specialists such as Mountain Buzzard, Kenrick's Starling, Hartlaub's Turaco and Mountain Greenbul.

White-eyed Slaty Flycatcher

Brown-hooded Kingfisher

Otherwise we had a great day in the park.  It was quite busy with family groups enjoying the holiday and safari vehicles with foreign tourists but apart from a few places it was easy to get away from them all.

Giant Fig - according to the signboard you can drive an elephant-sized car through it.

Maio Waterfall above 2000 m.

Ancient Podocarps at Maio Waterfall.

Another highlight was a flock of 22 Maccoa Ducks on Small Momela Lake.  This is a close relative of the Australian Blue-billed Duck and is becoming increasingly rare.  Arusha NP is one of the few places it can be seen in any numbers - formerly in 1000s now not more than 100 at a time.

Maccoa Ducks (stiff, erect tails at the back) with Southern Pochard (at the front).

Snow and birdng at Kili Golf.

We woke last Saturday to light drizzle and when the skies cleared in the afternoon our mountain had a light dusting of snow.  It lasted through to Sunday.

Zooming in on the snow.

On Thursday (a public holiday) we went with our local birding friends James and Isaac to Kilimanjaro Golf Estate for a few hours of birding.  We met Englishman Alex Rees who lives nearby and he showed us a pond where we found at least six Greater Painted-snipe.  This species is probably not rare but is seldom seen because it usually hides in dense vegetation during the day and is active at night.  Unusually, the females take the dominant role and the males do all the incubating and chick rearing.  We suspect that breeding is about to begin because we saw some aggression between two females.

Sparring female Greater Painted-snipe

Alex had to leave us but we, plus two other late comers spent the next several hours wandering the acacia woodland and wetlands between the fairways.  We saw 74 species in all.  The Painted-snipe, Black-faced Waxbill and African Black Swift were all new for me in Tanzania.  Other highlights included Mourning Collared Dove, Namaqua Dove, Green Sandpiper, Pearl-spotted Owlet, African Hoopoe, Green Wood Hoopoe, Giant Kingfisher, Orange-breasted Bushshrike, Slate-coloured Boubou, Brubru, Black Cuckooshrike, Sombre Greenbul, Violet-backed Starling and Southern Citril.

Greater Painted-snipe (female)

Magpie Shrike

Pearl-spotted Owlet

A young Leopard Tortoise (one of the 'Little Five' along with the Elephant Shrew, the Buffalo Weaver, the Rhinoceros Beetle and the Antlion)

Little Grebe

Green Sandpiper

Long-tailed Fiscal

At home recently we have had much activity at the two birdbaths in front of our house.  Yesterday we had Red-eyed Dove, Speckled Mousebird, Rüppell's Robin-Chat, Streaky Seed-eater, Pale White-eye, Dark-capped Bulbul, Red-backed Mannikin all visiting at the same time.

Arrow-marked Babbler

Baglafecht Weaver

Speckled Mousebird

Red-backed Mannikin

Our African Goshawk pair are still incubating.  Chicks should emerge in another 10 days or so and then we can watch the regular comings and goings as they are fed.  Last night we had a Verreaux's Eagle-Owl calling in the garden but I was not able to find it roosting this morning.

Off to Arusha National Park tomorrow for the day (public holiday for Eid El Haj) and next Saturday we go to a lodge near Lake Manyara for two days as Jenny's birthday treat.