Rain then a White Christmas

Over the last week we have had some excellent rain.  Every day lately has brought promising signs with storm clouds and rolling thunder but rain has seldom followed.  On Thursday it finally arrived and bucketed down for 10 minutes with following drizzle.  We awoke Christmas morning to heavy rain which persisted for several hours.  Then on Boxing Day we had the heaviest and most prolonged downpour to date.  What this all means given that we are coming to the end of the short wet season I don’t know.  If you were a poor farmer would you risk sowing precious seed now?  Everybody here who depends on the seasons says they are less reliable than years past.  So in theory they should write-off this short wet season and wait until March when the long rains should start.  In practice however there will be some who will take a punt on the rain continuing for the next couple of months and try to grow some food.  Only time will tell.

The rain has stimulated a large eruption of winged termites.

We have had our third Christmas in Arusha.  We went to dinner on Christmas Eve with Jenny’s work colleagues and other friends.  We were two Australians, an American, an Italian/Afrikaans Tanzanian, an Indian Tanzanian, a Chinese, two Costa Ricans, two Brazilians and three African Tanzanians.  Our host was Dutch married to an Indian Tanzanian and heir daughter (Dutch/Indian Tanzanian).  Our occupations included Catholic priest, pilots, big game hunter, nurse, doctor, teacher, agricultural scientist, tree grower (for carbon offsetting) and safari company owner.  So the conversations covered many subjects.

Jenny and I went to Rivertrees Country Inn in Usa River for their famous Christmas buffet lunch. We have had Christmas lunch there twice previously now  - once with a group of friends and once just us.  This time it was just us again.  I had booked in for 12:30 but the buffet didn’t start until 2 pm so we had a fair bit of down time and were well hungry by the time they were ready for us.  Fortunately the weather was kind after the morning rain and we wandered the amazing grounds for a while with a rainforest stream and some huge ancient forest trees.  The buffet was excellent as usual and we were not looking for dinner later.

This is a cool idea for a home for many species of small bees.

The walk along the stream through the grounds of Rivertrees Country Inn.

After all the rain on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, Mount Meru appeared late afternoon with another heavy cover of snow.

The view from our house south-west of the mountain.

This is from the western side of the mountain (photo by Father Pat).

There have been some exciting birds in the garden of late.  The first was an immature African Harrier-Hawk (or Gymnogene) which hung around for a couple of days.  This species is famous for having highly flexible tibiotarsal joints and using it’s long legs to probe into tree hollows and rock crevices for reptiles and bird chicks.  

African Harrier-Hawk

Next, Jenny was in the kitchen one afternoon and called me to look at this little falcon that had perched close.  I managed to get several photos before it disappeared and tentatively identified it as an Ovambo Sparrowhawk - a new species for me.  The identification was confirmed by the experts on the Birding Tanzania Facebook page.  Not a common bird and this one was also an immature.  

Ovambo Sparrowhawk

The third highlight was a small heron reported by one of our compound neighbours, Judith who lives in the guesthouse adjacent to the new from pond.  I assumed it was a Striated Heron which is fairly common in wooded lakes and streams in the district.  I managed to get some nice photos and realised it was the far less common and rarely reported Dwarf Bittern - also an immature bird.  Presumably these immatures are all on the move during the prolonged dry conditions we have been experiencing.  

Dwarf Bittern

Finally today, at the height of the afternoon rain, a raptor flew into a garden tree and then out again before I could get a photo.  It was a Black Sparrowhawk.  This species had been reported by the previous owner, Paul Oliver, but it was my first record for the garden.

The frog pond is attracting some cool Dragonflies at the moment.  I will endeavour to identify these two:

Jenny is back at work this week although the school is closed. Plenty to do without the students and teachers apparently.  We will fit in a day in Arusha National Park in a week or so before heading to Kenya on the 7th January for a short safari.

Happy New Year to all our family and friends back in Australia or wherever you might be reading this from.

New birds, snow, a tortoise and an earthquake

I have been out and about quite a lot since the last post with visits to Lake Duluti, Monduli Forest, Lake Manyara National Park, Karatu and the Maasai Steppe.

Lake Duluti is a small crater lake surrounded by forest near Usa River.  A pleasant walk with a good assortment of birds: Cormorants, Herons, Fish Eagle, Giant Kingfisher, Paradise Flycatcher, Grey-olive Greenbul and Taveta Weavers.  The highlight on this visit was a Marsh Mongoose.  We have only seen this species once before - at Lake Mburo NP in Uganda - so a nice Tanzania mammal tick.

Marsh Mongoose

Reed Cormorant

Little Egret

Striated Heron

Thick-billed Weaver

With a careful study of the route on Google Earth we found our way to the Monduli Forest after failing to do so a few weeks earlier.  I was with local birding friends Abdul, Alex and Jacinta.  Despite some early morning rain we had a great day with some forest birds.  Highlights were Crowned Eagle, Mountain Buzzard, White-headed Barbet, Black Cuckooshrike, Hunter’s Cisticola, Eurasian Blackcap, Eastern Double-collared Sunbird and Tree Pipit.

Tree Pipit

Broad-ringed White-eye

White-fronted Bee-eater

Black Cuckooshrike (female)

Eastern Double-collared Sunbird

Alex, Jacinta and Abdul in Monduli Forest

I was invited to do bird lists with local birder Isihaka Salim Saidi for two new lodge sites - one near Karatu and one near Lake Manyara.  The owners were a family of Yemeni Tanzanians and we were treated to Yemeni hospitality for a couple of days.  Great food and stories!  A bonus was a chance to do some birding in the garden and adjacent coffee plantation of The Manor on the Ngorongoro Crater rim.  82 bird species in all from the three sites.  Highlights were Booted Eagle, Verreaux’s Eagle, Black Sparrowhawk, Usambiro Barbet, Grey-capped Warbler, Brown Parisoma (lifer!) and Mbulu White-eye (lifer!).  I have given the lists and many bird photos to the lodge site owners along with a copy of the movie Hatari (1962 starring John Wayne).  One of their stories was being taken to watch filming of Hatari near Arusha National Park as a school excursion and then seeing the finished film later.

Brown Parisoma

Trachylepis striata (Striped Skink)

Fischer's Lovebirds

Cape Robin-Chat

Coincidently found this poster in the Sheraton Hotel, Arusha.

Jenny and I went to Lake Manyara National Park for the first time in three years.  A highlight of our previous visits there has been the marshland adjacent to the Hippo Pool where many waterbird species allow close approaches.  Sadly the very high lake water levels means that the hippo pool is now under water.  The ecology of the lake changes with fluctuating water levels and mineral content of the water.  At the moment it is not very attractive to waterbirds.  In particular we saw no flamingos and very few fish-eating species (pelicans/storks etc).  Large areas of trees around the lake shore have also been killed by several years of inundation.  Fortunately the bush, although very dry, held a good range of species.  In addition to birds we saw elephants, buffalo, zebra and a rather nicely marked Maasai Giraffe.  It turns out we have two subspecies of Giraffe in this region.  The Reticulated Giraffe has more rounded markings.

Dead acacias ring Lake Manyara after several years of high water levels.

Maasai Giraffe

African Elephant

Silvery-cheeked Hornbill

Most recently I accompanied friends Melissa and Jon Eager and Abdul al Habesha to the Maasai Steppe area to the south west of Kilimanjaro International Airport.  This area regularly turns up bird species that mainly occur further north in Kenya.  We saw over 100 species for the day in the acacia woodlands and around the shore of Shambarai Swamp.  Highlights were Spotted Thick-knee, African Jacana, Whiskered Tern, African Darter (Tanzania tick), Black-crowned Night Heron, Martial Eagle, Olive Bee-eater, Red-bellied Parrot, Pygmy Batis, Pringle’s Puffback (lifer!), Golden-breasted Starling, Southern Black Flycatcher, Hunter’s Sunbird and Black-capped Social Weaver (lifer!).

Melissa Eager and friends

Black-capped Social Weaver

Pringle's Puffback

We celebrated International Volunteers Day with a lunch with AVI in-country managers and partner organisations on 6 December.  Jenny is currently the only AVI volunteer in the country but several more are due over the coming months.  I had a Skype chat recently with a Tasmanian chap who is coming to work at ECHO in March.

Happy International Volunteer's Day

Last week Mount Meru appeared from the clouds with a new dusting of snow.  We hadn’t noticed it being any cooler down at our level.  Next day it was all gone.

Snow on Mount Meru

In other news the tortoise population of our compound has doubled.

A new Leopard Tortoise has appeared - probably another female.  How are they getting in?

Finally, we had an earthquake a few days ago.  It was 98 km from our house and 10 km south of the active volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai.  I felt it at home and our large mirror wobbled dramatically for about 20 secs.  Jenny felt it at work and many people reported feeling it as far away as Nairobi.  It was a magnitude 4.6, 10 km deep and at location: -2.84433, 35.92383.

Jenny is finishing work for the Christmas break this week and we have a safari planned for Kenya in early January then we will be eagerly awaiting the arrival of Liz and Sophie later in January.  Not sure what we will do for Christmas but lunch at Rivertrees in Usa River is a distinct possibility.

Rain and Bulbuls

Dark-capped Bulbul - abundant in our garden to the point of distraction.

We have finally started to have some rain.  Not a lot and not every day but the dust has been settled and everyone is feeling happier about life.  I have the VicEmergency app on my phone and it has been regularly providing me with storm, flood and sheep grazier alerts for the area around our home in Australia.  It just keeps raining there and across much of eastern Australia.  Probably the same Indian Ocean conditions that are keeping East Africa relatively dry at the moment.

When the first steady rain arrived here last weekend it was fascinating to watch every bird in the compound head for the lush Bougainvillea hedges to flounce themselves in the foliage and have a good bath.  We have birdbaths around the garden but this was obviously a preferred method of bathing.  The onset of rain also triggered calling of a Red-chested Cuckoo, a Verreaux’s Eagle-Owl and African Wood Owls.  Here’s hoping it continues and intensifies over the next month or so.

Spotted Flycatcher - a wet season migrant from eastern Europe and central Asia.

Southern Citril

All medium-sized birds in the garden are Bulbuls.  If I go and sit at the table in the middle of the garden I am distracted by 30-40 Bulbuls constantly on the move from ground level to the tree tops.  You have to check every one for the occasional different species.  November has been a great month - still 10 days to go and I already have 52 species recorded compared to the previous best month’s total of 38.  Some notable additions in November are African Green Pigeon, Hamerkop, White-eared Barbet, Red-and-yellow Barbet, Willow Warbler, Violet-backed Starling, Spotted Flycatcher, Cape Robin-Chat, Spectacled Weaver and Chestnut Weaver.

Brown-crowned Tchagra

Female Variable Sunbird

I have started seriously planning Liz and Sophie’s visit in late January.  I ran the initial itinerary past our safari company friend Stanley.  It consisted of visits to Lake Manyara NP, Tarangire NP and Ngorongoro Crater.  He replied “Do you think it is OK for your daughter and grand-daughter to miss the world famous Serengeti with such wildebeest migration in January?  Of course he was 100% right so that is now what we are doing.  With a bit of shuffling and squeezing we are now having 5 nights taking in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater.  I don’t know what I was thinking!

I have to leave Tanzania in early January for visa renewal so we are planning a short safari in Kenya.  We hope to visit the highland forests on the slopes of Mount Kenya and then some savanna country further north.  New country so hopefully new birds and other critters.  

Jenny has been granted her work permit but still hasn’t received the documentation and has been without her passport for over two weeks.  Not a comfortable situation.  She has been assured it will be sorted soon.

Jenny goes off to work every day and I’m keeping busy with learning Swift coding.  Swift is the programming language used to write apps for all Apple hardware these days.  I struggle with some of the concepts but enjoy the mental stimulation.  I’m also mining eBird data for valuable bird records that Neil Baker can incorporate into the Tanzanian Bird Atlas.  He is particularly interested in rarely reported species and data from places off the beaten track. Much of the eBird data is of little value sadly, due to the way it is collected - inaccurate location information is a major deficiency in many cases.  We are finding some genuine gold nuggets though.

This Hamerkop has discovered the frog pond - and the frogs and tadpoles ...

... as have the resident Hadada Ibis.

A snag is the power situation here.  Most days we lose power for a large chunk of the day but it is quite unpredictable.  On Thursday it was off from about 0645 until after 1900.  Yesterday it was on all day.  Today (Saturday) it is off.  You have to decide if you want to use your laptop’s battery up or switch it off and do something else.  At least at night we always have lights due to a battery back-up even if the power-points don’t work.

I went birding with our old friend Abdul last week.  We first went looking for the elusive, skulking Lynes’s Cisticola.  This is a fairly recent addition to Tanzania’s list being more common further north in Kenya.  It is now regularly seen on rocky slopes north-west of Arusha and I’ve looked for it before without luck.  This time we found a pair building a nest in a grass tussock and they were up and about, ferrying material to the nest and singing from bush tops.  This is the first nesting record for the country.  

Lynes's Cisticola surveying its territory.

There's a nest under construction in there somewhere.

After this success we decided to visit a couple of forest sites on Mount Monduli but got lost and ended up on the highway that heads to the Serengeti (i.e. very lost).  So we went instead to our regular spot at the quarry north of Oldonyo Sambu and saw lots of good birds despite the dry conditions.   A highlight was a stunning Eurasian Golden Oriole but also nice was the first adult Greater Honeyguide I’ve ever seen.  We also saw several Rock Hyrax and a Scrub Hare.

Adult male Greater Honeyguide

We still get amused at some of the sights of Arusha.  These women counting coins in a supermarket was one such sight recently.  It probably cost more to count them than the coins are worth.

Waiting for rain...

Four weeks in now and still no rain.  We have had two brief, pathetic sprinkles and the occasional rumble of thunder.  Maybe this coming week the predictions will come true.  It is so dusty!  I walked down Sakina Avenue (sounds grand doesn't it) one afternoon and the dust nearly killed me.  I don't know how the villagers and shopkeepers cope with it constantly.  People in our compound are going a bit troppo.  Last Sunday afternoon four of our neighbours decided to sit in the pond with beers.  How on earth did leeches find the pond so quickly?

We had a good day in Arusha NP.  Last time we visited (May 2021) we had the park almost to ourselves as COVID was keeping most tourists away.  This time it was quite busy and hard to avoid safari vehicles and their dust plumes.  We still managed to find 73 bird species and a nice assortment of mammals.  New for me was Abbott's Starling - a pair was attending a nest in a hollow tree at one of the Ngurdoto Crater lookouts.

Abbott's Starling at the nest hollow, Ngurdoto Crater, Arusha NP.

African Olive Pigeon, Ngurdoto Crater, Arusha NP.

Southern Citril, Arusha NP.

I've been filling my days with eBird data mining for Neil Baker of the Tanzanian Bird Atlas project.  There are some valuable sightings among the over 1 million eBird records for Tanzania and Neil wants them all. My other main daily activity is learning to code apps in SwiftUI.  I have a great course to work through and a couple of ideas for apps is I ever become competent enough.  

I am constantly being distracted by birds however as the loft apartment is ideal for canopy birding.  Since we have been back I've added nine species to the garden list - most recently Chestnut Weaver, Spectacled Weaver and White-eared Barbet.  The dry conditions probably mean more birds are moving around looking for oases.

Variable Sunbird, our garden, Sakina, Arusha.

Yesterday I met up with a few local birders for a walk to Chama Forest.  We started in Usa River and walked up through villages to the forest.  On the way we passed a huge abandoned series of poly-houses for cut-flower production.  You can seen them on Google Earth at (-3.363, 36.861).  The story apparently is that the people behind this were asked by the government to explain where their money had come from. Rather than explain they abandoned the enterprise overnight and have set up shop in Kenya.  Now the land is under army control and villagers are permitted to grow their crops under the rotting polythene.

We walked about 13 km and I'm feeling it today.  The forest is home to some special birds and we found one of them (African Broadbill - lifer) and dipped out on another (Buff-spotted Flufftail).  I also added Blue-mantled Crested Flycatcher to my life list.  Always difficult photographing birds in rainforest but I was delighted with how my Broadbill photos came out and managed a nice butterfly as well.

African Broadbill largely obscured by vegetation, Chama Forest, Arusha.

A much better view.

Forest Mother-of-Pearl, Chama Forest, Arusha

Jenny has received her work permit and heads off to work every morning.  She is happy with the way things are going and has just made a short video showcasing the new exercise equipment being used.  This was purchased by an Australian Volunteers grant last year and is making a big difference to the students with their various physical handicaps.  You can follow her blog at https://wantingafrica.blogspot.com/

Liz and Sophie have just purchased their tickets to visit us here in January.  We are so looking forward to showing them our Africa.