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.