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.