TENDABA MANGROVE CREEK CRAWL – KIANG FOREST
If you have never experienced a creek crawl
then you are missing a fantastic nature-experience. We boarded our piroque at
the jetty immediately after breakfast at 8:30am. It was peaceful and calm with
some high cloud, but the light was good.
During our 4 hour trip we enjoyed some superb
birding, we crossed the river and drifted into the mangroves, entering a
network of channels where the forest looms over you on either side and
occasional open spaces appear which are covered in grass and pools of water.
The sounds of the forest are eerie with many strange bird calls. We listed over
50 species during the trip, the list is shown below and here are some of the
highlights:
We found several hanging nests of the
Mouse-brown Sunbird all of which were occupied, we got very close to them and
the adult bird could be seen sitting on eggs or chicks. The odd called of the
Blue-breasted Kingfisher was most common, we managed to see over 20 of these
beauties but a malachite Kingfisher allowed closer approach. Both Woodland and
Grey-headed Kingfishers were also seen and many Pied Kingfishers gave us great
views. A Fish Eagle perched high up for us on the main river, as we were
watching it an African Hobby flew by, followed by a Woolly-necked Stork.
We had some excellent sightings of the normally
hard to find White-backed Night-Heron, fortunately for us the boatmen knew of
two locations where they had nested very close to the water’s edge, the same
applied to a roost of African Scop’s Owl.
Pink-backed Pelicans were a sight to behold as
they sat on the water just in front of the boat and we got very close to
African Darters both in the water and on perches. I must mention the Martial
Eagles, we had one in flight high above us, what a huge bird that one is, we
also saw a second one just afterwards perched in a tree not too far from the
boat. On the thermals there were Black Kites, Woolly-necked Storks, Pink backed
Pelicans and a Long-tailed Cormorant? How odd was that mix of species.
By the time we got back to the camp we had
logged 56 species, not as many as usual but a good total for a high tide trip.
We took a really long lunch and set out again
at 4pm for an afternoon trip to the Kiang West national park. It was fairly
quiet and still very hot but we managed to see several new species. We stopped
to look at a Gabar Goshawk which promptly disappeared but we found Grasshopper
Buzzard, Blue-eared Starlings, both species, Pygmy Sunbird and we had great
views of Black-winged Bishops, there were many males displaying in the long grasses.
A Rufous-headed Roller posed well for the cameras and several Abyssinian
Rollers were in the area.
A short walk along the track produced a good
number of species, all in one bush, because our guide Modou made the
call of the Pearl Spotted Owlet and they came to mob the 'owl'. We saw lots of yellow birds, Yellow
Fronted Canary, a female Pygmy Sunbird, Yellow Penduline Tit and a Yellow White-eye.
There was also Bush Petronia, Beautiful Sunbird and we heard a White-shouldered
Black Tit calling.
Not
much else was seen and as it grew dark we jumped back onto the bush and drove
back to Tendaba Camp, along the way we stopped to look at Nightjars, we found a
couple sitting on the track and got good close views of one of them, it turned
out to be a Standard Winged Nightjar, a great species to finish the day with.
No comments:
Post a Comment