East Africa – Day 41

Kenya 28 August 2015

I have not been able to upload photographs to my blog because there has not been any wifi or decent band width but will add my photographs to my blog post as soon as I can.

Today is the tenth day of our birding trip to Kenya which we have organised through a local ground agent and bird guide Moses Kandie of Birdwatching Express Tours. He provided lots of references, who all said that Moses was a brilliant guide and well organised. Having now birded with him, he is a great birder, very focused on what we want, which is seeing our target birds, and a great guy too. I would highly recommend him. Our driver Max was also great and we had loads of space in our extended Toyota Land Cruiser. He drove quite fast, but that speeded up our journey time and I didn’t mind the ‘African massage’ as it didn’t stop me from sleeping or reading, though blogging was challenging!

This morning we were up at 5.30 am this morning, for breakfast at 6.00 am and then out into Samburu National Park.

We were on the north of Mount Kenya, where you get specialist birds many with Somali in the name.

As soon as we came out of Samburu Game Lodge, there was a large Bull Elephant by the road and I was able to get some photos. During our morning safari drive, we had stunning views of a young leopard, close up views of an adult male lion, a lioness and three young males and quite a few elephants. There were animals everywhere here. We also saw more water, so felt better for the animals that have to survive here.

We had some brilliant and special birds during the morning game drive the best of which were Vulturine Guinea-fowl (we saw loads but this was the only time were saw them), Golden-breasted Starling, Somali Bunting, Yellow-vented Eremomola, Blue-naped Cordon-bleu, African Silverbill, Black-bellied Sunbird, White-headed Mousebird, Donaldson’s Bulbul and Fischer’s Starling.

We came back to the lodge for lunch followed by a 3.30 pm safari drive going until 6.30 pm when we had to be back for the curfew. We saw Red and Yellow Barbet, Ashy Cisticola, Somali Long-billed Crombec, Mouse-coloured Penduline-tit and Taita Fiscal. We also saw the same lions walking in the dry riverbed, which was brilliant as all the lions we had seen so far were lying down.

It was an amazing day’s birding with lots of animals thrown in.

Trip List – 585 birds for Uganda, 183 birds for Rwanda, total trip list of 612 for Uganda and Rwanda, 391 trips for Kenya, 753 total trip list and 399 lifers for me, taking me over 4,100.