Kenya Blog Post 1 – Days 1-2

Due to my GCSE exams, I had an especially long summer holiday this year and my family and I decided to take full advantage of this by going to Tanzania for three weeks, Madagascar for 4 weeks, and with a three week school trip to Kenya wedged between them. I had one day of birding at the beginning and end of my school trip to Kenya.

This evening we arrived in Nairobi Airport, having travelled East all day and fly out of Dar.  We were met at the airport by a driver from our accommodation Wildebeest Eco Camp. It had been recommended to us and had a great vibe, with loads of young people and even a lorry overland trip.
With the wifi not working, I wasn’t able to upload by blog posts of photographs, so left Mum with strict instructions to do that the next evening if there was wifi.

Day 2 – 20 July 2018

Our bird guide, Moses Kandie (kandyrop@yahoo.com) had guided us around Kenya in 2014. Funnily enough, I saw my 4,000th bird in the world with him on my first morning of birding in Kenya. It was good to see him again. He was a great guide, which was why we were birding with him again.

This morning we birded in Nairobi National Park, which is just on the outskirts of the city. It was strange looking out on a savannah and seeing skyscrapers in the background. We had birded here on our last afternoon in We had one real target for the morning, Shelley’s Francolin. As well as getting amazingly close views of this, we saw A Fan-tailed Grassbird and Cuckoo-finch, both of which were new birds for us.

Trip list Kenya – 71

New birds Kenya – 3

Variable Sunbird, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Dusky Turtle Dove, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Nile Crocodile, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Brimstone Canary, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Secretary Bird on Nest, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Long-tailed Fiscal, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Yellow-throated Longclaw, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Black-backed Jackal, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mum birdingl, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Shelley’s Francolin, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Topi, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Scarlet-chested Sunbird, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Grey-crowned Cranes, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Giraffel, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

African Python, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

We had lunch at the Nairobi National Park and what was incredible was that there were literally thousands of mainly primary age children visiting the national park, visiting the animal sanctuary and hopefully educated about the need to conserve animals.

We had seen the site where the government has burnt stashes of ivory in 2012. There had been another burning since we last visited, on 30 April 2016, with over 105 tons of ivory destroyed which amounted to the tusks of 6,000 elephants and worth 68 million pounds. I agree with them that any kind trade in ivory creates a market for it and leads to more poaching.

Ivory Burning Memorial, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Burnt ivory, Ivory Burning Memorial, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Ivory Burning Memorial, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Burnt ivory, Ivory Burning Memorial, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Ivory Burning Memorial, Nairobi National Park, Kenya Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Kenya is the only country in the area to ba n trophy hunting altogether.How can you have a National Park stopping poaching on one side of a line and people paying $100,000 dollars for a weeks’ poaching (AKA hunting) permit on the other side of the line such as in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa. No wonder some poachers who are poor locals feel aggrieved. One rule for them and another for each white people. If you feel like me, write to these governments and say you will boycott their countries until they stop  trophy hunting.

We then went to Nairobi Airport and met up with my school group. I left my parents and Moses at this point, to meet up again in 16 days.

We were spending the night in Nairobi YMCA before travelling to Kisii in West Kenya. We were visiting a community project which was organised by Mend The Gap.

We then had a week off on safari in the Masai Mara and followed by a week with the Masai putting in solar panels to power up phones, whilst half the group did a walk in Mount Kenya.

My school, Chew Valley School were visiting at the same time as Gordano School, Churchill School and Clevedon School which are all close to my school and now in the same Lighthouse Academy.