The Standlake Birder

After our morning boat ride around lake Baringo I left Carolyn enjoying painting the lake landscape and went birding again with Titus. He was very keen to show me some of the spectacular nocturnal birds that Kenya has to offer and had done an early morning recky to locate the roosting birds.  The first bird he took me to see was a roosting pearl spotted owlet.  This little chap had conveniently decided to spend the daylight hours in a fairly open tree hence affording some very good views. This is a  relatively small comparatively common diurnal owl that breeds across sub-Saharan Africa. Pearl spotted owlet We moved on a little distance to the next of the night folk, a white-faced scops owl. Titus told me that this owl was the reason he  became a bird guide. As a young lad of 8 years or so he was out one day with 5 of his mates when they met a chap looking at birds. It turned out that he was a bird guide and was looking for a roosting wh...

Slavonian Grebe I had a very pleasant sunny day out today at Rutland water. By most birding trip standards this year it was almost local at 100 miles from home! My purpose was twofold. Firstly, to see a Hooded Merganser which was found yesterday. Now this was probably plastic, i.e. an escapee from a collection, but I always live in hope! Secondly, to try and catch up with three birds missing from my UK year list, namely Smew, Slavionian and Red-necked grebe. The problem with exotic ducks and geese is that they are kept in collections and have a habit, given half a chance, of doing a bunk. The Hooded Merganser is a North American native often kept in collections but there are 9 accepted UK records of what are believed to be genuine vagrants to date. Many exotics fail the first big test, are they ringed and are they free flying? The subsequent tests are a little less black and white. The state of moult, if any, can be checked against what would be expected of a wild bird. If the...

African fish eagle After 3 wonderful days at  Kicheche Laikipia bush Camp  Simon drove us back to the airstrip to meet our new driver for the next 3 days, Isaac.  Our destination was lake Baringo, an area I was very keen to visit as it is famous for bird watching with over 470 species recorded there.  Former Baringo ornithologist Terry Stevenson until recently held the world record “bird-watch” for 24 hours – 342 species.  We either had not been told by our travel agent or missed the fact that this was a six-hour drive, a very unproductive use of one of our days in Kenya. Driving in Kenya can also be a truly hair raising experience. There is much slow traffic on what tend to be rather poor roads with almost as many potholes as the UK! The general rule of thumb for overtaking is just do it! It is not necessary to see what is coming the other way, you simply assume that they will get out of the way. There were many overtaking occasions during the...

I have amassed a good collection of candidates for the much sought after dip of the year award so far this year and this new one is definitely right up there! Since we arrived home from Kenya some 10 days ago there has not been much in twitching range to get me interested in making a trip.  A report of a very rare lesser kestrel in Yorkshire 2 days ago did, however, grab my attention. When it was  reported as showing well yesterday the game was on! I booked the cheapest local room I could find  and embarked on the 3-hour evening drive to Yorkshire.  After checking in I settled down in the bar for a nightcap before bed and checked RBA to find that at least some of the viewings yesterday were a common rather than the rare lesser kestrel. In the morning things took a decided turn for the worse when RBA reported that the bird had been re-identified as a common kestrel. One of the defining characteristics of the lesser kestrel is that it has p...

Cheetah We landed at Nairobi international airport late evening on Monday 30 th  September at the start of our Kenyan adventure. We decamped to the airport Sheraton for the night and enjoyed a nightcap in the roof bar with views over Nairobi. The next morning breakfast gave us a small taste of the many wonders to come with brightly coloured superb starlings picking at crumbs around our feet. Our driver picked us up after breakfast and took us to Nairobi Wilson airport for our light aircraft flight to our first destination,  Kicheche Laikipia bush camp in the Ol Pejeta conservancy some 150 km north of Nairobi in the shadow of mount Kenya. On landing we were greeted by our driver and the accompanying soundtrack of crowned plover alarm calls. Our driver showed us the reason for their distress; they had nested some 20m from where the plane had stopped! The locals had surrounded the “nest”, actually a shallow depression in the ground, with a ring of stone...