Saturday 28 July 2012

Birding and Mammal Spotting in the Masai Mara - As good as it gets

I recently travelled to Kenya with the school for a three week mission trip - a report on this will be produced through a different medium. However, while there the team visited the Masai Mara GR for three days and we had an awesome time! The following is therefore not a specifically bird report, but the birding was prolific, from the Common Ostrich to the tiny Grey-backed Warbler (Camaroptera)! The mammals were also stunning, and I hope my photos do them justice! Enjoy!

We arrived at Intrepids Camp (check it out at www.heritage-eastafrica.com/tented-camps/mara-intrepids/), an amazing luxury tented camp overlooking the Talek River in the north-central Mara, after a six hour drive from Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya. The road to the Mara turn-off is excellent (tarmac), and then the road to the Mara is awful! However, it is all part of the safari adventure and must be on anyone's bucket-list!

With a group of 38 combined with bumpy, rutted roads, toilets stops were fairly frequent! These were excellent opportunities for Pots to sneak off and do a little birding - I picked up Speke's Weaver, Red-capped Lark, White-fronted Bee-eater, Grassland Pipit (one of the few birds also found in OZ,along with the Common Ostrich of course!), Capped Wheatear and Augur Buzzard.

Once into the camp, it was clear that the birdlife was abundant. I quickly picked up Ruppell's Long-tailed Starling, White-browed Robin-chat, Grey-backed Warbler, Common Bulbul, Schalow's Turcao (one of my favourite birds - see the bottom of my blog page), Tropical Boubou, Slate-coloured Boubou, Egyptian Goose, Black-headed Oriole, and many others. Also scurrying around were Banded Mongoose, Kirk's Dikdik and Vervet Monkeys!











And then we went out for our first "game drive"! The mammals were simply stunning! In the first hour we had seen a mother cheetah with two cubs on a "kill", a cunningly concealed leopard (no photo!), lion, elephant and an array of other mammals - bushbuck, reedbuck, impala, thompson's and grant's gazelle, cape buffalo, and warthog.

Four more "drives" followed over the next two days and we amassed 30 mammal species, over 80 bird species and crippling views of enormous Nile Crocodiles. Along with eating a ridiculous amount of food, lying in bed at night listening to lions, hyaenas and tree hyrax's call out to each other, stumbling on an African Wood Owl hooting on the final morning, and finally picking up a lifer, the Rufous-bellied Heron, along with it's cousins, the Green-backed (Striated), Black-headed and Grey Herons, it was another unforgetable trip in the Reserve.

We also saw courting Common Ostrich - visually compelling dance, Martial Eagle (another favourite), Crowned, Wattled and Spurwing Plover, Yellow-billed Stork, Black-bellied Bustard, Hooded and White-backed Vultures, White-headed and Spot-flanked Barbets, Angolan, Mosque, Wire-tailed and White-headed Sawwing Swallows, African Sand and African Rock Martins, and Yellow-throated and Rosy-throated Long-claws. Plus lots more!! Paradise! If you ever get the chance...... DO IT!





  




And some of the birds seen on the drives .........