East Africa - Day 38

Kenya 25 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 seventh day of our birding trip to Kenya which we have organised through 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 focussed on what we want, which is seeing our target birds, and a great guy too.

Today was our eighth birding day in Kenya.

We stayed the night in a city type hotel in Nyeri, which was pretty cool temperature wise.

From here we drove the short distance to Aberdares National Park, which was high up in the mountains on the side of Mount Kenya.  One our targets was Jackson’s Franklin, which we saw well a few times.

We stopped at Mwea Irrigation Scheme in the afternoon, looking for Africa Painted Snipe.  It was really hot and hard to bird in the bright light, but we couldn't find one, which was disappointing.

From Nyeri we had the long drive to Castle Forest Lodge, where we were staying the night.  We birded along the track and did some quick birding around the compound for Green Ibis before it got dark.  

The lodge was basically in a clearing in the forest.  Our rooms were in a basic but lovely building with a fire in the living room.  Elephants and other animals come into the compound at night, which made it bizarre that the bathroom was outside and not ensuite.

The best birds of the day were 

Trip List – We also had an amazing trip list – 585 birds for Uganda, 183 birds for Rwanda, total trip list of 612 for Uganda and Rwanda.

About the Writer

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig on Scilly

Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig 

Mya-Rose Craig is a 13 year old young birder, conservationist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She is loved going Mountain Gorilla Trekking in East Africa and is looking forward to watching Penguins in Antarctica in December 2015, which will be her 7th continent. She has recently been listed with the singer songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. Please like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter