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.
We had booked our 22 day birding trip with Tanzania Birding and Beyond (www.tanzaniabirding.com/about-us.html). Tina in the office was very responsive and sorted queries out very quickly. It is a Tanzanian owned company which is also great. Our guide was Anthony Raphael who was excellent at digging out the target species for us, staying focussed and not giving up. Our driver Gaiten was also brilliant, having some very long journeys to do. Anthony is at the Bird Fair 2018, so go and talk to him.
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| Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig at Serengeti NP, Tanzania Photograph taken by Helena Craig and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
Day 4 - 30 June 2018
On Saturday 30th June we finished the day at Serengeti NP with fantastic views of 2 more lionesses, a leopard sitting in a tree really close, a cheetah drinking from a pool and then finally at the end of the day, a female cheetah with her two different aged cubs. This trio reminded me of watching Big Cat Diary with my big sister Ayesha when she used to look after me when I was little. I remember crying with Ayesha when a cheetah cub disappeared and we were told he was found dead. Some connections with animals stay with you always.
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| Cheetah at Serengeti NP, Tanzania Photograph taken by and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
We were then back staying at ThornTree Camp again, this time with less zebra around overnight because of higher numbers of noisy hyena present.
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| Spotted Hyena at Serengeti NP, Tanzania Photograph taken by and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Scarlet-chested Sunbird at Serengeti NP, Tanzania Photograph taken by and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Zebra at Serengeti NP, Tanzania Photograph taken by and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Baby elephant with mother at Serengeti NP, Tanzania Photograph taken by and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Grey Kestrel at Serengeti NP, Tanzania Photograph taken by and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Grey-backed Fiscal at Serengeti NP, Tanzania Photograph taken by and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Beautiful Sunbird at Serengeti NP, Tanzania Photograph taken by and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig
 Photograph taken by and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig
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Day 5 - 1 July 2018
The early morning of Sunday 1st July, we travelled back to Ngorongoro Crater Reserve hoping for a few target bird species and maybe the chance of Black Rhino as this is the best place in Tanzania to see one.
We saw 3 lifers, Lynes’s Cisticola, Abyssinian Wheatear and Black-headed Apalis, which were fantastic.
First we birded the crater rim, where the Masai now live. They lived in the Serengeti but when the park was created in the early 1960’s by the British they were moved to the crater itself. However, when the habitat was demolished by over grazing, they were moved to the rim. There are plans to move them again out of the area due to population and cattle growth being unsustainable.
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| Abyssinian Wheatear at Ngorongoro, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Greater Flamingo at Ngorongoro, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Grey-crowned Crane at Ngorongoro, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
First we birded the crater rim, where the Masai now live. They lived in the Serengeti but when the park was created in the early 1960’s by the British they were moved to the crater itself. However, when the habitat was demolished by over grazing, they were moved to the rim. There are plans to move them again out of the area due to population and cattle growth being unsustainable.
The Masai Mara in Kenya is not a NP and so the Masai have continued to live across the border, which is having an impact on habitat, wildlife and poaching. I am going to be living with a community during my school trip to Kenya in August and will be interested to compare the conservation success on the two sides of the border.
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| Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig at Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Lizard at Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig
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We saw our target birds on the way down to the crater, where we then looked for Black Rhino, which had been spotted by other groups and after several hours of searching, we eventually found it, some distance away but unmistakeable.
At the exit within a second of arriving into the car park, a large make baboon climbed into the roof and grabbed a left over pack lunch box. Dad stood up to shoo it out, but it was really intimidating standing on the seat next to me. I was quite prepared to let it have all the pack lunch boxes!
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| Giraffe baby at Ngorongoro, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Wildebeest at Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Zebra foal at Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Buffalo at Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
At the exit within a second of arriving into the car park, a large make baboon climbed into the roof and grabbed a left over pack lunch box. Dad stood up to shoo it out, but it was really intimidating standing on the seat next to me. I was quite prepared to let it have all the pack lunch boxes!
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| Olive Baboons with my pack lunch box at Ngogongogo Crater Photograph and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
We then moved on to The Country Lodge (www.countrylodgekaratu.com/), in Karatu for dinner, some World Cup footage and catching up on social media. The staff were really friendly and helpful.
Day 6 - 2 July 2018
On the morning of Monday 2nd July we visited Lake Manyara National Park for the day. It is a forested area with rivers and a huge flooded area. It’s also home to Tanzania’s climbing lions. There is annual flooding created by rain here. The last 5 years, they have had unseasonably high rainfall, causing severe flooding each spring. Then flood swollen rivers have burst their banks and swept huge sections of forest away. This is another example of climate change in action and can only be bad news for Tanzanian wildlife.
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| Flooding at Lake Manyara, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Flooding at Lake Manyara, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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As well as Collared Palm-thrush, we saw Tree Hyrax, Giraffe, and Dik-dik.
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| Tree Hyrax at Lake Manyara, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| African Jacana & hippos at Lake Manyara, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Giraffe at Lake Manyara, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
We were back at the Lodge that night, getting our trip list sorted, again catching up on social media before dinner and followed by watching Japan v Belgium in the World Cup whilst blogging. There were a group of Belgium’s who went off to bed in disgust when Belgium were 2-0 down and missed a spectacular comeback with a 3rd goal in extra time.
Day 7 - Tuesday 3 July 2018
On 3rd July, we spent the morning birding a high trail at Gibbs Farm, seeing 3 new birds for us, Schalow’s Turaco, Brown-headed Apalis and Grey-olive Greenbul. That was an amazing number of birds for this trip.
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| Schalow's Turaco, Gibbs Farm, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Brown-headed Apalis, Gibbs Farm, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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| Striped Mouse, Gibbs Farm, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
In the afternoon we had a very fancy lunch at Gibbs Farm and then birded the grounds of coffee plants and local produce. It was set up as a farm in 1929, but when the family retired, Thompson’s Holidays bought it and now run it as a luxury destination.
We returned to The Country Lodge for 6 pm, with plenty of time to sort out lists, photos from the day, blogging and social media. We’d had a really fantastic stay at The Country Lodge with a lovely spotless room, friendly staff and brilliant food. I would definitely recommend them especially as they are so well located for birding local birding sites.
There was a large TV in a seating area in the same room as the dining area. We got there early, so Dad could get the best seats in front of the TV. We were then the first to sit down for dinner, after bagsying a load of chairs, which did feel a little rude.
During dinner, Dad kept telling us to hurry up, as he wanted to get back to our saved table. As Mum got up to move to the TV area, our waiter Peter asked us to sit down again, saying that they had another pudding for us. Despite Dad’s rush, we diligently sat and waited. After a few minutes all the hotel staff appeared in a line, singing and dancing, one with a container with a lit fire on her head, others with sticks to make music to accompany their singing and one with a cake and lit candles on her head. Being English, we were mortified. As the troop danced in and out of the tables we were praying that they stopped at a different table. As they approached our table and stopped next to me, I assumed they must have got my birthday wrong. But no, it was a goodbye cake!
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| Birdgirl Mya-Rose at The Country Lodge, Karatu, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
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After I had cut the cake into slices, Mum and I were dragged up to dance and sing with our hosts!
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After all the overwhelming kindness, the lodge staff said they would watch the England v Colombia World Cup football match and support England with us.
Anyone interested, will know that England won the game on penalties. What was amusing was that 3 soccer crazy US teens had snuck away from their big family group and were enthusiastically watching the game when an aunt appeared, told them off and told them to come and look at the amazing night sky. They dutifully followed her, only to return 5 minutes later, staying until what was probably their 10pm curfew.
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| Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig at The County Lodge Karatu, Tanzania Photograph copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
There had also been a quiet England supporter sitting in front of us, wearing an England top. We had silently been sharing every minute of the pain, anger and exuberance when a young woman (who looked and sounded East Asian and who was likely to be his new wife on their honeymoon) came and called him to bed. So at 10 pm, he silently went off to bed. What she unwittingly didn’t realise (maybe she didn’t understand the importance of football to many English men) was that for the next 60 years of their marriage, he would never forgive her for making him miss “that” England game; the one where they actually got through to the next round of a World Cup on penalties. It’s a bit like that, but even more painful, when you are forced to miss a mega rarity, especially if all the big twitchers but you see it.
Tomorrow we move on.
Number of bird species seen - 250
Number of new world life birds seen - 18
About the Author
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Mya-Rose Craig is a 16-year-old young British Bangladeshi birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, activist, 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 loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and Penguins in Antarctica over Christmas 2015, her 7th continent. She is looking forward to visiting Tanzania, Kenya and Madagascar birding in 2018 and hopes to see her 5000th bird species in the world.
Mya-Rose was a Bristol European Green Capital Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol Ambassadors. She has also 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. She is an Ambassador for World Shorebirds Day, See It Her Way and a Charter Champion for The Charter for Woods, Trees and People. She has given over 50 talks, speaking at conferences such as being on a panel with George Monbiot and Caroline Lucas on Sustainability and the Future of Cities. She has also appeared on TV an dis particularly proud of being in Silent Roars, a short film whihc was part of Listen to Britain 2017 https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-silent-roars-2017-online. She organised a conference, Race Equality in Nature, in June 2016 aiming to increase the ethnic diversity in nature and plans to run her fifth Camp Avalon camp in 2018. She has also set up Black2Nature with the aim of working with organisations to increase the access to nature of Black Asian Minority Ethnic people. Please connect with her on LinkedIn (Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig) so that she can invite you to join the Race Equality in Nature LinkedIn Group and be part of the change. She has been awarded the Bath and West Show Environmental Youth Award 2017 for Bristol for her Black2Nature work EYA 2017. Please also like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter.
Mya-Rose was a Bristol European Green Capital Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol Ambassadors. She has also 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. She is an Ambassador for World Shorebirds Day, See It Her Way and a Charter Champion for The Charter for Woods, Trees and People. She has given over 50 talks, speaking at conferences such as being on a panel with George Monbiot and Caroline Lucas on Sustainability and the Future of Cities. She has also appeared on TV an dis particularly proud of being in Silent Roars, a short film whihc was part of Listen to Britain 2017 https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-silent-roars-2017-online. She organised a conference, Race Equality in Nature, in June 2016 aiming to increase the ethnic diversity in nature and plans to run her fifth Camp Avalon camp in 2018. She has also set up Black2Nature with the aim of working with organisations to increase the access to nature of Black Asian Minority Ethnic people. Please connect with her on LinkedIn (Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig) so that she can invite you to join the Race Equality in Nature LinkedIn Group and be part of the change. She has been awarded the Bath and West Show Environmental Youth Award 2017 for Bristol for her Black2Nature work EYA 2017. Please also like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter.
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