Paradise Flycatcher: Udzungwa, 1880m Photo © 2007 Louis A. Hansen.
As a British bird lover; born and raised as empire was being seamlessly reconstituted across the Atlantic; it has taken me until quite late in life to begin to embrace those things which cannot be changed. Yet now it seems only proper that a globe consuming empire should be dissolving at break-neck pace, together with our polar ice caps, after scarcely five decades at the helm. Collapsing into a darkness equally as fearsome as that which befell any imperial predecessor.
Living back home in Africa, in this great country Tanzania, I am learning at last, albeit somewhat uncomfortably, to concentrate the energies abiding in this atomic configuration on those things which can be done.
I am trying to work exclusively with what I feel is wholesome and good. To revel in the resilience of nature's project; marveling at the adaptability of living beings. Simply in awe at the breath-taking speed of evolution as revealed by close observation of little things; most of whom are seemingly invisible, or at best insignificant, to nearly all my human companions.
For example "skulkers". For many experienced birders there is something very special about skulkers. Ever since I first made-it into the real jungle I've really enjoyed getting
to grips with those shy birds which forage exclusively on the ground or in the understorey immediately above it.
Especially thrilling when I've been part of a small team of observers well-matched in terms of both their enthusiasm and their skill. Roughly stated the pursuit of skulkers can occasionally evolve into a mystical experience. No doubt die-hard, dried-up ticker positivists would say - "it's only our endorphines kicking-in", released in that triumphant moment when at last - "it's on my list!".
From the late nineteen seventies, with some others of my birder's age-set, I journeyed whenever possible eastward in winter-time, across old Asia Minor to the home of wisdom and the snow, to the truly awesome Himalaya. There, on a painfully insufficient vegetarian diet, in tiger-haunted cliff-hanging forest, magic places without par, we honed our skills at obtaining multi-second glimpses of skulkers great and small.
Similarly in late autumn we, twitchers original and fine, would loiter on chalk or granite headlands, at England's southernmost extremities. Assembling there after an urgent phone call in the hope of at least a momentary view of some Sibe or Yankee skulker. Way off course, storm-spun accidentals or mirror-image migrants these; they had pitched onto an island in the north-east Atlantic, instead of coming safely down beside some tangled tropical creek.
Young men, we would be risking our chance of romance and security for these all too brief encounters - yet also for moments in eternity. A step beyond, as if through an invisible door to the forbidden Russian taiga or the far Canadian muskeg. To view the grey of cheek, the olive-back, those slightly rufous tails - 'crippling' vagrant passerines - "chipping", "tacking", "chacking" - in the damp morning air. The greatest thrill of course was to discover your very own cosmic waif. Suddenly, when least expected there it would be, hopping right before us, flicking russet bramble leaves aside. Time would stop. We would share a wan and dappled sunlight, memories of summer warmth, well on the ebb, vanishing tangibly overnight. I recall being huddled under a stooping yellow willow clump, beside a thorny hedge, when both bird and observer in the same half-second spotted a Red Admiral butterfly, floating-up in a shaft of autumn sun to hang in the honey-sweet ivy flowers above, and I felt that both we vertebrates gained some assurance then, as if all three of us had arrived together, safely-in, from the far side of the world.
Twenty five years later, in Africa in 2008, I am more than a little handicapped on my hunts for skulkers. I'm short-sighted and astigmatic, my eyes needing serious correction by fast-misting spectacles, as I cannot abide those grit-garnering contact lenses. Also at a height of 1.82m I am a little on the tall side for the pygmy-crawling field craft that is required in order to see the deepest skulkers - to find the best perhaps of tropical forest birding. Already into my fifth decade I nevertheless attempt to recreate that jungle-birding mystique which was felt so strongly by quite a few throughout the nineteen eighties, until in my case tropical sickness finally took its toll in 1997, on a ghost-littered Ho Chi Minh trail, in a half-forgotten Indo-China.
But thankfully now, a decade later, once again those skulkers call to me from shiny pages in the Bird Guides. And are again being sought, typically this time on shrinking 'forest islands' - moist green refugia, floating up aloft above the cracking khaki crust of a sub-savanna Africa smouldering into the 21st Century. There are skulkers even here in Arusha, in our own back garden. For in this one acre plot we are carrying-in dead leaves from broad-leaved ancient trees. From Cordias and Crotons felled, indigenous spirits, who've supposedly outlived their economic usefulness, old shade trees from the Arusha coffee plantations. Plantations run by companies that must increasingly chase the poisonous waves of bio-technical progress seeping ever faster into Africa.
Yes we import indigenous leaf litter and local seed-rich soil in Tanzania's bright blue and red Marlboro-man plastic bags! There are no traditional flower beds in this garden, and as yet no trenches either. It appears utterly unregulated, without any biodiversity-action plan and there's not an EU directive in sight. We spread the mix beneath exotic shrubs in the hope of recreating the kind of leaf-litter that, early one misty morning in May, might just entice an African Pitta, striped in red green and blue, to come hopping across the garden path in front of my steaming mug of Orange Pekoe tea.
Ruppels Robin Chat: Photo Martin GoodeyBut right now we're well into Robin-Chats, Ruppell's especially, little African thrushes that sing so sweetly and look so fine; and hide so well that it is hard to get a good look at them. Even in your own garden, until hopefully you have won their confidence, via those bags of native leaves and that mimicry of a buffalo-disturbance-regime - it's turbo wildlife gardening this. Rufous-red below, olive, grey and blue above, black bandit masks and brightly supercilious of brow. They suggest nothing at all in Europe west of the Urals, but that single Moussier's Redstart comes close!
Sptted Morning Trush: Photo Martin GoodeyApart from the Spotted Morning Thrushes, who are daily here to delight anyone with an ear to hear their rich and liquid song, we had no regular Turdinae until June 1, 2007. That day a single juvenile Mountain Thrush (Turdus abyssinicus) came here to check-out the possibilities for a home, but we were not yet good enough. However on the same evening an adult Ruppell's Robin-Chat was heard in the very overgrown Kai Apple hedge. Only unstructured faltering crepuscular song at first. Three weeks later, after all the leaf-litter shipments, it had become no tamer, however the periods of song were getting ever longer, despite the increasing dryness and coolness of the days. Naturally I would like to think that the damp leaf mould that we were creating down in the shrubbery was playing a great part in this.
Two hundred kilometres, and three and a half hours by Land Rover south west of Arusha, takes you to the forest of the Nou, home of a very dark and skulking little robin-thrush of the Mbulu highlands. Somewhere there we shall find this endemic thrush - the northernmost and darkest form of, what would still be called by most, a form of the Olive-flanked Robin-Chat, so let's write Cossypha (anomala) mbuluensis.
These once forested highlands, like so many in Africa and through the tropics generally, are now almost chock-full of people. Increasingly the remaining woodlands and water bodies are being subjected to so-called 'inappropriate development', such that their waterbirds are quickly dying-out. The regionally endemic form infuscatus of Great Crested Grebe is seriously threatened with extinction; and the populations of Maccoa Duck and other waterfowl have crashed in recent decades. Residual forest fragments, saved as water catchments for people, survive mainly along the hill tops and the largest of these, the Nou, is now the focus of some conservationist initiatives. Over the past few years the agents of poverty eradication programmes, and various other 'sustainable developers' from Arusha, Europe and elsewhere in the 'Clever World' beyond advise the simple locals on how best to satisfy (and how to create) an escalating need for farm land, for saleable crops, for the definitive entity - hard cash. As everywhere, working out how to do this, and simultaneously how to squeeze ever more resources out of the forest ecosystem, without completely destroying it, is proving somewhat harder in practice than on an in-flight lap-top, on donor-snappy web-site, or in glossy smiling brochure.
So the dark and distinct, unique form, this Black Mbulu Robin-Chat, skulking in the densest stands of the Nou forest, is hardly likely to be getting any commoner. We plan to go and hear it one day soon - for its song is very different from that of all the other Cossypha anomala(s) - i.e. the various Olive-flanked Robin-Chats who inhabit these isolated mountain blocks all the way from the Nou to Mulanje Mountain in southernmost Malawi. It is described as "a short whistle followed by a long one, with the emphasis on the second note 'fe-fuuuur' ". Bob Stjernstedt found that these birds show no interest whatsoever in the played-back calls of even their closest relatives and neighbours.
The Mbulu Robin-Chats are without doubt adept skulkers; like all their congeners, exceedingly loathe to show themselves to sunlit view. So early morning, on a cool and narrow forest path, would appear to be our best chance for an uninterrupted 10 by 42. But just in case we fail, no doubt my simple Sony tape machine will be coming out too. To be there at dawn we will have to camp near the forest. Appropriate eco-tourism (this must include insomniac bird-watchers surely?) is a very important component of the plans which have been drawn up to achieve the 'sustainable development' of the Nou forest, to the lasting benefit of all the people all around, in eighteen encircling villages. So in our twitchy quest for the Mbulu Black Robin-Chat we will see how far these bold and wordy plans have come in practice, especially since last year overseeing the management of these initiatives was scheduled to be transferred from foreign NGOs to the Mbulu district administration itself.
Photos © Louis A Hansen, Martin Goodey
