Out of the Log - and into the line of fire - These Days - One Year Ago - November 11, 2005
I spent a couple of hours in the morning around "transmitter hill" on Burkha Coffee Estate by Olasiti; wildness increasingly squeezed between Arusha's small 'safari-specials' airport and the city's sprawling lower westside Majengo 'suburb'.
After a good rain shower on November 10 this was a fairly cloudy morning with a soft easterly breeze, at first only a hint of moisture in the air
cf. this same week in 2006 where we have already received a sumptuous deluge of rain.
Sacred Ibis 46 feeding at the AICC-Rwanda prison pools
Black-headed Heron there's a thriving colony in the Indian Silk Cotton (Bombax ceiba) a huge tree that overlooks the prison compound
Egyptian Goose a noisy gaggle of 11 birds graze on the bright green nutrient enriched grasses beside the pools
Spur-winged Goose a pair there
Yellow-billed Kite the local Arusha birds have only been conspicuous since late September suggesting that a sizeable part of the population moves out
Lesser Spotted Eagle excellent - just one, the first of the return, on down-splayed wings it circles the hill almost aimlessly, then gains height and pushes-off south for pastures new
Lanner Falcon three including a juvenile take turns at mobbing the arriving vulpinus Steppe Buzzards who drift across, in ones and twos, out of the western sky tracking the line of "Monduli gap"
African Hobby a pair, the female with full crop, also mobbing the Steppe Buzzards
European Hobby - a migrant immature just shot through scattering the doves
Augur Buzzard two, the female apparently 'on eggs'
Secretary Bird two display over the boundary of the airfield toward the prison pools
Helmeted Guineafowl a covey of 17 is based in the old graveyard spinney at the base of the hill
Grey Crowned Crane the only pair hereabout, dance and bugle at the pool edge
Little Button Quail unlike in poor old Europe, several little hemipodes are loose upon this hill, especially easy if like me you have a very poorly-trained 'gun dog'!
Grey-headed Kingfisher one in the green pencil-stemmed 'manyara bushes' in the old spinney
A single European Roller arrives and surprises all - definitely, these days, a bird to watch!
Nyanza Swift small flocks of from five to forty birds zip over presumably from Mount Meru's crags and mountains north, just local feeding flocks or part of some bigger picture?
Four species of Streptopelia dove are frequent, common even, plus Emerald-spotted Wood Doves, budgie-sized Namaquas and thickset red-rimmed Speckled Pigeons - imagine that lot in any part of modern Europe?
White-browed Coucal bottling away
Lesser Striped Swallows, Barn Swallows and House Martins just a few of each
An orange-throated Pangani Longclaw rises on stiffly hesitating wings as we climb the path to the transmitter post
An icterops Whitethroat is in the acacia tops down on the west side of the hill
Whilst invisibly down the damp side - lower east slope tangles - two Dark-capped Mountain Warblers and several Singing Cisticolas vie with two White-browed Scrub Robins and a Spotted Mourning Thrush for recognition as chief songster of the hill
Not so the Rattling Cisticola gangs, who slink about with hoarse and popping cries from scrub to bush and down again
Scanning with the rickety Swarovskis there are clearly "Shrikes" if not a plenty, well almost:
resident Long-tailed and Common Fiscals, Tropical Boubous calling from the spinney, the first eastern Red-backed Shrike is back and two Red-tails too!
Interestingly the stucturally similar Superb and Hildebrandt's Starlings occur here side by side, in this so-called moist bushland
In the rear order four nectar-sipping sunbirds and seven seed-eating species complete the batting as we pocket the notebook and retire for breakfast in the face of what some might call threatening clouds.
