Kenya

Guest post by David Fisher (Sunbird):

Brian Finch has encouraged me to post part of the introduction to the tour report that I wrote for the participants on my Sunbird tour to Kenya in January this year. It was certainly a very strange year. To put this into context I have led the same tour following the same itinerary on roughly the same dates every January for the last 18 years.

"Bird wise this year's tour to Kenya was very unusual. Unseasonable and heavy rain throughout December had turned most of the country green, which was very good for the local people and for birds such as bishops, widowbirds, whydahs and weavers. We saw males of many of the latter groups in full breeding plumage, often engaged in dramatic display flights some of which had never been seen on previous Sunbird tours. We also benefited by finding some shy and skulking birds such as Broad-tailed Warbler which we watched singing and displaying - a species we have not seen on this tour for at least eight years.

Email exchange about a veterinary drug that threatens vultures:

1) 24 May, 2006

“Vultures in Asia" India bans production of death drug.

Dear Safari Operator,

I know the experts say that this is not the problem here in Tanzania but what do vets use here e.g. on those 'pampered wazungu cattle' living near you in Olasiti?

(Olasisti is 'a village' very near Arusha.)

There were two more postings to the bird group on February 14 under the title

"More on those Migrating Butterflies"

"Incidentally we went through the largest butterfly migration I have
ever seen on the way back from Moshi. Millions of whites all heading
south from Moshi all the way to Karatu (Karatu is in the Crater Highlands along the western edge of the Rift Valley). In places it resembled a blizzard. We've collected a few off the radiator.
Grant Hopcraft - Frankfurt Zoological Society"

"Those Brown-veined White butterflies that were mentioned the other day. They passed through Naivasha and the Rift last week, laying thousands of eggs everywhere. Their favoured food plant is a three-leaved indigenous bush that becomes devoured by the caterpillars before they move into the grass.
Am sure your local agricultural officers are well aware of it all and are spraying (sic!).
Don Turner, Naivasha, Kenya"

The area and duration of the current Brown-veined White Belenois aurota movement in Tanzania and Kenya would seem to be quite extraordinary.

Brown-veined White in Arusha 14 February, 2007 (Anabel Harries)I first became aware of this Brown-veined White (et al.) migration on Tuesday afternoon February 6 as we drove south on the main highway toward Dar with Jack & Kathy Wigan heading towards Chalinze from the Saadani NP junction.