Kimemo farm, in the Valley of Ngare Ormotonyi, looking west toward Monduli January 11
On a beautiful ascendant afternoon, in the week before Christmas, when days here in East Africa could still be warm and dry, I was birding at my local patch, near Ngara-mtoni in the Monduli gap. 'Gap' is an appended suffix, used to identify this vital transport and bird migration portal between two mountains. It's a valley, or a trench at 1,390 metres elevation which separates the great grey volcanic cone of Mount Meru (reaching 4,565 m) from the lower greener four-headed eminence of Monduli (at about 2,300 m). That afternoon I was staring idly yet attentively, as any birder should, head in the clouds up among the towering cumulus, admiring top-heavy galleons of pure white, as they drifted slowly westwards across the great blue sky.
Suddenly, in a one adrenaline instant, some of the ubiquitous floaters that plague my vision resolved themselves into an external worm-like trail of tiny black specks.
"Birds! birds! birds! VisMig! Gliding birds descending". High altitude migrants. Dots that became big dark raptors, effortlessly dropping-in. They were arriving from the north, from the direction of Lake Natron. Perhaps they were coming straight out of the northern hemisphere, and all that way today, maybe.
Black and Yellow-billed Kites over Themi Z. Zadori: file:///Users/jameswolstencroft/Pictures/iPhoto%20Library/Originals/2009/21%20Dec%202009_4/IMG_2311.jpg They came closer and closer. Quickly materialising into Black Kites. Black Kites remain a common raptor in the far Palearctic, but these were my first big flock of this species in this southbound season of bird movement. In all some 270 birds descended to truck leisurely eastwards at a height of fifty feet. Lumbering brown birds with long notched rudder tails. They ambled along in crawl-stroke: "wrists pressed forward level with the head". Travelling with effort now, and purposefully, passing just above the dark rounded crowns of the shade trees in Kimemo coffee farm. Indigenous trees, pure african shade trees these, trees for which the twin coffee estates, of Mringa and Burka, should be both justly proud and famous. For several minutes the great brown 'shaggy' birds filed past me, at a range of about two hundred metres, heading east into the sour and bilious haze of progress which is Arusha's air today.
An hour later that same afternoon Zsuzsa and Zsolt Zadori watched a great flock of Black Kites, 250-270 birds, circling above their home at Themi, 7 km distant, a hill on the south eastern edge of Arusha town. Almost certainly they were the same birds.
Yellow-billed Kite over Themi Hill December 21, 2009 Yesterday (January 10) I was at the local patch again. Now in these excruciatingly interesting times; this being labeled a 'moderate El Niño year'; every day in Tanzania is, at best, unsettled. The weather, and hence any outside activity, has become less and less predictable since Christmas. Equatorial downpours. Torrential knitting needle rains, they can seriously puncture one's plans, often accompanied by thunder and arriving seemingly out of nowhere. They carry-off all earthly human considerations before them. We live on a hillside, atop a network of open earthen roads, in heavy rain these tracks turn into a slithery black mess, a puddled pot-holed quagmire, which even a SWB Land rover 'on-diff' has great difficulty negotiating. Yesterday it poured heavily around noon, and then, after only an hour or so of heat and sun and butterflies, the rain started to come-on again at three.
From the notebook:
"At 1515 I took-up a 'sniper's position' to wait out the worst of this next, and hopefully brief, thunderstorm. Tucked myself under a leafy hedgerow Cordia, in a fairly dry vantage point, with a clear view north. Soon I was settled-down nicely amongst the sticky-headed love grass at the edge of a luxuriant lucerne field, on the eastern perimeter of Kimemo (Mringa Estate). Since today's brief sunny slot, either side of 1300, a cool and ruffling breeze had strengthened, most unusually out of the north west. Could this be some kind of 'new wind' - a trans-equatorial wind? A wind for the new Pliocene? Whatever it is, it's been causing cumulonimbus to quickly reassemble over any higher ground. By 1530 these have gathered into towering and quite unnerving monster clouds. Hue-less, the tone of lead or pewter. Growling werewolf clouds these, rearing-up, snarling and spitting their lightening, as if they've been summoned by El Niño to guard what remains of Gaian forest, the native woodland on Meru to the east, and Monduli to the west. Now the mega-clouds begin to howl and bay, chilling stuff, tripod-rattling howls from stoked-up thunder. They blast at each other across the five kilometres of simian (dis)order down here in the Ngara-mtoni trench.
Looking north, up to Lengi-jave which forms the northern end of Ngara-mtoni gap, a wall of misty grey rain is approaching sucked-in on this trans-equatorial breeze. While to the southeast, against Meru's eastern flank, the sky is darker still; black and thick and even. However comfort is at hand. To my right a black-hooded and rufous-chested African Hobby, a cheery comrade-in-arms, makes dashing zig-zag sorties from a dead snag Cordia, her stag's head look-out. So doing she strikes silence into the four kinds of cisticola hitherto wrapped-tight, wing-snapping their displays, out across this moist ultra-conductive air. And six polymorph Steppe Buzzards - who, from two until three pm, have been contentedly snaffling sausage-like caterpillars of the Convolvulus Hawk-moth caught-out wandering in a harrowed field - rise one after another and fly away northwards to settle in some distant feathery eucalyptus.
At 1540, a hundred metres to my right, I notice a couple of raggedy kites, at first I assume they are local 'Yellow-billeds', they pass behind the stag's head 'hobby tree'. As I watch they become three, then seven birds tree-topping, each one heading north west. Interesting? Then within seconds there are 17 of these big brown birds, all in a line, snaking between the Cordias. After 30 seconds or so, I estimate 40 birds are strung-along there, then 90, then 200 - a pincer movement is taking place as another line of birds descends, from the massive wall of blue black thunder cloud above and behind me. Decend to join those already streaming-out across the coffee farm. Soon there is a mass of at least 270 kites wheeling in a vortex on some warmer rising air. They circle upwards over the concrete aprons and cattle shippens of Mringa farm. By now of course I have twigged that they are probably all Black Kites, kites caught out. Arrested, perhaps a little earlier in the day than is comfortable, they've been caught-out by heavy rain mid-afternoon while heading back north."
Eventually the kites must have decided upon a suitable roosting site. A grove in which they could roost and, most likely pass the night, roost in relative safety. And so they descended toward some lofty farm-avenue trees on the southern edge of the sprawling west Arusha satellite, the 'township' which bears the same name "Ngara-mtoni".
I just sat and savoured those moments. Whilst the pack of mighty thunder-dogs gathered all round. After all what power have I compared to such elemental forces? And then, before the network signal died completely, hasty mobile calls were traded (with Elsie, the boys and the great blue Land rover) calls to ensure my rapid extrication. At this time I noticed some other bird species were moving. Three small flocks of White-fronted Bee-eater (totaling only 60 birds), in their characteristic yo-yoing long-distance flight, were heading north on the western edge of Kimemo along this ngare, this korongo; although nowadays it's no more than a narrow wadi. Higher, in the ever gathering gloom, a few hundred unattached Pied Crows evidently had decided to 'return home' a little earlier than usual to their ancestral roost, well out of harm's way, on the green hills westward, below Monduli mountain. incidentally on a site now entirely owned and perhaps soon to 'be protected' by the agency of the Agha Khan.
Before retreating to my rendezvous with normality, in the cool and, by now, very damp conditions I heard some birds: nearby Common Quails were calling insistently from deep inside the blue-flowering lucerne: "wet-my-lips .. wet-my-lips"; while Red-chested Cuckoos, two real zealots, insisted without need: "it will rain .. it will rain".
As I broke cover seven more Black Kites appeared a couple of hundred feet over my head; together with an adult male Marsh Harrier. On Friday evening there had been six adult males harriers, yet only two females, at the roost here. They drifted north into the as yet light rain. Soon these kites must have espied their relatives, so they swung around and descended in a fine slalom, down to the Ngara-mtoni. And then, at last, the penny dropped!
This area is almost certainly an ancestral stopping point for migrant birds. A traditional and preferred night-time roost for migrant kites. When they are coming southwards it is immediately after the dry-lands east of Lake Natron:the stunted thorn-bush, lacking tall and leafy trees, that surrounds Kitumbeine, Namanga and Longido. When they are going back north it's immediately after the almost boundless steppe of the Simanjiro or Maasai plateau.
Lengi-jave and Ngara-mtoni are at a profound watershed: west to the Rift, east to the Indian Ocean. A point where large raptors like buzzards, kites and eagles can leave (or join) the Rift Valley flyway; heading north as now - into a corridor - via an increasingly over-crowded Kenya to the, as yet, still green and open southern boundary of the Sudd.
Maybe these rivers of birds have passed this way since humanity first started to look-up. To the 'freedom-loving' Maasai, at least, 'long handled lion spear in hand', this place must always have been Ngare Ormotonyi - and that has nowadays become abbreviated, by the domesticated Warusha people, to Ngara-mtoni.
Kiwarusha: Ngaramtoni from Maasai:
Ngare Ormotonyi : The River of Raptors.
Swifts at the Gap - January 11, 2010
A Mottled Swift above Ngara-mtoni by MPGoodey January 2009
January 11: After a midday shower this afternoon was large sunny warm and sultry in the Monduli gap, despite the occasional and very welcome refreshment of a gentle easterly breeze. Evidently rain was falling, on and off, over the massif of Monduli, whilst Mount Meru (at anywhere above 2000 m) was wreathed in cloud throughout. I birded, more or less the same area as yesterday, starting at 1530 and continuing until the aerial action calmed at about 1800hrs. From the outset it was obvious that there was a huge number of swifts over the valley. Easily in excess of 5,000 and most of those were Common Swifts, although a definite call from this species was only heard on one occasion. There were a few burly Mottled Swifts scything about among them. The swifts were foraging from about 100 feet above ground level to well over two thousand feet. Weaving about in the warm updraughts welling-up out of the ripening grass and maize fields that extend right across the valley floor. Vast numbers of little orange grass beetles were drifting on the breeze. These packs of feeding swifts probably extended from well to the south of Arusha airport (3 km distant) to at least the watershed of Lengijave. That was not all, together with the swifts, were many thousand House Martins (and a very few Plain Sand Martins) - in fact probably the most House Martins I have ever seen in one day in one place, certainly so in Tanzania.
At ca 1630 the first few tens of Black Kite, and a couple of Yellow-billed Kites, started appearing high above me, all were coming from a southeasterly direction. During the next hour and a bit some 700 kites dropped-in to the roost area, in tall trees near to the TPRI track at Ngara-mtoni. Among them a few Steppe Buzzards and a single Lanner. And above all a group of 40 White Storks was tightly wheeling. At some points there were so many different birds; silhouettes of different shapes and sizes, careering about in all directions and at different speeds in the sky above; that it felt like those images seen on TV. You know, looking along the drop-off wall beside a coral reef, except of course, that these fish were all birds. Birds filling the sky.
