Birding Safaris for Modern Naturalists across Northern Tanzania in December If you google “Birding Tanzania” into the glistening grid you’ll call-up a screed of high-order gen. Typically the first twenty hits will be paid-for placements that promise encounters with a panoply of ornithological riches. Riches for which East Africa is, or was, rightly famous. Upon more careful reading however, you’ll […]
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Or whatever you want to call that near perfect euphoria? You know the score, the “M.M.MEGA” drill : a carefully nonchalant sms msg such as this one, from JW, Anabel Harries and young Frank Christopher on ‘Lark Plains’ to Neil Baker sent at 10.15 on Wednesday morning, March 8, 2006. “Fox Kestrel catching giant dung beetles […]
Arusha’s Biggest Day in Nature We will collect you at your hotel in Arusha, preferably by 0600, and drive to the southern gate of Arusha National Park to arrive by 0715. Bird fairly slowly from the vehicle through the forested central area of Arusha National Park to arrive at Momella gate by about 0900, where we will collect a […]
August in East Africa. Mid-winter in Arusha National Park, three degrees South and more than a mile above our warming oceans. So cool, at times it’s almost cold. We’re experiencing mornings that are chilly enough. Nippy, so that tough locals, and less-tough expats, would feel much better in a windproof fleece. If they had one. This past […]
Nearly 650 bird species have been recorded in an area only slightly wider than that covered by this green satellite photograph of Mount Meru in Northern Tanzania. The long axis of the photograph amounts to barely 30 km. And since June 2005 this area, within a radius of about 20 km from the summit ridge of Mount Meru, has become the core of my home […]
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By Tringa! They’re back.
They’re back – from the tundra and the taiga and unknown places between ya! Pity the survival chances of the first wave of long-distance bird migrants heading ‘home’. I’m thinking of the migrant shanks and sandpipers. Especially those of the genus Tringa, who are winging-it south, night and day, through July and August, in this, our era. In the late […]
A few years ago the Arusha Birdman (JW) was asked to assist several Canadian birders planning their birding trips through Tanzania. One individual’s mission was simply outstanding, both in scope and budget, he has come the closest to cleaning-up, so much so that he might, or might not, wish to remain anonymous! Nevertheless here’s an […]
Endemic Birds of Tanzania Grey-breasted Spurfowl Pternistis rufopictus savannas of Serengeti ecosystem Udzungwa Forest Partridge Xenoperdix udzungwensis forests of Udzungwa mountains Rubeho Forest Partridge Xenoperdix obscurata forests of Rubeho mountains Pemba Green Pigeon Treron pembaensis Pemba (northernmost) Yellow-collared Lovebird Agapornis personatus dry central savannas Fischer’s Lovebird Agapornis lilianae northern savannas and highland forest edge Pemba Scops Owl Otus pembaensis Pemba forests [ – […]
When travel agents with Tanzania in mind speak of “The South” they usually mean to invoke the wildlife attractions of what is known as the Southern Circuit. Nature reserves that lie alongside a one thousand mile artery that delves deep from the ocean, far into the darkness at the heart of Central Africa. This aorta has been named the Tan-Zam highway, more accurately it’s a […]
“As one brown patch on a blue globe Africa is a rather dry island where white vapours off the surrounding seas shed their rain rather sparingly.” So wrote that incomparable African naturalist Jonathan Kingdon in Island Africa in 1990. Climatic stability in Africa has always been a great rarity; preserved chiefly in broken necklaces of ancient mountain gems scattered […]
Vagrant Mind 