A Taste of Ruaha & Arusha National Parks

Forest birding. Photo by Pietro Luraschi.

Having won the tender to train rangers in Ruaha National Parks to conduct safe walking safaris, I headed down to Ruaha for a quick recce with friend, fellow birder, and fellow guide trainer Pietro Luraschi. The task of finding the site for the training camp distracted from birding but we managed to see over a 100 species adding the following to my list. 

276	White-crowned Lapwing
277	Spur-winged Lapwing
278	Spotted Thick-knee
279	Heuglin's Courser
280	Purple-crested Turaco
281	Square-tailed Nightjar
282	Broad-billed Roller
283	Ruaha Hornbill
284	Collared Palm-Thrush
285	Grey-capped Social Weaver
286	Gabar Goshawk
287	d'Arnaud's Barbet
288	Yellow-bellied Greenbul
289	Pale Flycatcher
290	Great Egret
291	Amur Falcon
292	Grey Kestrel
293	Red-necked Falcon
294	Common Cuckoo
295	Böhm's Spinetail
296	African Firefinch
297	African Golden-breasted Bunting

Ruaha is Tanzania's largest national park and has a phenomenal bird list that includes quite a few "new" species. During the training in January and after I hope to see some of the special Miombo species and Ruaha specialities.

Not only birds in the forest.

With Pietro in Arusha for only a couple days, we headed off to have a look at Hatari Lodge in Arusha National Park and to get up into the forest on Mt. Meru. Forest birding is a whole different story to savannah birding and I was pleased to add the following birds to the list including some we saw on the way in.

Hartlaub's Turacco

Dusky flycatcher

Starred robin

Cinnamon breasted bee-eater

Eastern double collared sunbird

298	Lesser Spotted Eagle
299	Peregrine Falcon
300	Alpine Swift
301	Sand Martin
302	Red-throated Tit
303	Avocet
304	Diederik Cuckoo
305	Slender-tailed Nightjar
306	Lesser Flamingo
307	Greater Flamingo
308	Southern Pochard
309	Lammergeyer
310	Grey Crowned Crane
311	Spot-flanked Barbet
312	White-naped Raven
313	Rüppell's Robin-Chat
314	White-starred Robin
315	Common Stonechat
316	Olive Thrush
317	Hunter's Cisticola
318	Blackcap
319	Grey Wagtail
320	Mountain Wagtail
321	Eastern Double-collared Sunbird
322	Abyssinian Crimsonwing
323	African Moustached Warbler
324	African Dusky Flycatche

1/4 of a thousand +1

This morning Gina, Pietro and myself headed to Monduli to have a go at forest birds. Forest birding is difficult. Most of the time you hear the birds but you don't see them, and in my quest to be a better birder I really don't want to record a bird just by its call. Fortunately we found a fruiting fig tree and spent some time watching some really spectacular birds. I should note that the Brown-hooded kingfisher and Grey-Olive Greenbul were seen in the Burka forest.

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Grey-olive Greenbul

Brown-hooded Kingfisher

Mountain Buzzard

Hartlaub's Turaco

Cinnamon Bee-eater

Common Scimitarbill

Black Saw-wing

Mountain Greenbul

White-eyed Slaty Flycatcher

Bronze Sunbird

Montane White-eye

Speke's Weaver

Yellow-bellied Waxbill

Purple Grenadier

Revised total so far...

A very good friend and one of the top birders/ecologists/naturalists I know sent me an excel file with all the bird species for Tanzania listed so that I can check them off and avoid duplications. Checking through the list I discovered a couple omissions (African paradise flycatcher, Brown snake eagle) and a couple duplicates and questionables and fortunately the overall sum comes out at  

236 

 so far. The file is now in my dropbox folder and you can view it by clicking on the link at the top of the page.

Its the weekend again so I hope to add a few more species and enjoy some good birding.

Overnight in Tarangire

If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you’ll know that I love Tarangire. I’ve been travelling to Tarangire since I can’t remember and it’s just a classic savanna habitat with all sorts of cool stuff and tons of elephants. This weekend, I decided to boost my list to over 200 with a short overnight trip to a place I’m really comfortable with. We left Saturday morning stopping en-route at a dam with GPS points South 03.44465, East 36.38680. You have to be careful birding on the Arusha-Tarangire road because the land on the southern side is military land and they have a hard time understanding why you’re walking around with GPS, notebook, and binoculars.

We quickly racked up 33 species with the following 19 additions to the Big Year List. Admittedly, there are a few repetitions in my master list, but I should get time this week to sort through that. It’s only a couple, but it will be reflected in the next post.

162	Coot, Red-knobed
163	Dove, Namaqua
164	Eagle, Bateleur
165	Egret, Intermediate
166	Fiscal, Long-tailed
167	Goose, Spur-winged
168	Harrier, Marsh
169	Jacana, African
170	Lark, Fischer's sparrow
171	Plover, Blacksmith
172	Plover, Common ringed
173	Plover, Three-banded
174	Sandpiper, Common
175	Shrike, Magpie
176	Spoonbill, African
177	Starling, Wattled
178	Swift, Mottled
179	Teal, Red-billed
180	Weaver, Red-billed buffalo

Without wasting too much time, we headed on to the park. Tarangire is a special park and deserves a lot more birding time than an overnight. It has hills with forests that have forest birds, its got dry Commiphora woodlands with specials like Vulturine guinea fowl, and it’s a hotspot for endemics like Ashy starling and Yellow-collared lovebirds. Its early in the wet season so I was a little disappointed not to get any whydahs, widow-birds, and some other very common birds just seemed to elude us. That said, we managed to list over 100 species just in the park with highlights like great viewing of African quail finches drinking.

200	Hornbill, Red-billed
201	Hornbill, Southern ground
202	Hornbill, Von der Deckens
203	Kingfisher, Striped
204	Kingfisher, Woodland
205	Lovebird, Yellow-collared
206	Ostrich, Common
207	Owl, African scops
208	Owl, Barn
209	Parrot, Brown
210	Plover, Senegal
211	Pytilia, Green-winged
212	Roller, European
213	Roller, Rufous-crowned
214	Ruff
215	Sandgrouse, Chestnut-bellied
216	Sandgrouse, Yellow-throated
217	Shrike, Northern white-crowned
218	Silverbird
219	Snipe, Common
220	Sparrow, Swahili
221	Spurfowl, Red-necked
222	Starling, Ashy
223	Stilt, Black-winged
224	Stint, Little
225	Sunbird, Marico
226	Swift, European
227	Swift, Little
228	Swift, Palm
229	Thick-knee, Water
230	Vulture, Lappet-faced
231	Vulture, Ruppels griffon
232	Vulture, White-backed
233	Weaver, Rufous-tailed
234	Woodpecker, Bearded
235	Woodpecker, Grey

Tarangire wasn’t only about birds- we also saw the following mammals and we’ll add a mammal and reptile page to this blog soon.

15th November- A 112-Bird day

My brother is heading to South Africa to study for a few months and we wanted to spend some quality time together. Niether of us had commitments this morning so we set off on our motorbikes on a bird trip. Convening at my Dad’s house for breakfast we quickly checked off 22 species of birds that are already on the big year list. Hopping onto our bikes we headed up just beyond Oldonyo Sambu where we pulled up near a cattle trough to bird for a while. 35 species later we moved on, with the following additions to the master list.

102	African grey flycatcher
103	African hoopoe
104	Banded parisoma
105	Brubru
106	Capped wheater
107	Chin-spot batis
108	Cinnamon-breasted rock bunting
109	Common kestrel
110	Common rock thrush
111	Common scimitarbill
112	Grey wren warbler
113	Hildebrandt's starling
114	Isabeline shrike
115	Nubian woodpecker
116	Pygmy falcon
117	Red-fronted barbet
118	Red-fronted warbler
119	Schalow's wheater
120	Speckle-fronted weaver
121	Steppe eagle
122	White-bellied canary
123	White-bellied go-away bird
124	White-browed scrub robin
125	White-browed sparrow weaver
126	Speckled pigeon
127	Yellow-breasted apalis

The lark plains have turned green, but neither of us had the patience to tackle cryptic larks, so we headed across them to the Acacia-commiphora scrub to their east. Stopping a couple times we walked around and managed to get some highlights like the Rosy-patched bush shrike, white-headed mousebird, and northern wheater. Did you know that some of the northern wheaters that come to these plains migrate here all the way from Canada.

128	Beautiful sunbird
129	Black-faced waxbill
130	Black-necked weaver
131	Black-throated barbet
132	Brown snake eagle
133	Buff-crested bustard
134	Chestnut sparrow
135	Fishers sparrowlark
136	Isabeline wheater
137	Lesser masked weaver
138	Little bee-eater
139	Northern wheater
140	Rosy-patched bushshrike
141	Rufous sparrow
142	Temminck's courser
143	Violet-backed sunbird
144	White-headed buffalo weaver
145	White-headed mousebird
146	Yellow-bellied eremomela
147	Yellow-necked spurfowl
148	Yellow-spotted petronia

By this time the sun was pretty high and our stomachs started grumbling so we headed back for lunch before heading into a beautiful little forest on Burka coffee estate. Our walk took us up to a small dam for the following additions to the master list:

149	Ashy flycatcher
150	Black-backed puffback
151	Green sandpiper
152	Grosbeak weaver
153	Hammerkop
154	Holub's golden weaver
155	Palmnut vulture
156	Pied kingfisher
157	Rock martin
158	Scarce swift
159	Tambourine dove
160	White-browed robin chat
161	White-eared barbet