Back Home After the Trip of a Lifetime

I am back home!  Wow what a trip I had birding in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda from July 1st thru August 1st.  I was joined by Bob Wallace, the trip organizer, and Stu Wilson. Our bird guide for the entire trip was Brian Finch, a Kenyan citizen who is an amazing story in and unto himself.  I am still getting my body's time clock adjusted--7 hour time difference--plus I came home with a sinus infection from inhaling so much dust every day.

The superb starling in the photo above was one of the almost daily birds for us (you can click on any photo to enlarge).  I don't know how many times we wished out loud that the starling imported to the U.S. was as beautiful to look at!  And daily we saw birds equally or even more stunning visually. The number of birds seen was totally mind boggling, but you will need to follow the blog as I write it to get the final species count, or skip to the end sometime in September when I finish the story. 

We also saw many of the most desired big game as we visited several parks.  Elephants graced us on our second day of the trip, and were seen many times.  While our mammal count was no where near the final bird count, we did see many unique African animals.

My plan is to use both my photos and some of Bob's to provide color to my narrative.  It will be a few days until he can begin to send me some of the 10,000 photos he took.  Once that photo stream begins to come my way, I will be writing about each day of the trip, sharing the birds, animals and events  that stood out for me.  We birded all day on 31 days of our trip, with the only non birding day being the gorilla trekking day.  I am looking forward to the next several weeks of detailing this trip of a life time.  Stay tuned!