Spur of the Moment Chase Trip to Miami

I have been checking NARBA regularly to see what rarities might be tantalizing this year's big year birders.  There are so many possibilities with the citrine wagtail and bramblings in British Columbia; the northern lapwings, and pink-footed and barnacle geese in New England; the bananaquit and western spindalis in Florida; and the Nutting's flycatcher and rufous capped warber in AZ.  So far I have not come across any new big year blogs to know which of these birds are being pursued, but seeing that both a western spindalis and a bananaquit were very near each other in the Miami area, I decided to fly down to Florida last Wednesday morning.

I arrived about 9 AM, picked up my rental car and immediately drove to Bill Baggs SP on Key Biscayne to try for the bananaquit.  When I got to the site I found several other birders, and was told that I had missed the bird by about 20 minutes.  It had called and then had flown across the nature trail and disappeared providing at best very poor looks at it.  I spent the next 2 hours hanging out with the other birders in hopes it would reappear.  One of the birders was Roberto Torres, known as Toe locally.  We had first met in 2010 when I came to see the Cuban pewee in the Everglades.

About noon I decided to join Dick and Gaylee, who had come over from Marco Island to look for the bananaquit, to go to the nearby site on Virginia Key where a female western spindalis had been seen off and on for a month.  Gaylee had seen it earlier in the morning, so we were hopeful about finding it again.  We looked from noon to 2 PM without success.

I decided to return to the bananaquit spot, where I worked the area until dark without success.  Mariel, a park ranger, and her husband, Angel, came around about 5 PM in hopes of finding the bananaquit, but as dusk approached we had neither heard nor seen the bird.

Thursday morning I was back at the spindalis location by 7 AM where I met Dick and Gaylee to hunt for the bird again.  We ran into Ron and Dollyanne, a birding couple from Knoxville who I realized were part of a small birding trip to E. Africa that had inspired Bob Wallace to set up the trip I took there last July.  We shared some of our memories of our respective trips while we wandered around on the mountain bike paths listening for the spindalis which we did not find again.

I left about 8:45 to make the 20 minute drive over to the bananaquit site.  I arrived to find Toe already there, only to be told that the bird had once again made a quick fly by 15 minutes before I had arrived.  I spent the next 3 hours searching for it.  About 10:30 a group of birders from Minnesota joined in the search.  They had just seen the La Sagra's flycatcher, another rarity, close to the spindalis site, and now were keen on finding the bananaquit.  The group was led by a well known Minnesota birder, Kim Eckert, who wrote the best field guide for the area around and north of Duluth.  I had met him back in 2005 when I visited Minnesota during the great gray owl irruption.

At mid day I left to go down to Kendall to look for other Miami exotics like red whiskered bulbul, and monk parakeet.  I found one of the latter (click on any photo to enlarge).  Mid afternoon I returned to my motel to regroup.  While looking for the bananaquit, I was given the number of Alex Harper, a local birder, who was familiar with good spots to look for white-winged parakeets.  I called him to find he was up in Tallahassee looking for a Costa's hummer.  He gave me directions to a good roost site in Miami for the white-winged, so I drove there arriving about 4:30 PM.  Over the next hour small groups of white-winged parakeets would fly over.  Then about 5:45, a very large group circled and landed in a palm tree to roost.  I apologize for the not great picture, but the light was not very good by the time they settled in for the night.

I decided to try one more time for both the spindalis and the bananaquit.  I arrived at Virginia Key about 6:30 AM Friday, and joined 2 other birders to hunt for the spindalis.  When we had not located it by 8:15, I decided to go back to Bill Baggs for one more try at the bananaquit.  When I arrived there was only one other birder there.  As the morning wore on a few more birders began to arrive.  One of them was Pat, who lives in the summer on Kelly's Island in Lake Erie near Magee Marsh, and winters in Boca Raton.  I had met him in January of 2010 when he and his friends were checking out a red-footed booby that had been rehabbed in Miami and then released.  After seeing the booby, we had all gone up to Ft. Lauderdale near the airport to look for smooth-billed ani's.  I did not find one that day, but was successful in February. 

I gave up my search about 1 PM to make the drive back to the airport to fly home.  While I did not find either of my target birds, both of which would have been life birds for me, I did enjoy being in Florida, and chatting with several birders.  As a consolation prize for my readers, I have included a photo of a bald eagle that I found last week perched at the entrance to our property in NC.  This is only the 3rd bald eagle that I have seen on our property.  Stay tuned!

New Year's Day 2013

Another new year is upon us--may the birding gods give birders much joy in the coming year!  And as for 2012, there were certainly plenty of vagrant rarities to keep people happy last year.  My post today is a short review of my birding highlights from 2012, and a recap of the big year efforts that have just been completed.

Other than the trip to meet with the 700+ club in early December, my last bird outing of note was when I made a spur of the moment trip up to Boston after Thanksgiving to visit friends, and to see a northern lapwing that arrived outside of Boston in mid November.  I had hoped during my big year in 2010 that a lapwing would come and stay late in the year like this one has but that did not happen.  Amazingly this one, plus a pair on Nantucket, have now been "wintering over" for weeks.  There is a good chance that anyone starting a big year is in MA today to add a northern lapwing to the list.

Not an hour drive from the lapwing that I saw with my friend Richard, a little egret was found about the same time.  I had already seen a little egret in DE a few years ago, so I did not also go check it out.  My birding photographer friend, Doug Koch, went to MA a couple days after I was there, and graciously shared his photos of the lapwing and egret for you all to see (click on any photo to enlarge).

Looking back over my year of birding, the trip to E. Africa, which is thoroughly documented already, was unquestionably the high point of the year.  Right behind E. Africa was the first ever gathering of the 700+ club in TX in December.  Spring migration in KS and OH was a delightful mix of birds and friends.  The whirlwind trip early in the year to see the Nutting's flycatcher in AZ, and the falcated duck in CA was lots of fun.  Interestingly, it appears that both birds returned to their respective spots in December making for another prime target to hit this week for this year's big year birders.  And last, the one day trip into Chicago to see the elaenia species found in late April.  Unfortunately, the birding experts could not make a final determination as to which elaenia species it was--white crested or small billed.

Turning to the many big year efforts put in in 2012, 2 young birders from Colorado started well, but unlike Gabriel Mapel in 2011, lost momentum by mid summer.  The father and son team from Ohio, Eddie and Liam, also hit a few rough spots beginning in late spring, and from what few subsequent blog posts they made, it appears that they did little birding in the second half of the year.

Black and Holly Wright who are based in TX and did a photographic big year, ended up with over 400 species photographed, but illness and the holidays made their December less productive than they had planned.  Sara and Simon--the trucker couple--seemed to have a lot of fun seeing birds while moving goods around the U.S.  After mid summer they also slowed down a bunch, but did do some more posts on their blog late in the year.  It appears that they will be trying again in 2013 to increase their number above the 351 seen in 2012.

Robert Baumander from Ontario definitely gets the award for being the most successful novice birder doing a big year.  He almost made it to 600 species seen.  Michael Delesantro and Renee Rubin unquestionably get the award for the "biggest bang for your buck big year" in 2012, tallying 654 species seen while spending only a little over $10,000 to do it.  And finally, John Hargrove (primary birder) and his wife, Beverly (regular in the field support, and big year chronicler/blogger), strove mightily to reach the 700 level but came up just short.  As Beverly said in her blog, John will need to go thru his lists and photos before making a final determination, but as of 12/31, his number stood at 689.  You can find the blogs for all these 2012 big year efforts on the home page of NARBA.

Peering into 2013, it will be interesting to see who will be doing big years.  I know that Jay Lehman, a birder from Ohio, is supposed to be out there today starting his quest.  Jay has the opportunity since his ABA life list is already at about 790 to be the first birder to see at least 700 species in a calendar year, and pass the 800 level on his life list in the same year. I suspect there will be other big year birders joining him, and hopefully most of them will be blogging so that we can follow their exploits.  As for myself, I check NARBA regularly to see if their is a rarity that I want to pursue, but mainly I prefer to go birding.  Spring migration will find me actively enjoying warblers in northern Ohio in May.  I am also toying with a return to Alaska in the fall to do some birding for a couple of weeks with friends.  Stay tuned!

First Ever Gathering of the 700+ Club

As promised, this post today is about the first ever gathering of those birders who have seen 700+ birds during a big year in the full ABA area, or in my case, the lower 48 states.  The gathering happened last week down in the Rio Grande Valley of TX, and was organized by Bob Ake.  Bob did his big year in 2010, and as a result I got to know him some since we ended up birding together quite a bit at the end of the year.  He thought since John Vanderpoel in 2011 had almost broken Sandy Komito's full ABA big year record set in 1998, it was timely to see if he could track down the few known 700+ big year birders.

My research on who those people are had led me to believe that there were as many as 15.  Once we began to search for contact info on my list, we discovered that 2 of the birders based on ABA annual big year info had not in fact done big years, rather their life time ABA list had been included in the annual list.  So that left 13 names on my list, of which only 11 could we find contact info.  In the end last week 10 of those birders came together to share our experiences and do some birding together.

I flew down last Tuesday with my sister, Maria, who had birded some with me during my big year in 2010.  She had never birded in the valley and wanted to check it out while also meeting the 700+ members.  Since the group was not getting together for the first time until dinner on Wednesday, she and I spent the day birding at Salineno and Falcon Dam SP.  We immediately found a couple of birders in from Pennyslvania scoping the river at Salineno when we arrived about 7:30 AM.  Soon we had the good fortune to have a fly over of 4 red-billed pigeons.  Right after that a group of birders arrived who were part of the Wake County, Raleigh, NC bird club.  After we finished checking out Salineno, we all went over to Falcon Dam SP, and spent some time at its feeding station where we saw quite a few birds including ladder-backed woodpecker (photo just above--click on any photo to enlarge), and the rabbit and green jay just below.

We also saw a long-billed thrasher and a pyrrhuloxia.

By early afternoon things were slowing down quite a bit bird wise since the temp had broken thru the 80 degree mark, so we made our way back to Alamo where we were staying at the Alamo B&B which caters specifically to birders--we both highly recommend trying it out next time you visit the valley to bird.

Before going to dinner, we drove up to Violet and 10th St. in McAllen at 5 PM to see if any green parakeets were staging on the wires.  We heard them before we saw them.  We arrived at the Santa Fe Steakhouse a little before 6:30 to find John Vanderpoel, Bob Ake, John Spahr and Benton Basham already sharing a beer in the bar.

We moved into the wine cellar which seats up to 12 people for our dinner, and by 6:45 all expected attendees had arrived.  We had a very nice meal while spending the next 2+ hours sharing our big year experiences.  The other attendees not already mentioned above included Sandy Komito, Al Levantin and Greg Miller--all of whom did their big year in 1998 which led to the book and then the movie--and Dan Sanders and Lynn Barber.  Jeff Gordon, the president of the ABA, also joined us.

I learned a lot more than I had already read about the various members of the group and their big years.  For example, Benton Basham was one of the founders of the ABA, and the first to see more than 700 birds in a big year, and reach 800 birds seen lifetime in the full ABA area.  He also told us that when he met Sandy years ago chasing a Mexican rarity, that he told him about Attu.  Both of Sandy's big year efforts were greatly helped by visiting Attu.

We also reviewed the 3 other names on my list of possible 700+ club birders. Two of the 3 names (Bill Rydell and Steve Perry) were confirmed, but no one knew anything about the third person (B. Shiftlett), who was on my list as a result of information Greg Miller had back in 1998.  Greg could not remember where he got the list that appears in the book, The Big Year.  So we concluded that we all only knew of 12 birders who had seen 700+ birds in a calendar year in either the full ABA area or just the lower 48 states.

The next morning we met at 7 AM at Bentsen RGV SP to bird together, and then went to Anzulduas SP to continue birding.  Our stomachs finally took us to lunch about 1 PM.  We split up for the afternoon.  My sister and I next went to check out Santa Ana NWR before getting cleaned up to attend the talk John V. was giving on his big year to a group at Quinta Mazatlan, which is part of the World Bird Center locations in the valley.  Prior to John's talk, we took a group picture.

 From left to right with year and number of birds seen, front row--Greg Miller (1998, 715), Benton Basham (1983, 710), Sandy Komito (1987, 722; 1998, 748), Lynn Barber (2008, 723), and John Spahr (2010, 704); back row--Dan Sanders (2005, 715), me (2010, 704), Al Levantin (1998, 711), John Vanderpoel (2011, 743 + 1 provisional), and Bob Ake (2010, 731).

After John's powerpoint presentation full of photos and humor, we had dinner together again with the exception of Benton and Lynn who had other commitments.  More sharing of experiences spiced up the meal, and Jeff got to ask a few questions of the group which I suspect he will be writing about in an upcoming ABA article. 

Friday we did not bird together.  Instead my sister and I traveled to the east side of the valley, first visiting Estero Llano Grande.  We met Henry Burton, a birder down from Ohio, who knew both Greg and Dan.  We worked together to find the female rose-throated becard that has been seen regularly near Benton Basham's trailer.  It was a life bird for both my sister and Henry.  He soon took off to go to Santa Ana to look for hook-billed kites.  My sis and I went into the main part of the park to see what else was about. We then returned to the area near Benton's trailer where we found Dan, Greg, Bob and John all looking for the becard which they had heard, but not yet seen.  Maria and I dropped in to say good by to Benton before driving to bird Old Isabel Rd. where we found an unbanded aplomado falcon.

We then headed out to South Padre Island to check out the shore birds and gulls, before returning to look for white-tailed kites (photo just above).  Next up was to drive the access road to Laguna Atascosa NWR where we found a birder who was looking at not 1 but 2 adult unbanded aplomado falcons (photo just below).  We chatted, and found out about a great spot in Brownsville to see parrots at dusk.  Sure enough, when we later visited Oliveria Park we saw well over 300 parrots come in to roost for the night including red-crowned, red-lored, white-fronted and yellow-headed.  It was a fine end to our 3 days of birding.

We rushed back to McAllen to have dinner at 7 PM with John Vanderpoel, and his son and daughter-in-law at Delia's tamales.  We all loved the different tamales we tried.  Maria and I headed back to Alamo to get some sleep since we needed to get her to the airport by 6:30 AM the next morning for her flight back to NC.

I dropped her off, stopped for a Mexican breakfast, and then spent a couple of hours at Santa Ana on the hawk tower in hopes of seeing a hook-billed kite.  I was the only person there until it was time for me to go to the airport when Henry came back to try again himself for the kite.  I did not see any kites, but several harriers, an osprey, and 1 Harris and 1 gray hawk made appearances.

Over the 3 days of birding, Maria and I saw 140 different species of birds, and my sister picked up 22 life birds plus 8 more for her ABA area life list.  The yellow-headed parrot was a new bird for me, but it is not countable in the ABA area.  I am now home without any bird trips planned.  My next post will be at the end of December when I review the year's birding, and talk about chasing a northern lapwing near Boston 2 weeks ago.  Stay tuned!

East Africa Trip Wrap-Up

The trip home from Kenya proved uneventful--two 9 hour flights changing in London.  The worst part was the sinus infection that I had developed the last few days of the trip because of all the red dust I had inhaled.  It finally cleared up within a week of being home in Chapel Hill.  I believe that it took me over a month after returning for my body's digestive process to return to normal as a result of having taken anti-malarial medicine for 45 days.

It was fun for me to relive this amazing trip thru the blog.  As I have said to many people since being back home, it was definitely the trip of a lifetime that I am thrilled to have done, and also don't need to do again.  31 out of 32 days of non-stop birding from dawn to dusk is challenging even for the most hard core birders.  Even Brian was more than ready for the trip to finish up.  I called my good friend, Marty, as soon as I got home to say I was glad he chose not to make the trip.  Being a casual birder, he would have been more than fried by the experience.

Some other take aways would be that a trip like this is definitely more in the "collecting" mode rather than the simply birding mode.  Some of my favorite times during the trip was when we were just seeing what was around the lodge where we were staying.  That said, seeing so many new and amazing birds plus all the animals was truly wonderful.

We drove over the 4+ weeks about 5000 KM which is a bit more than 3000 MI.  The roads were often very poor which made you feel worn out much more quickly than we are used to here in the U.S. We also flew within E. Africa about 1000 KM.

The food was mostly edible and generally we had plenty of it, but even the best meals were nothng to write home about.  Roast potatoes every day at both breakfast and dinner for a month gets quite old.  And as I have bemoaned, the bag lunches were in all but a couple of cases really poor.

The lodging varied with most simply being adequate with a few outstanding properties to a few you would never want to return to. Of course, if you wanted to increase the cost of the trip significantly, you could stay at only 4 Star places.

Bob, Stu and I really did not know each other, and fortunately we ended up traveling well together.  Brian also was unknown to us except by birding rep.  He proved to be as good a birder as I have ever met.  His knowledge of E. Africa, his encyclopedic memory for bird calls, and his desire to show us the birds were the reason we were able to see so many different bird species in just a month.

So what was our final bird species count?  For the entire trip, there were 807 different bird species seen, and 31 heard only for a trip total of 838.   About 1400 different bird species have been recorded in E. Africa. For myself, I felt only good about counting 797 seen and 24 heard only for a personal total of 821.  One of the birds, an Ayre's hawk-eagle, was not confirmed until after returning home from a photo Bob had taken in the W. Usambaras of a soaring raptor.

To put these numbers in perspective for predominantly U.S. birders, there are less than 100 living birders who have seen and/or heard over 800 different bird species in the ABA area, and many of these birders have been birding the ABA area for decades!  My own ABA area life list is somewhere between 750 and 775 birds seen and/or heard, and my own big year lower 48 states total in 2010 was 704.  The total number of bird species in the world is just over 10,000.

As for the birds we did see, there are so many different bird families in E. Africa that we do not have in the U.S.  The ones that really stand out for me are the sunbirds, hornbills, turacos, weavers, hoopoes, barbets,  bustards, bee-eaters, bushshrikes, greenbuls, robin-chats, cisticolas, whydahs, and waxbills.  Starlings, raptors, lapwings, storks, cuckoos, owls and owlets, kingfishers, and woodpeckers are families that we see here as well.  If I had to pick a bird family as my favorite on the trip, I would with great difficulty settle on sunbirds of which we saw 41 different species.

All the photos in today's post were taken by Bob who has been so helpful in sharing his photos with me to make the blog much more colorful and interesting. In order from top to bottom today: malachite sunbird, sooty boubou, tropical boubou, red-chested sunbird, scarlet-chested sunbird, straw-tailed whydah, and golden-winged sunbird (click on any photo to enlarge).

The total cost for this birding extravaganza including round trip airfare to Kenya ($2500), shots and meds ($500), visas ($300), and on the ground expenses--lodging, food, guide and driver, gorilla trek, park entrance fees, transportation and tips ($13,700)--came to $17,000.  As a reference point, my big year cost me $40,000 which meant I spent about $57/bird species seen while birding for about 260 days.  Each bird species on this trip cost only about $21 while birding for only 31 days.

It was truly an incredible birding adventure because of the birds and the location.  My main advice to others is that you should think twice about taking such a long trip.  If you can afford the extra airfare, I would suggest breaking a trip like this in half which should reduce the exhaustion/burnout factor, and probably make for even more birding enjoyment.  Also, we had tried to have a total of 6 birders on our trip which would have reduced the base trip cost by $2,000, but because of the length of the trip, we were unable to find 3 more birders to join us.

My next post will probably not be until early December after I return from the first ever gathering of the 700+ Club--those very few birders who saw 700 or more bird species in the ABA area during their big year.  Stay tuned!

Day 32--Nyungwe to Kigali to Nairobi

We awoke to another beautiful morning, had an ok breakfast and then started working our way back towards Kigali.  We stopped fairly quickly along the main road to listen for birds.  Brian heard a short-tailed warbler calling right next to the road.  We had only heard this bird over the past 2 days, so we walked into the forest maybe 30 ft to try to call it in.  It took 15 minutes before we all got reasonably good looks at this skulker.

At another place we flushed an immature red-throated alethe out of the ditch by the roadside.  We also saw a fine looking cinnamon-chested bee-eater (photo above taken by Bob-click on any photo to enlarge).

We saw again both a northern double collared sunbird, and a red-faced mountain-warbler (both photos taken by Bob) as we moved down the main road.

We decided to walk down the side road that we had so much success with yesterday afternoon.  We saw and heard several birds including an African stonechat (photo just above taken by Bob). Our first new bird of the day was a heard only Lagden's bushshrike.  Soon after we totally lucked out when we found a red-breasted owlet (photo just below taken by Bob).  We would not know until the end of the day that this would be our last new seen bird for the trip.

Since it was the last birding day of the trip we had to have a photo taken of the group (left to right--Bob, Brian, me and Stu). We also stopped at the wetland we had visited 2 days earlier in an effort to find our last possible new cisticola--the Carruther's.  It was a no show, but we did get to see the Grauer's rush warbler again.

Our last major stop was at a large wetland, mostly grown up with papyrus grass, just outside of Kigali.  We spent at least an hour here trying to see more heard only birds like papyrus gonolek, white-collared oliveback, and white-winged warbler.  We did finally get to hear Carruther's cisticola calling, but could never get it to come out in the open.  Our efforts to find these birds attracted a small group of young boys who at one point I let look thru my binos (photo taken by Bob).

About 3:30 after seeing a giant kingfisher, we finally gave up trying to coax the calling birds out of the papyrus, and made the short drive into Kigali.  Isaac took us to a coffee bar for some drinks, and then we met Catherine at 6 PM to have dinner at an Indian restaurant.  This turned out to be the very best meal of our entire trip.  Unfortunately we could not linger over it because we needed to get to the airport for our flight to Nairobi which then was late in departing. At the Kigali airport we said our farewells to Isaac who had been so much fun to have as our driver while in Rwanda.

We arrived in Nairobi about 11:30 PM where we met Ben, the owner of the ground operation in Kenya, who would take us to our night's lodging.  Brian was headed home from the airport, so we said our profuse thanks and good-byes there. After a 30 minute ride, we arrived at the Oak Place Hotel.  As we were checking in we heard a montane nightjar calling just outside the office.  This was a bird Brian had heard during the night at the end of week #2, but it was the first time the 3 of us had heard it call.  Ben confirmed that was what we were hearing, but by the time we went outside it had stopped.

We were in bed by 1 PM.  Bob would be heading out before sunrise to catch a flight to visit an old friend who lives near Mpala, Kenya.  Stu and I would be hanging around the hotel all day before catching a night flight to London, and then on to the States.  I will be doing a wrap up post next on this amazing trip.  Stay tuned!

Day 31--Nyungwe Forest Redux

We started our day with a so-so breakfast, and picked up our bag lunch that we found out at mid day we might as well not have bothered.  Our birding day was all about retracing our steps in the forest to find more new birds and hopefully see a few species that were on our heard only list.  Narcisse, a local guide, joined us for the day as well. 

Our first stop was to walk further down the side gravel road that we had spent a little time checking out yesterday afternoon.  It was a bit overcast which made it very comfortable for walking and birding.  Our first new trip bird was the yellow-eyed black flycatcher (all photos in today's post are by Bob except for the very last one--click on any photo to enlarge). We then heard the black-billed turaco calling, and this time one flew out in the open.

We walked by the spot from yesterday where we had seen a purple-breasted sunbird, and soon after we saw another one plus a beautiful blue-headed sunbird perched out in the open for us.  There was a lot of bird activity over the 4 hours that we traversed the road including 3 fly over Cassin's hawk-eagles, and several black kites. We kept hearing Doherty's bushshrike calling, but could not get it to come out in the open.  We did manage better views of the Grauer's warbler.

We finally pulled ourselves away from the road and drove to the visitor center to walk a trail which led eventually to a dirt road.  We found Elliot's and olive woodpeckers--both new trip birds--plus a blue yellowbill.

A little further along we picked up a white-browed crombec (photo just below) and chestnut throated apalis.  We also saw white-bellied crested-flycatcher, and gray-chested iladopsis.  Several stripe-breasted tits were working the top of a very large tree, but in the end we got good diagnostic looks at this small bird.

It took us about 3 hours to walk the trail and road.  All along the way we kept finding small feeding flocks.  We came across strange weavers (photo just above), and a dwarf honeyguide was a special pick up.  At the same spot we flushed a lemon dove off the road--another hard to find bird.  We had nice looks at white-headed woodhoopoes also.

It was getting pretty late in the day when we finished the hike, so we began driving back towards our evening lodging spot--the Top Hill View Hotel.  We stopped at the side road briefly to see if anything else was around, but found nothing new.

We arrived at dusk to find that thru some kind of misunderstanding with our ground operators in Rwanda, we only had 2 rooms reserved for the night instead of 3, and the hotel was full.  After some frustration being voiced, and some wrangling, the hotel put another bed in one of the rooms to solve the problem.  We then walked back down the hill in front of the hotel to listen for Rwenzori nightjars.  It was a windy evening and we came up short.

The dinner buffet was pretty good.  I had a very nice tomato and tuna salad, roasted potatoes, and curried beef over rice.  Dessert was fresh pineapple chunks and crepes.  The bird list update took our trip total past 830 different species seen and/or heard.  We would be birding our way back to Kigali tomorrow, arriving early evening for our flight back to Nairobi.  Stay tuned!

Day 30--Nyungwe Forest

We were up and out quickly because we still had to drive some distance to get to the edge of the Nyungwe Forest.  As we neared the forest entrance, we stopped at a wetland and got our first new trip bird for the day--Grauer's rush warbler.  Our second was a Handsome francolin that moved so quickly into the foliage that no photos were obtained. Soon after we saw our first regal sunbird (photo taken by Bob--click on any photo to enlarge).

By 9:30 we had stopped at the office to pay for our entrance pass.  There was a large tea plantation surrounding the office, and many women were walking by to begin picking the tea leaves.  We would spend the rest of our day working our way from east to west on the single road that passed thru the forest.  The road was generally in very good condition because the Chinese contractors, who seem to build most of the roads now in E. Africa, were making improvements.  We would pass several African work crews throughout the day.

One reason to visit the Nyungwe Forest is because of the endemics there, many of which are named for the Rwenzori mountains that are part of the Albertine Rift in Rwanda. As an example, in the photo just above taken by Bob you can see a Rwenzori apalis.  In Kenya we had seen its look alike cousin, the black-collared apalis. We also picked up the white-bellied robin-chat in the morning (photo taken by Bob).

The find of the day was a group of red-collared mountain babblers (photo just below taken by Bob).  Brian told us that he had missed this species on his last trip to the forest.

We stopped to check out a group of L'Hoest's monkeys that were crossing the road, and also found a Rwenzori turaco (photo taken by Bob)).

Our routine would be to stop at good habitat spots, and walk along the roadway.  This was generally productive in finding more birds, but also at times harrowing when medium size buses would come flying by us.  Isaac would wait with the landcruiser, often trying to get cell service including standing on top of the truck to do so.

As the day went along, we kept finding new trip birds such as white-tailed blue-flycatcher; barred long-tailed cuckoo; Grauer's, and red-faced mountain warblers; Archer's robin-chat; mountain masked apalis; mountain iladopsis; many-colored bushshrike; dusky crimson-wing; and mountain sooty and Willard's boubous--the latter being a newly accepted species.  We also found Rwenzori batis (photo taken by Bob).

Later in the afternoon, we walked a narrow gravel side road, and turned up more birds including our first purple-breasted sunbird, a calling red-chested flufftail that was a total surprise given the location, scarce swift, and fleeting glimpses of black-billed turaco.  I was able to get a photo in the waning light of 2 great blue turacos.

As the sun began to set we pulled into the ORTPN resthouse--a very modest place on the west side of the forest where we would spend the night.  Dinner was some kind of pureed vegetable soup, talapia, roast potatoes and rice with a sauce. We updated the trip bird list, adding 23 new birds which took us past 800 different species seen and/or heard.  What a mindboggling number given that we had only been birding for 30 days, and one day was really all about gorillas.  Stay tuned!