11:28 AM Kenya Bird Watching With Nature Kenya | |
Kenya often referred to as Magical Kenya is a land of contrasts with a variety of landscapes ranging from the coastal beaches and towns of Mombasa through to the forests of Western region and the semi-desert of the Turkana region in the north-west. It also has a diverse culture with a variety of tribes the most notable among tourists being the Maasai tribe. Being crossed by the Equator, it is also in the migratory route of birds fleeing the cold winter months of the northern hemisphere.
Every Wednesday morning, a group of bird watchers meets at the Kenya National Museums in Nairobi, ready to fly to the wild to see the beauties that populate the forests, grasslands and marine habitats. At 9 a.m., they start their journey to a park, a private garden or just prowl the museum grounds. For only Sh200, one gets to enjoy these three-hour expeditions organised by Nature Kenya. Peter Usher, a bird watcher and a photographer, rarely misses out on these excursions to the wild. He says he spots up to 50 species of birds in Nairobi in one outing. Often, the expeditions take them to Lake Nakuru, Lake Naivasha, the Aberdares and Nyahururu. Mr Usher has been watching birds and taking their photographs for over 30 years. In this period, he has photographed 500 species of birds – half the number of species found in Kenya. His ambition is to photograph all the 1,090 species of birds. On weekends, he takes his two cameras and heads into the depths of Ngong and Ololua forests to look for birds. Yet, according to Mr Usher, some of the birds which, just a few years ago, we would wake up to listen to at the crack of dawn are no more. Others are rare and one has to be persistent to see them. Most beautiful One of them is the trojon, which he says is the most beautiful and the most difficult to see. "You will only see it when there is a tree,” he said. He says he has tried to photograph the sulphur-breasted bush flight for three years now without success. He spotted it in the backyard of his house in Nairobi last Wednesday night and, by the time he grabbed his camera, it was gone. "I have seen it four times, but I have failed to photograph it even once,” he said. There were days when tourists and bird watchers – cameras in hand – would flock to bird sanctuaries to savour their beauty. Those were the days when the grey-capped social weaver, the great white pelican, the white-throated bee eater, the pied crow, the olive thrush and the marabou stork were aplenty. The sunbird was not rare, and neither were the streaky seedeater and the Caspian flover. They lived in Kenya’s forests, woodlands, bushlands, grasslands and aquatic habitats. But, today, though they still live in our country, most of the birds are rare to find. Their habitats are diminishing and they are migrating. The grasslands of Kinangop and Molo, for example, are vanishing rapidly due to agricultural activities and bird watchers have to venture deeper into their habitats to see them. Scientists attribute the drop in bird population to degradation, pollution, poisoning, human population growth and climate change. "Human population is expanding rapidly compared to the past and
even now we see species that are well adapted to human populations
showing large declines – such as the hooded vultures,” says Dr Darcy
Ogada, the chairperson of Raptor Working Group of Nature Kenya. bird watching in Uganda Until the 1990s, birds hovered over roofs and the trees nearby. They came home to roost. For this, they became closer to households. Children even used catapults to hunt them down. Not these days. The
birds are disappearing into friendlier habitats. A number of surveys
conducted in various parts of the country indicate that Kenyan birds are
on the verge of extinction and human activity and changing climate are
driving Kenya’s rare species of birds away. list of birds in Uganda Although Kenya has a high number of bird species than Costa Rica, which has 700 against Kenya’s 1,090, the Latin American country receives a higher number of tourists for bird watching. No one could confirm the actual number of tourists who visit birding places such as the Mwea National Reserve, Shaba National Reserve, Lake Nakuru and Cherangany hills to watch the birds. Six species of birds – the Tana River cisticola, the Aberdare cisticola, Sharpe’s longclaw, the William lark, Hinde-Sbabbler, and the Taita thrush – are only found in Kenya and nowhere else in the world, placing Kenya as one of the most attractive tourism sites for visitors who want to see more than the "big five”. "Kenya’s location is unique
because it is along a major migratory highway. Birds fly all the way
from Europe,” said Mr Alfred Owino. birding in Uganda Asked whether there is a specific species of birds in Kenya that attracts tourists, Mr Owino said: "A number of tourists visit Kenya for bird watching in different habitat types spread across the country. Endemic species While some tourists may be interested in particular bird species, especially endemic species, others show interest in huge concentrations of congregatory species such as flamingoes in Kenya’s major lakes in the southern Rift Valley.” Dr Ogada says birding in Kenya is top class and the country is among the top five globally with regard to bird species. But she is worried that this ranking may change soon if more conservation efforts are not made. "As any bird tour guide will tell you, it is getting harder and harder to find the birds. Good habitats are getting wiped out, especially wetlands and grasslands,” she said. Dr Ogada is writing a paper on the decline of hooded vultures across Africa. She says the species has seen declines in the range of 45-73 per cent over the past four decades, yet it is commensal (a form of symbiosis in which one organism derives a benefit while the other is unaffected) in most parts of its range. "Some
threats include poisoning, mostly accidental, trade for witchcraft,
trade for food. Some of the most threatened species in Kenya are raptors
basically because they are on top of the bird food chain,” she says. Kenya vacation packages In Laikipia district and Mara region, raptors such as vultures have recorded a 60-70 per cent decline in the past three decades and scientists blame this on poisoning. "Pastoralists are
using highly toxic though legal pesticides on carcasses of livestock
that have been killed by lions. The vultures come down to feed sometimes
in their hundreds and get wiped out,” she said. Masai mara flying safari Vultures live long, hence they are slow to reproduce and cannot sustain large rates of mortality. Death of birds The construction of power lines could be a milestone, but scientists say it is contributing to the death of birds too. - Masai mara tour Mr Owino says the KWS is in constant negotiation with the Kenya Power and Lighting Company to ensure activity they undertake does not bring down the numbers of birds. All the fun and thrill of watching the beautiful birds of Kenya is facing a threat. There is a dearth in the sanctuary and kingdom of birds in Kenya. Scientists say even though extinction is a reality, most endangered birds have ranges beyond Kenya and there is low likelihood that an individual species will become extinct. Kenya tours By John Makeni @ Nation Media Group | |
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