Dear all

a note from a very amateur birder.

Young Joseph Kariuki [my fundi !] and I had a three day safari to Saaki
river, Sokoke forest and Mida creek last weekend. All in all I clocked
70 different species and saw 25 new birds. Joseph was not far behind as
it was his first visit there.

We were fortunate that we caught up with Colin Jackson on Saturday with
a group of Nairobi birders , whom we accompanied to Sabaki river. We saw
a marrvellous variety and large number of birds amongst the sand dunes .
There were many madagascar pratincoles flying inland over head , we
reckon upto 500 .New birds for me were the Senegal plover,red knecked
falcon, plain night jar,greater painted snipe ,sooty gull,white fronted
plover,and saunders tern.

Our trip into the Arubuko-sokoke forest the next day was with David
Ngala , an amazing guide who is retiring shortly. We had a bout 6 hours
meandering in the south part . We saw amongst others northern
brownbul,zanzibar sombre greenbul,forest batis ,blue mantled flycatcher,
mombasa woodpecker,tiny greenbul,fischers greenbul,plain backed sunbird,
little yellow flycatcher,green barbet , which was very vocal,eastern
nicator,redtailed ant thrush , veraux's eagle owl , which I have good
shots on video , and a bateleur

Our final trip was into mida creek and we waded into the low tide sands
. Crab-plovers,whimbrels. a greater sandplover and a terek sandpiper ,
were seen in just under 2 hours.

A great trip which tells me even more what a great resource we have in
Kenya.!

Mike Davidson

[MD   NIC BANK]