Mombasa Bird Walk

The golf course is really majestic with grass like velvet, all grown from seed and transplanted in squares, a great joy to the many hundreds of Yellow Wagtails, the most numerous bird but unfortunately Indian House Crows coming a close second despite the ongoing and enthusiastic trapping. The ponds and streams are attracting some waders, not in great numbers, but in ones and twos, namely Common and Wood Sandpipers. An African Jacana has taken up residency on one of the waterways and we were told that there are swallows nesting under the small bridges. Black Headed Herons abound as do Long Tailed Cormorants. Unfortunately the large natural dam is very deep and with no wading space so only Cormorants there. A second dam under construction will, hopefully, under the eagle eye of our resident birder, incorporate a wading area. Woolly Necked Storks flew overhead and a single Fish Eagle. A flock of Violet Backed Starlings in one of the big trees and a small flock of White Throated bee-eaters. Other migrants were Eurasian Orioles in the garden at the admin. centre, quite a few Spotted Flycatchers, in fact the most I have seen this year in one place! Hundreds of Barn Swallows dipping in the pools. Plenty of Black Capped Tchagras calling and other more common birds, all totalling 25 in the 2 hours we were there. This is a massive site, in the words of one of the birders "like something off a film set"! Still a lot of distrubance especially with the building of the airstrip but hopefully with all the waterways, surrounding scrub, large indigenous trees and gardens it will eventually become a great birding area, hopefully on the scale of the Windsor Golf and Country Club! Wishing you all happy birding. (Marlene Reid - Mombasa)