11th JANUARY 2014, THIKA SETTLING PONDS AND SEVEN SISTERS ROAD

Dear All,
On Saturday 11th, Nigel Hunter and myself departed his place at
6.40am, arriving at the ponds in seventy-five minutes. It was an
entirely sunny day.

There was much water in many of the ponds, and one was in fact flowing
over the bank into a lower pond. The first pond near the gate was low
with much mud. This was the most attractive for waders, and held most
of the smaller species, numbering over 800 Little and two Temminck’s
Stints, two Ringed but six Little Ringed Plovers including one adult
already in breeding plumage, which seems extremely early for such
transition.
Other waders on the ponds were 300 Ruff, just fifteen Marsh, 150 Wood,
10 Common and just one Green Sandpiper. Of the African waders, at
least fifty each of both Spur-winged and Blacksmith Plovers, four
Long-toed looked like a family unit with two adults and two immatures,
not many Black-winged Stilts and a scattering of Three-banded Plovers.
 Also 220 White-winged Black and five breeding plumage Whiskered Terns
were feeding and resting on mud.

Of the waterfowl, one-hundred each of Red-billed Teal and Garganey,
seventy White-faced Whistling Duck, twenty Northern Shoveler, ten
Yellow-billed Duck, eight Hottentot Teal, five Southern Pochard and a
small female Northern Pintail.

Other birds included ten Black-crowned Night-Herons roosting on the
Falcons-claw Acacias on the banks, three Eurasian Marsh Harriers, and
in the surrounding vegetation eight Sedge and two Great Reed Warblers.
Every year around Nairobi these two species seem to make their first
appearance in early January, where have they been before this?

Along the road from the Garissa Road, one Turkestan Shrike, three
Northern Wheatear, and twenty Yellow Wagtails but only flava and lutea
seen.