NAIROBI NATIONAL PARK 11th February 2014

Dear All,
On 11th February, with a rendezvous with Jennifer Oduori at the Main
Entrance to Nairobi National Park at 6.30am, and an en route
rendezvous to collect Nicholas from Ngong Forest at 6.20am at the
Galleria, Mike Davidson and myself left Langata in what we thought was
good time at a little after 6.00am.
We finally got through the gate into the Park at 9.00am, having been
caught up in a major major traffic jam, that apart from Nairobi also
affected most of the Nairobi district, and the most amazing thing is
that nobody knows why. All roads were completely gridlocked and moved
a few metres every few minutes. Jennifer had been looking around the
car park where there was an exceedingly noisy Emerald Cuckoo.

As we were so late we gave KWS Mess a miss, and a very brief pause at
Ivory Burning Site where there was nothing of note, but did see a
Long-crested Eagle on the way.

On the way to Nagalomon Dam, we had an Ayre's Hawk-Eagle, a fairly
dark bird with heavily banded underwings, and headlights as bright as
a Booted Eagle.

Our first real birding was at Nagalomon Dam, and almost our first bird
there, was a species I had never seen in the Park before, an
attractive Grey-headed Gull. There is a record in the Harvey list, but
it is completely uncited, and so here is the official documented first
record for NNP with a photo on top! The bird never landed, it just
flew round and round the dam, not even seen to pick anything off the
surface.
Also at the dam was a single African Darter, eleven Black-crowned
Night-Herons were in the trees, maybe the recent rain has brought them
back to breed again, a sub-adult Fish Eagle was along the causeway, an
adult Bateleur was also speeding by. There were nine Green Sandpipers
in a cluster, and many more Greens were seen than usual, that it could
be indicative of some return.