Dear All,
On 14th June, Ben Allen kindly conveyed Fleur Ng’Weno, Jennifer Oduori
and myself on a local trip to Endashant. This is an excursion that
usually smacks of harassment, outrageous demands by the residents, and
causes bad feeling so at the end of the day you leave not as happy as
you really want to be. Not so on this occasion as I will relate a
little later, we met only the nicest of people and made friends, also
a contact for anyone who wants to camp on our friends site and what a
view.

We met up at Galleria and set off for Ngong, with hardly any traffic
we were through Kibiko and on the edge of the Rift in no time. Amongst
the species we hoped to see here was the race albicaudus of
White-headed Barbet. There were a couple in some figs and they really
spoilt us (see images). Now this is not the same as what we have been
calling White-headed Barbet in Nairobi. That bird is the race senex,
but BirdLife have elevated it to a species Lybius senex, no longer
White-headed Barbet but the birds on the Ngongs are real White-headed
Barbets living mere kilometres from senex. Very unfortunately BirdLife
called the bird Brown-and-White Barbet, could you possibly be any more
boring for such a startling all white bird apart from all blackish
wings and a narrow dark brown line across the upper back, it is now
Snowy Barbet which gives a real description that makes this barbet
unique in the world, the whiteness!
The differences between the albicaudus on the Ngongs (and into the
rift south to Shompole and north to Nakuru, and in west Rift Oloololo
Escarpment in Mara patchily north to Malaba), is that the breast to
lower belly is all dark brown, but this is all pure white in Snowy,
the wings are brown rather than blackish of Snowy, which lacks the
large white blotches on the shoulders and coverts of albicaudus
instead being all uniform dark. Whereas the Snowy has a very thin
brown band across the extreme upper back, albicaudus has an
extensively brown back from just below the nape almost to the start of
the rump. There are claims of hybridisation between the two, but this
seems to be erroneous and the two forms living so close, you would
expect to see a strange mixture, but plumages of each is constant.
Other birds here were Lyne’s Cisticola, Abyssinian Black Wheatear and
Cardinal Quelea (but they were everywhere and abundant at the swamp).
At the bottom of the hill was a strange sight of a pair of Anteater
Chats! The road was not nearly as bad as anticipated, as this can be a
very difficult road after downpours and we continued to the lava
cliffs just before Endashant. Very birdy, and from the one spot quite
a good representation of chats and thrushes with a showy Bare-eyed
Thrush, White-browed Scrub-Robin, Spotted Morning Thrush, Cape
Robin-Chat, Cliff-Chat and more Abyssinian Black Wheatears. It was
quite a noisy spot! We had a White-headed Saw-wing here, but had them
at two other places during the day, including a group of four. This is
quite an incursion for this western species, six birds in a day would
usually amount to three years of observations around Nairobi in normal
years!

The first marsh at Endashant was a huge sedge bed shallow basin,
Yellow-crowned Bishops found this much to their liking. We met some
herders here, and they were most pleasant, and Jennifer took time to
explain the Pentad Atlas Project. After a short walk we continued on
to the main swamp and spent a couple of hours on the lakeshore. It too
was an enormous sedge bed, but the water was deeper and there were
open patches. Ducks included both Whistling-Ducks, many Red-billed
Teal, half-dozen Yellow-billed and a dozen Knob-bills. But this is a
seasonal wetland and we were too early, after it had not so long ago
been a dry basin it had not had time for all the small organisms to
multiply and was quite sterile. In all the time there we did not hear
or see a frog, the only heron was a Black-headed, the only waders were
a pair each of Blacksmith Plover and African Jacana, and the only
rails were numerous noisy but secretive Common Moorhens. There were
three Crowned Cranes. The sedges though were teaming with Cardinal
Queleas and Yellow-crowned Bishops.
The only dragonflies we saw were the four on the image. But the
standard was very high, and they were resting on fallen acacia twigs
in the shade of an acacia next to an open area of water. The
threesome, top is a young male Broad Scarlet (Crocothemis erythraea),
below this on the left is Barbet (Philonomon luminans) called this in
South Africa because the colour and pattern resemble Crested Barbet,
and right a young male Strong Skimmer (Orthetrum brachiale). The image
to the right from the same place is a male Deceptive Widow
(Palpopleura deceptor). So what was lacking in numbers made up in
quality. There were a few Global Skimmers (Pantala flavescens) in the
general area.

The butterflies were not very varied, but there were clouds of Zebra
Blues (Leptotes) on the mud along the shore. Flying with these were a
few Blue or Eyed Pansy (Junonia orythia), such a stunning butterfly,
the image is below the Deceptive Widow. Keeping to the right on the
montage, just below the Pansy is another species of blue that was
associating with the Zebra Blues. I took a photo believing at the time
that it was the only species of Pied Pierrot found in the Nairobi
region (sorry no common name for this one) Tuxentius calice, when I
downloaded the images it just did not look right and so I consulted
three different publications and all three confirmed that this was the
Black Pied Pierrot (Tuxentius melaena). However it is more exciting
than that. Larsen states the butterfly is coastal, extending inland to
Yatta Plateau and Taita Hills! This would appear to be a first in this
whole region, but Larsen was produced in 1991 and reprinted in 2000.
Nothing has been published on the regional butterflies since then, but
maybe it has since been found in this area.

If you look on the montage, second row far left is a frog. This is
another story. Ten years ago I found an identical frog to this one in
IUCN near a flooded rock pool but low in some vegetation. It is a
Leptopelis Tree-Frog, readily identified by the vertical pupil. I sent
the image around to the experts, and they could not identify it. The
closest they could get was Leptopelis bocagei, which is a dull brown
frog, and suggested this was a green form. Nothing happened until
about four years ago when Fleur with her Wednesday Bird Walk found one
at Uhuru Gardens, and although images were sent off to the right
people, it came to the same result. Now this at Endashant is the
third. You would imagine that if this is a species that is usually
brown, why have we never seen brown individuals, just these bright
green animals. It does suggest that this is still an undescribed
species. An interesting thing about bocagei, which could equally apply
to this beast is that it cocoons itself underground and aestivates for
long periods of drought.

The last image bottom left is the view from the proposed campsite, and
it is truly quite stunning. Whilst we were on the lakeshore, a Maasai
gentleman greeted us and was a pleasure to meet. We talked much about
the region, and he obviously enjoyed nature (even carried a pair of
binoculars). We could see that this man was a great contact for anyone
wanting to visit the area. On the walk back he showed us the site he
proposed for camping, and had us tasting some fruit, which were very
tart. We did not know what the bush was.
Stephen was his name and he was the regional Pastor, and owned a
sizeable portion of land. We arranged that we would advise just how
interesting his area was, and as you can see it really is, for all
branches of wildlife, and that we would publicize his details as a
contact.
So anyone wishing to visit Endashant, and not having hassles should advise

Stephen Parmuat Ole Mparingoi
<stempar@yahoo.com>
Phone 0722-397351 or 0732-018919

…..of their intended visit.

Fleur researched the fruit we ate, and advised it was Zizyphus, this
is the only known food-plant of Dark Pied Pierrot butterflies!

Best to all
Brian