Hi Everyone,
Sorry, this is a long one! I recently spent 10 days at Lake Turkana from the 29th of November. We flew in and out of Lodwar and then travelled from Labolo on the western shore down to the southern end before heading back up to Central Island and the Ferguson's Gulf area. The area had just started getting some rain. The local people have lost a great proportion of their livestock over the last 2 years and there was literally no grazing left. The area to the west of the lake is totally devoid of any wildlife these days other than birds. The rest has long been used as targets for AK-47 firing practice! Some of the big luggas in the area were in flood when we drove out which was very unusual to see in this incredibly dry area. The rain around the lake effects the wind at this time of year so you get much less consistent wind than normal. It is also much more unpredictable and the lake would go from a mill pond to a roaring ocean over the course of an hour.
We also got an opportunity to visit the delta made by the Kerio River as it enters the lake. The river was in flood which was interesting, discharging large amounts of deep brown coloured water into the lake. There is a surprising area of papyrus and reed swamp here as well as lots of flooded prosopsis woodland along the lake shore. We were very pleasantly surprised to see hippo footprints on the shore here. Hippos have virtually vanished from the lake and only cling on in the Omo delta and in a few groups in Sibiloi. We had heard rumours of them at the Kerio delta so it was great to see confirmed footprints. The local fisherman said that there were up to 10 of them present but it was impossible to verify this. In the reeds we saw Jacanas which I have only seen in the Omo Delta before with regards to Turkana. There were other reed living birds present including some unidentified warblers. The trip was focussed on water resources so birding was only done as an aside but this area certainly holds some very interesting and probably overlooked bird habitat to investigate on another trip.
The Lake has declined from a several decade high point at the beginning of the year and has fallen steadily by just under 2 metres in total. The level would ordinarily started to rise anytime from June onwards when the traditional Omo floods occur but this year the filling of the Gibe III dam has absorbed all of the flood water and the lake has continued to fall steadily. Gibe III will take at least another year to fill so the lake could feasibly fall by another couple of metres over this time which is a concern because Ferguson's Gulf is now less than 2 metres deep over its entire extent and will therefore dry up were this to occur.
The fishing intensity and pressure in the Gulf is unbelievable. There are nets everywhere and we counted in excess of a hundred boats. The shallow water and associated algal production make the Gulf the most productive fishing area on the lake. The high water of recent years has meant that much of the invasive prosopsis woodland along the lake shore has been flooded. This has been highly beneficial for the fish and other wildlife because it provides an excellent refuge for young fish, birds and crocodiles, and we saw more evidence of young crocodiles around the lake than we have seen in a long time. The prosopis reduces the fishing pressure as it destroys people's nets so it actually seems to have some positive benefits for the shoreline of Turkana! This flooded woodland may not be a feature of Turkana again because the damming of the Omo will prevent the annual flood that has traditionally triggered the fish breeding cycles through the inundation of the shoreline. Time will tell.
The bird life in the gulf is unbelievable. There are terns everywhere; whiskered, gull-billed as well as a good number of Caspians. Grey headed and lesser black backed gulls were also present in good numbers. There were hundreds of great white pelicans as well as large numbers of cormorants, various herons, and egrets. The cormorants all seem to commute over daily to the Gulf from their roosts on Central Island. I wonder where they will all be feeding if and when the Gulf inevitably dries up?
We saw a number of different reef herons around the lake, all dark morph birds. These are a regular feature of our trips to the lake. On the topic of reef herons have any members of this group ever seen dimorphic egrets anywhere other than at the Coast in Kenya? I am convinced that I have seen one at Magadi but in the book it says they are 'strictly marine'.
There were large numbers of barn swallows and yellow wag tails pretty much everywhere around the lake. We saw eurasian marsh harriers regularly around the lake, particularly so on Central Island. I saw a pair of Egyptian Vultures along some cliffs at the Lake's southern end which was quite unusual. One was an adult and the other seemed to be immature. I saw a northern carmine beeater and a number of blue cheeked beeaters at the Kerio delta area.
Central Island is an unbelievable place for birding, unlike any I have been to in Kenya before. The grass cover and wild flowers are beautiful to see because of the absence of any grazers. This was my third trip there. It really needs better protection from the local fishermen than KWS are providing with their intermittent and random visits from the mainland at Kalokol. There are huge Great Cormorant breeding colonies around Crocodile Lake on the Island with nearly fledged youngsters. In addition there were breeding yellow billed storks, grey herons, spoonbills and sacred ibis. The bird numbers and the noise around the lake is reminiscent of some bird colonies in much colder northern climates. The only predators are the local fishermen and the ever present fan-tailed ravens.
There are a good number of white browed coucals present in the dense mswaki thickets on the island. I often wonder how on earth they made it to the island when there is a total absence of other skulking birds such as boubous, tchagras, scrub robins and an absence of birds such as hornbills and go away birds. The distance to the mainland is at least 15 kilometres. Do you think that a coucal could fly this distance? Their haphazard flights between low bushes has never filled me with the confidence that they could achieve this? The only other option is that they arrived after stowing away on floating masses of reeds coming from the Omo Delta. We saw a number of huge such rafts on this trip one of which was several hundred metres across and was covered in perching egrets. These break away from the delta and make their way down the lake, wind permitting.
There are no big trunked trees on the island so this may explain the lack of hornbills? Namaqua doves, mourning doves and speckled pigeons are numerous as are the white bellied morphs of the variable sunbird (the only place where I have consistently and reliably seen this variant in Kenya).
Marsh harriers were numerous and there appear to be year round resident ospreys, fish-eagles, peregrines and fox kestrels. Another bird of interest here was a nightingale which I saw twice in a mswaki bush. Last time we were here there was a willow warbler in the same thicket.
The Flamingo lake on the island was sadly very short of Flamingos on this trip. In July 2014 we counted over 20,000 Lessers but this time there were only about 50 Greaters and a couple of injured Lessers that had been left behind. These injured birds had broken wings and legs which I am sure were the result of local fishermen who target the flamingos with rocks for some extra protein. Flamingo lake is no deeper than 5 metres at its deepest extent. Its level is dependent on the main lake via underground hydraulic pressure. A 5 metre drop in the main lake level, which is quite feasible when the effects of Omo water extractions for irrigation are compounded with those of Gibe III, will mean that this valuable flamingo habitat will dry up entirely.
There were little wading birds present in large numbers all around the Lake. These included large numbers of common greenshanks, little stints, ringed plovers, white fronted plovers, common sandpipers and kittlitz's plovers. As well as smaller numbers of ruffs. I also saw a single Curlew and a pair of avocets on the western shore of the Lake.
Lake Turkana is an incredible haven for bird life and the developments on the Omo and any planned developments on the Kerio river are certain to have very significant impacts on the resident and migrant bird communities that utilise the Lake.
best wishes and merry christmas to all of you
Patrick
Dr Patrick Avery MRCGP, MBChB, MRCS (2009), DTM&H