NAIROBI NATIONAL PARK 26th JULY 2019

Dear All,
Samira Khan kindly provided the transport for a day of bird-atlassing
in Nairobi National Park, her friend Farah visiting from India was on
her last day in the country, we met up with Jennifer Oduore queuing
for the entrance processing, and holding our place.

We had initially planned to meet up at 6.00am but some days do not go
quite the way intended. Because of major hold-ups on Ngong Road,
although Langata Road all clear, we did not arrive until 7.00am.
Jennifer was second in line which sounds good, but behind a single
group of forty people in ten different vehicles. We stood for nearly
an hour whilst this rather complicating mass was sorted out, and only
one lady on the check-in in the main office. Then we were processed in
two minutes and outside. But now all of the forty people in that group
had to be processed through the gate and another shambles which took
yet another forty minutes before we were to gain entry!

It was now 8.50am, and we were birding slowly down the main tarmac
road finding a few common bush birds and some happily singing Zanzibar
Greenbuls, when a large truck came up behind us and we pulled slightly
off the road onto the verge, and it passed but immediately the air was
bursting out in violent puffs from our front left tyre, and we were
being deflated in more than one way. We limped to the flat piece of
tarmac next to the signpost to KWS Club. The tubeless tyre had been
sliced as if with a knife and was ruined. We were advised by KWS not
to get out of the car without an armed ranger, but they were efficient
in despatching one, whilst we were out of the car a very large Leopard
crossed the road in front of us, there was the skin of a small but
adult coloured Black-necked Spitting Cobra dangling from the sign next
to us, and more benign was a Long-crested Eagle flying down the road.
We had a few more issues before KWS kindly changed the wheel for us
and got away for birding at 10.15am, having lost the best part of the
day which meant that a number of locations could not be visited in the
time we had remaining.

Our first stop was Nagalomon Dam, where a group fifteen Grey Crowned
Cranes were along the edge, which they shared with no less than 220
Egyptian Geese. On the island were some fifteen Darters with large
pale young and smaller young being tended to in nests. Further along
the shoreline the new Sacred Ibis colony was a mass of activity and
other birds there included Fish Eagle, Bateleur and four Yellow-billed
Storks.