Re: A very lucky day!

Thank you everyone for the wonderful comments. Interesting the lesser jacana were seen at the golf club James! I live quite close to it, and visit a couple of times in a year, but I haven't seen them there yet. Perhaps the excessive and growing number of house crows at the golf club(about 300 birds) keep many birds away from the wonderful ponds. Also interesting to hear about pemba river wetland. Don, do you have GPS coordinates for the wetland? It would be a lovely place to visit and see what it currently has. And also interesting the carmines aren't seen often in North coast. I've seen them in good numbers from Diani all the way to Lunga Lunga.

Mustafa Adamjee

On Mon, 30 Sep 2019, 3:52 pm Mustafa Adamjee, <madamjee.ma@gmail.com> wrote:

Greetings all,

I hosted a Saturday morning birdwalk at Tiwi pond on the 28th of September. We started early at 7:30am. A flock of Northern carmine bee-eaters were the first birds we saw as we branched off the main road, with an adult feeding a young bird(pic attached). On reaching the pond, we saw it was full with water lilies and the water level was a bit higher due to a rainy week. The resident African jacana, African pygmy geese and Little grebes were the first birds we saw. The grasses close to the waters edge had quite a few common waxbills, Bronze and B&W mannikins, zanzibar bishops and pin-tailed whydahs. As we searched for the resident white-backed ducks amongst the water lilies. I spotted a smallish jacana, which at first I thought was a young African Jacana. But on closer inspection, turned out to be a Lesser Jacana!!(pic attached) We all enjoyed watching this rarity feed alone for quite a while, before it disappeared into the tall grasses. Other birds we saw were: White-faced whistling ducks, Black kite, Common and wood sandpipers, greenshanks, ringed plovers, wooly-necked storks, grey and purple herons, a painted snipe and an Immature Palm-nut vulture soaring above. The small forest patch on the far side of the pond gave us: yellow-bellied greenbuls, broadbilled roller, lizard buzzard, Little sparrowhawk, silvery-cheecked hornbills and East coast boubou.
In the afternoon (around 4pm) I visited the Kongo estuary, it was full of people and I wasn't expecting to see much, I couldn't have been more wrong! Just close to the river inlet a group of small waders were resting(pic attached), they included: common and curlew sandpipers, greater and lesser sandplovers, ruddy turnstones, sanderlings. As I watched them I saw a bird with a very flappy flight, flying over me, I quickly took some shots with my camera and turned out it was a Eurasian Oystercatcher(pic attached), I had seen the last one in early 2017. I proceeded to walk towards Tiwi beach and saw another group of waders many were the same with an addition of grey plovers, whimbrels, and a Bar-tailed godwit(pic attached). Not wanting to disturb the flock I started walking back, when 2 Crab plovers flew over the surf and landed on the beach just ahead of me(pic attached).
It's definitely the first time I've seen such a number of special waders pass by Diani on a busy Saturday afternoon. Sorry for such a long story, but thank you for reading it.

Mustafa Adamjee