Saturday, February 19, 2011

Sightseeing up Rubafu way


Kabanga Bay from where the ferry port will be.
As Jenny has beaten me to it (link here) I'll not go into great detail about our Rubafu trip.  Here's a map of where we went and some photos of the scenery up near the point.






Bugabo village for fish factory workers
Kyamukwenge Bay

Bukoba, 19 Feb 2011

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Leal and Audrey with current Nyakato HS boys
In January I was contacted by email by a woman who wanted to do some birding in Bukoba.  Audrey Dickson and her husband Leal - now from near Seattle, Washington - were Volunteer teachers at Nyakato Boys Secondary School (about 7 km north of Bukoba) in 1963-64.  Tanzania became an independent nation on 9 December 1961.  As the British pulled out the educated secondary teachers left their schools to take up posts in the new government's civil service.  Similar events in Uganda and Kenya saw hundreds of USA teachers being sent to East Africa to fill the gaps.  These folk were the forerunners of the US Peace Corp.

Audrey and Leal were newlyweds when they arrived in Bukoba and had their first child here so it always been a special place for them.  They have continued their association with the school and have raised funds for books, computers and lab equipment over the years.  This was their second visit back since their volunteer days.

Jenny and I spent a few hours with them while they were here.  We took them to a couple of Bukoba's finest restaurants (none of which existed in the 1960s), shared their welcome back to the school and showed them some of the region's birds.  Audrey has become a serious birder in recent years.

Leal and Audrey receiving gifts from Nyakato HS staff

With limited time available, on Wednesday morning I took Audrey and Leal to the Kyanyabasa Ferry wetlands on the Ngono River.  We didn't see the Shoebill but did see some great birds including Saddle-billed Stork, Rufous-belled and Purple Herons, Black Crake, Lesser Jacana and Long-toed Lapwing.





Purple Heron

Saddle-billed Stork
It was fascinating to look at the old photos Audrey and Leal had of district scenes from the early 1960s.  We plan to take modern versions of several of their Bukoba photos.
Downtown Bukoba, circa 1963 (Photo by Leal and Audrey Dickson)

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

New bird for the house survey

This morning a lone Bare-faced Go-away-bird popped into the garden for an hour or two.  This is the first record for this Tanzanian Bird Atlas square and one of very few for the Kagera region.  It normally occurs in drier country.  Species 132 for the house survey list.

Bare-faced Go-away-bird
Bukoba - 3 February 2011

Birding at Katoke Teacher Training College

Savannah (Vervet) Monkey
After Minziro this would be my favourite birding location in Kagera.  The college is a large campus with several hundred trainee teachers and staff living and working.  Katoke is about an hour's easy drive down the bitumen to our south.  VSO folk Rhona (English teacher trainer) and Sheila (librarian) always have a coffee or a beer and often lunch for visitors.


Pipit 1

Pipit 2
The campus is on a hill top with eucalyptus plantations and ornamental old gardens planted by the original German owners.  The adjacent land is hilly wooded grassland with some denser scrub along the valley floor.  It's quiet, peaceful, safe and full of birds.  Its also in a different Tanzania Bird Atlas square to Bukoba so I get to contribute knowledge as well as have fun.

Black-lored Babbler

Little Bee-eater

In five surveys now I've seen 86 species in all.  On Saturday Jenny and Rhona were demonstrating their teaching aids to aspiring english and mathematics teachers.  I had a couple of hours to wander the hills.  It was the middle of a warm day so I was not expecting much action but the sight of two Eurasian Hobbys in a tree just as I left the college was a great start.  Over the next two hours birds appeared steadily and I ended up with 50 species.

Singing Cisticola (95% sure)

Palm-nut Vulture

Highlights were Palm-nut Vulture, Tambourine Dove, Blue-breasted Bee-eater, European Bee-eater, Crested Barbet, Western Yellow Wagtail, Yellow-whiskered Greenbul, Brown-backed Scrub Robin, Moustached Grass Warbler, Singing Cisticola, Violet-backed Starling and Thick-billed Weaver.

Bukoba - 3 February 2011
Eurasian Hobby

Minziro Forest for some serious birding

Photo by Jenny
I've been to Minziro three times with company - all lovely women (Jenny, Terri, Leen and Stephanie) genuinely interested in the fauna and flora to be found there, be it the many stunning butterflies, the spectacular Great Blue Turacos, the huge trees or the Angola Pied Colobus monkeys which are found nowhere else in Tanzania.

Red-tailed Monkey (photo by Jenny)

Angola Pied Colobus (photo by Jenny)





As pleasant as this company has been and even though I've seen new birds on each trip I felt I was hampered by the extra (noisy) people and would see more if I could sit quietly in the forest on my own.  So - last Thursday I went back on my own and saw fewer birds than on any of the previous trips...


Moustached Grass Warbler

Olive-bellied Sunbird


The day was sunny and warm and the forest was dead quiet.  The few birds calling did not come close and never showed themselves.  This was the case for several hours and at several different locations.  Eventually I had a break for a coffee and mandazi (local doughnut).  After lunch, in the warmest part of the day I finally started getting on to a few birds and was able to add three of the forest skulkers: Yellow Longbill, Jameson's Wattle-eye and Pale-breasted Illadopsis.  Each of these is found in Ugandan forests and just sneaks across the border into Minziro Forest.





Orchid 1

Orchid 2

So now after four trips I've seen 65 species in the forest and in the adjacent grasslands.  I'll be back as often as possible - hopefully with companions for many visits if they will forgive me for calling them bird scarers.

Fan-tailed Widowbird
Bukoba
3 Feb 2011

Giant snails have enemies too

I showed you our giant snails in a previous blog http://bukobasteve.blogspot.com/2010/08/rain-and-wildlife.html.  With all the rain in recent months we don't really notice them any more.  I doubt if the fully grown individuals have too many enemies.  Few animals would be able to get through the hard shells.  However, they don't start life as monsters.  Recently we have had quite a few small, baby snails creeping around.  The largest is about the size of a half-grown snail you might find in a garden in Victoria after rain.  Thankfully (or we'd be knee-deep in monster snails) these smaller versions are readily available, easy to get at and apparently delicious.

A Crested Barbet has recently taken to having breakfast on our garden wall.  The top of the wall is hard and rough - just perfect for smashing snail shells and holding them still while you extract the beast.  Tonight I watched a normally shy White-browed Coucal snacking on snails in the garden.  Its beak is large enough to do the cracking and dexterous enough to get the prize.

Bukoba
1 February 2011