Birding Africa Today: Perfecting the One Hour Sit

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Location of my "One Hour Sit" it's a camping stool on the broad track by base of telegraph pole

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Try the One Hour Sit and See!

View westwards across "the Migrant Gap" to forested Monduli Mountain 28/12/09

This vantage point is on northern edge of coffee coppice at Kimemo 'Bird Observatory' Arusha, northern Tanzania.

Broad-crowned trees are Cordia africana (Kiswahili: Mringa mringa) and narrower ones Grevillea robusta (Australasian)

Site was watched today from 1100 ->1300 (28/12)

30 bird spp. in one hour until noon.

37 bird spp. in two hours (i.e. seven additionals by 1300hrs).

A rule: "Not allowed up for a pee until you get to thirty!"

New Site Record: seven Great White Pelicans circling over Ngaramtoni (i.e. due north of site at ca 1.5 km) 1255 hrs.

Also 'of notable interest':

12 Sacred Ibis, 2 Green Sandpiper (from nearby waste water pool), a sub-adult Ayres's Hawk-Eagle hunting pigeons, 4 Eurasian Marsh Harrier, Steppe Buzzard, Long-crested Eagle, Augur Buzzard, two Spotted Flycatcher - apparently they dropped-in with a grey rain shower at noon, 4 Black-headed Heron, 1 Alpine Swift, 25 Nyanza Swift, 4 Black Saw-wing, 12 Jackson's Weaver, 25 Speke's Weaver, 10 reichenowi Baglafecht Weaver, erlangeri Common Quail (h/o), 2 Black-crowned Tchagra, 2 Arrow-marked Babbler, 2 ambiguus Tropical Boubou, 3 Common Fiscal, 6 Winding Cisticola and 30+ Olive Pigeon feeding on the ripening Cordia berries.

Mammals: Kirk's Dik Dik, Hare sp., Ochre Bush Squirrel, Egyptian Mongoose

Invertebrate highlights: a large rufous-thorax/white abdomen bee-fly Bombomyia discoidea and a big emergence of an Acraea sp. butterfly illustrated below on Commelina.

Dog is Pi she's the ace quail-and-locustella-hemipode-and-corncrake flusher!