Birding for Ten; Starlings in Arusha National Park

July in East Africa. It's mid-winter in Arusha National Park at three degrees south and more than a mile above our warming oceans. We're experiencing mornings that do feel chilly right enough. Such that both locals and residents would really appreciate a wind-proof fleece. This past week I've been busy in the cool; early birding with overseas visitors; and local bird-guide training. Spending the chilly early mornings in the misty evergreen forests of Arusha National Park on Meru mountain side. And the warmer afternoons out in dry and dusty Meru-Maasai country, across the northern plains that mantle the national park's perimeter.
Mt Meru: photo Martin Goodeye

Some days the battle-ship grey, four and a half thousand metre, summit of queen Meru remains razor-clear; etched and jagged against a soft blue mid-winter sky, from dawn until dusk. On most days however; even on many that begin sharp bright and clear; a swirling woolly cloud-mass rises with the morning sun; drawn from the humid montane forests protecting Meru's eastern flank; and quickly hides the lofty cone from view. By eight o'clock a huge cream-coloured vapourous turban has settled upon the mountain, slipping down the heathery upper slopes, to form a cloud base at about 2000m asl. And this is where we commence our birding, in the upper storey of the moss-and-lichen-bearded juniper forests.

Each morning our journey leaves Arusha at six thirty so we can enter the park, through the southern Main Gate, at opening time (about 0715 - although in theory it's supposed to open by seven). We leave the park about two p.m. from the northern Momella Gate. In the afternoon we drive down through Ngare Nanyuki village ('the River of Bees') then head westward, descending further, to wrap-up our day-list at the ornithologically famous "Lark Plains" (1,350m), finally leaving "Beesley-land" just on sunset, via the Namanga-Nairobi road at Oldonyo Sambu, so that we're back in Arusha by seven p.m.
The Lark Plains North of Mt Meru: photo Martin Goodeye
Apart from the peculiar pleasure to be derived from circum-navigating the mighty cloud-girt cone of Mount Meru, each day in Arusha National Park is remarkable for the variety of different habitats we visit, and of course for the pantheon of bird species we've encountered therein.

We usually start our 'birding proper' at an upper level. Either at about 2500 metres, in the lowest heathland and swirling mist of Kitoto 'Viewpoint' on the mountain's eastern slope or, somewhat lower, just below the cloud, along the densely forested rim of the adjacent Ngurdoto Crater, at about 1800m.

From Kitoto viewpoint you can descend on foot, accompanied by an armed ranger, because bulky grey buffalo are browsing unseen in these woods, through ancient juniper, podocarpus and african olive woodland. Once outside the park one may walk freely, in the yellow-barked acacia groves near Momella gate (at 1500m) and anywhere, so long as you are quiet and respectful, in the arid acacia-commiphora woodlands (at only 1400m) along the Osugat drainage north east of Lark Plains.

Do you find, as I do, that after a great day's birding, when finally you lie in bed and doze, a kaleidoscope of images, an internal slide show, passes through your mind? And that for days afterwards the recorded highlights return to brighten and enrich your days? Certainly that has been my experience this past week.

Foremost in my mind, even now, are action replays of the encounters we've had with many beautiful afro-tropical starlings.

On a morning last week, at about eight thirty, en route the Ngurdoto Crater rim, you might have been as we were, on a motorable track through the lowest evergreen woodland (1600m) of Arusha National Park. We were walking around a clearing, by the park museum and rest rooms, where crickets and tree-frogs hum and trill from the luxuriant undergrowth. Typically humid-tropical, broad-leaved trees reach up into the overcast sky of morning. Here if one waits patiently for a few minutes, a hungry bird party should come through on its morning circuit. Black Cuckoo-shrike, femaleAfrican Golden Oriole: photo Anabel HarriesThese Arusha park bird parties frequently seem to be separated into two different groups by size. The feeding flocks of the larger-sized birds should include (especially if there is a fruiting tree nearby) among an exotica of insect-hunting Ret'z Helmet-shrikes, placid, slow-moving Black Cuckoo-shrikes and brilliant 'wintering' African Golden Orioles; our first starling - the largely frugivorous Kenrick's.

Poeoptera kenricki is a somewhat atypical starling, the shortest-bodied of all the world's starlings (at 15 cm or 6"), and in truth is not necessarily immediately recognizable as a starling. Do not bother looking for chestnut primary patches on these birds. Only the females have any red in the wing; and this is very hard to see, even in flight, especially in the morning gloom, and the pigmented area is so slight that it's all but invisible on the closed wing and utterly so when these tree-top haunting birds are perched, out on a dead branch, silhouetted against the sky. The best way to get onto Kenrick's is by appreciating their structure - by shape. These are clearly short-bodied, slim-looking birds with quite long, narrow, parallel-sided tails and small heads with delicate-looking bills and feet, such that they might even suggest, at a first glance, one of the african Black Flycatchers (Melaenornis). Thankfully since they perch up for long periods they often permit a leisurely study. Kenrick's Starling in northern Tanzania is perhaps easiest to find in the mountain forests of the Usambaras, around Amani village and they are frequent at Maweni Farm Lodge, or here at Ngurdoto Crater in Arusha National Park.

Waller's Starling (Onychognathus walleri) is a far more widespread, more abundant and more easily seen frugivorous forest starling, both here in Arusha National Park, on Kilimanjaro and in the Usambara mountains. Although like Kenrick's it's chiefly a tree top dweller, both sexes have red eyes and prominent rufous primary patches, but when that is not visible then you should be seeing a chunkier, broad-tailed starling, much glossier than Kenrick's and far noisier. Indeed Waller's cannot keep quiet for long and their rich fluty 'oriolus' wolf-whistles are a constant and pleasing feature of the podocarpus-juniperus woodland of this and other montane forest reserves, especially between the months of June and November.

Red-winged Starling: photo Anabel Harries
Red-winged Starling Onychognathus morio is typically the first starling species that is seen by visitors to Tanzania since, by being an obligate petrophile (as they would say in the "Birds of Africa"), i.e. it loves cliffs and rocks, it has taken to the big cement buildings of the 'western-style' towns, which have sprung up across the land, in the past hundred years. Fittingly, petrol stations are a very good place indeed to see this rock-loving bird; right up close! It's a big gregarious bird with a long tail, nearly always whistling, and very fond of figs.

Superb Starling: photo Martin GoodeyeThe dusty Maasai plains north of Arusha appear to be filled, at this time of year, with loose mixed flocks of chunky short-tailed more typically 'starling-shaped' Spreo starlings that nowadays are placed in the genus Lamprotornis along with all the other amazing african glossy starlings.

The two commonest glossy starlings here are not just glossy, they are iridescent, jeweled in an exotic play of shifting blues and purples, set-off perfectly by their brick or ginger red 'carotinoid' underparts.

One cannot fail to meet with that 'safari-icon-bird' the Superb Starling, (now Lamprotornis - formerly Spreo - superbus), all around the park's perimeter and in fact throughout the drier portions of safariland.

In quite a few places, as at Lark Plains, it occurs in mixed flocks together with the less well-known, yet equally fabulous, purple haze of the red-eyed Hildebrandt's Starlings (L. hildebrandti).

Hildebrandt's Starling: photo Anabel Harries

In the lowest driest, yellow-earth areas of Tanzania's eastern Maasailand, especially around the three metre spires of termite mounds, or bright green fruiting salvadora bushes, small numbers of the similarly-sized, yet by contrast almost puritan, or maybe just refreshingly modest, white-shock-eyed, grey-brown and fawn Fischers Starling: photo Martin GoodeyeFischer's Starling (L. fischeri) make an appearance. This starling, which is only very slightly glossed with green, is a north east African speciality that extends at most only a couple of hundred kilometres into Tanzania.

Also in the dry zones, yet rather scarce in the north at this cool time of year, is another starling of somewhat sombre hue, for which the far rarer Fischer's might be mistaken at a considerable distance. This is the Wattled Starling, Creatophora cinerea, in shape a very Sturnus i.e. 'Common Starling' starling-like bird, that follows the great ungulate herds on their seasonal migrations. They frequently descend onto Maasailand in hundreds of thousands and, in wetter years like last, breed in good numbers near the northern border of Arusha National Park when grasshoppers, upon which it depends, are abundant. In January 2007, immersed in those greening, grasshoppering, El Nino rains, hundreds of pairs nested around the wonderful Hemingway's Camp (recently established by Hoopoe Safaris) on the abnormally verdant plains of West Kilimanjaro ranch. Groups of garrulous, jostling males made for a truly fantastic sight as they displayed upon the stunted green whistling thorn acacias, wings flapping, floppy flat black wattles all-a-quiver, and as they sang; surely those trembling wattles must have tickled their bald golden pates?

Violet-backed Starling: photo Anabel HarriesIn contrast to the post-DNA taxonomic revelations that have recently almost swept-clean the genus Spreo, the bird we now call Violet-backed Starling has succeeded in remaining in the same genus - Cinnyricinclus - for some considerable time. The english name of C. leucogaster however has suffered many changes - through both time and space, as if somehow in keeping with the erratic socio-economic winds that have been blowing across Africa during these past hundred years. This is another small starling, a berry-eating, long-distance migrant with two quite separate populations in Africa, a northern and a southern, that is certainly somewhat rare around Arusha at this cool time of year.

Last but by no means least are the two small piebald frugivorous starlings in the genus Pholia: Abbott's and Sharpe's. These strictly evergreen forest birds are the dainty lightweights of the starling family; an Abbott's weighing-in at only 34 grams (1.2 oz), the lightest of the family; and typically they are the hardest to find, at least around Arusha.

Abbot's Starling: photo Martin GoodeyeBoth are East African endemics confined to Kenya and Tanzania, both are certainly quite rare, nobody really knows, and since they require suitable cavities in fine old trees for nesting, and only at medium to upper elevations in mountain forest, they have definitely been at the 'sharp or butt end' of humanity's incredible population expansion, and the digging-in of 'andean potatoes' across the afro-montane zone, during the past century.

Abbotts Starling, female: photo Martin GoodeyeAbbotts Starling, male: photo Martin GoodeyeI know of only two really reliable sites for Abbott's Starling on Mount Meru, at both of which in late July breeding seems imminent. Just yesterday we watched a singing male, outside the park, high in a giant fig tree on the very edge of shamba land, far above the haze of safari city. It may just be that they are afforded some protection by the fact that the Maasai and Warusha peoples, who live around Mount Meru, continue to hold many Ficus tree species sacred; upon whose fruit these starlings feed and where sometimes they nest; so that venerable fig tees continue, even today, to line the narrow watercourses which spill down Meru's flank. The great fig trees, whose 'strangling' aerial roots and stems, are seen by the Warusha (sensibly I'd say) as an essential connection between heaven and earth, are consequently the only arboreal giants left unmolested 'outside the parks' in these highly-populated hills.

The dumpy little broad-billed Sharpe's Starling (P. sharpii) is, rather like a male Abbott's blackish-blue above with a staring yellow eye, but below it's a rich creamy cinnamon-buff intensifying from bill to vent. Although more widespread in the North East African region, it is in my experience, even more capricious in its appearance that Abbott's. The tallest lichen-festooned trees of the Ngurdoto Crater rim in Arusha National Park, and the eastern ridge alongside the Magamba sawmill track in the West Usambaras, certainly remain the most reliable places in Tanzania in which to find it. Unobtrusive and, by comparison with others, quite retiring in habits, it's prone to appearing suddenly in a distant tree top. To an unsuspecting 'northern birder', it can look somewhat Waxwing-like in bounding flight, or you might almost dream you've seen a grosbeak vanishing from sight. Not so - it's Pholia sharpii. So always scan those treetops and, as ever - watch the skies!

View from Meru: photo Anabel Harries

Photos by James Goodey and Anabel Harries  |  More starlings? See The Tale of Two Starlings  |  More on Arusha National Park