Tuesday November 21 really was a Red Data Day.

Returning to Osugat, after an ankle injury enforced my absence for eleven days, Dismus and I discovered many changes out on the desert plain. In eastern Africa we are in the midst of what a climatologist might call - an exceptionally productive "short rains event". On the arena, behind the walls of Meru, occasional showers averaging perhaps a few drops more than one, and on every other day, have thrown a green veil across the ochre yellow soils and tempted the desert steppe into partial bloom. Presumably after loitering in the Horn lands, at long last Palearctic bird migrants are arriving, many local passerines are nesting and some butterfly populations are being bountiful, dispersing downwind and westward in search of habitat new.

Most important perhaps to a globalised human brain; after a full year of anticipation, and two final hours of patient 'watching-them-back' field craft; was the eventual discovery of the nest of the soon-to-be very Red Data Beesley's Lark. The two individuals that we had observed on November 10 (see blog entry: Rise Up and Move On) were not in fact a pair in the strict sense, rather a pair and an adult helper. For eleven days ago one of the trio of adults that we saw on November 21 must have been 'on eggs'.

The nest, as you can see from the picture, is a merest scrape, facing south westwards away from the brilliance of the equatorial morning sun, barely secreted in the side of a close-cropped tussock of freshly verdant Sporabilis grass. It embraces two scaly-feathered young, each about eight days old. Their bright gape flanges betray their orientation - bills pointing toward the top.

I found the nest at two thirty p.m. local time (1130 GMT); in 'a brief window' provided by thickening cloud cover and the ensuing afternoon absence of the two parents and their 'trainee' helper. In all spending less than two adrenalin-filled minutes at the nest site, scarcely daring to breathe, simply to record it. And ignoring the "William Tell" Nokia ring tone that began vibrating in my waistcoat pocket as one of my own youngsters tried to call me, modernity insinuating itself into an already overloaded consciousness, insisting I ought to be contactable even way out here.

Of more immediate concern, the beguilingly gentle overcast condition vanished in an instant as a tough easterly breeze arrived, emanating from the skirt of growling black cumulonimbus clouds that were forcing themselves between the giant pillars of Kilimanjaro and Meru. The herald of another earth-refreshing shower. I had been so lucky. Had the sun been shining, one or other of the adults would doubtless have remained behind to shield the chicks from the fierce midday light. I dare not approach the nest whilst the adults were anywhere near. They could easily watch my movements from a distance of several hundred metres, so it is a wonder where and how far they went, that they did not return, if indeed they were close enough to see me. Interestingly, during the morning, each of their more or less continuous foraging bouts was undertaken almost entirely by running and in the same general direction, south eastwards and very slightly upslope, across the immense eroded and broadly corrugated outwash fan of Mount Meru that constitutes this plain.

After recording the moment at the nest I dusted over my foot prints and hurriedly retreated toward the narrow gazelle track from which, at two well-spaced points, I had earlier spent a total of two hours 'scoping the parents as they moved around the nest site. And whence eventually, at a distance of about seventy metres, I had seen the chicks' orange gapes and yellow gape flanges as their heads waggled-up begging for food; so short was the grass. I also noticed the parent waiting at the nest for a faecal sac to be produced, yet on only one occasion saw the adult fly-off low over the sparse sward immediately upon receipt of the bright white package. This was in complete contrast to the stealthy, very hesitant, running of a bird approaching the nest with food in it's beak.

Having hobbled quite quickly back to the Land Rover, about two hundred metres distant, I waited with Dismus at the vehicle track until well after five p.m. to assure ourselves that no damage had been done by my visit to that precious spot. I had wanted to cover any tell-tale trace of the nest visit limped-into the friable dust. Two feathered Beesley's chick bundles would make an excellent meal for either the largely insectivorous Golden Jackal, [0]seen earlier loping across their range, or for the two species each of harrier and kestrel now regularly patrolling the Osugat. The big birds would no doubt bekeen to renew themselves with lark meat after their long migratory flights across the desert wastes of Arabia, Sudan or Somalia. In the event the light rain shower soon arrived and completed the job.

It was interesting in those three afternoon hours at the telescope to watch the response to predators of various other passerines who share the Osugat steppe with Beesley's Lark. At this time of year a few Black-winged Lapwings are usually attempting to nest on this part of the plain; we photographed a nest with single egg on November 10 and several pairs of noisy [0] Crowned Lapwings are always about. Adult Capped Wheatears dance in the air, making an insistent scolding churr, just in front of the lapwings, when the latter forage through the Wheatear's territory. Yet the Red-capped Larks and Grassland Pipits, both of whom should be on eggs at this time, seem, at present at least, to ignore these large plovers.

At about three twenty a Kori Bustard paced sedately through the middle of the nest area. I concentrated hard, 'heart in mouth' as he walked right past the two young larks in their open nest. However the three adult Beesley's joined together for this most serious of incursions. The little russet-rumped birds bounced back and forth a metre or so in the air directly in his path, and scurried about, at times almost between those great yellow legs, their rounded white-fringed 'Cisticola' tails being very conspicuous, and presumably quite distracting to the bustard who was [0]eyeing the ground on either side with evident attention. The larks abandoned the huge juggernaut of a bird as soon as he had passed a few metres beyond the nest site itself.

Earlier, in the bright sunshine of the morning; when we had first discovered that the Beesley's were indeed feeding young; we - two humans and one piebald spaniel gun dog had passed within a metre of the nest. Walking as we were from east to west very similar 'yo-yo flight dancing' behaviour was elicited from the pair. It was accompanied by an excited reedy 'kreip krip krip' from the bouncing birds, calls that are very reminiscent of a small Calidris wader as it flushes. Only minutes later, when we had retired to what we thought was a safe distance, a migrant trio of Steppe Eagles circled overhead sweeping dark and no doubt ominous shadows upon the plain. Both adult larks, with small flies, spiders and ants in their bills, crouched forward completely flat, head-down on the yellow brown earth between the scattered tussocks and the sparse clumps of fine-leaved, creamy pom-pom flowers that are the thrift-like Kylinga sedge.

After the eagles had drifted away a very large and loosely-knit flock of black, brown and white sheep arrived on the scene. They trundled in long smelly columns straight across the nest site, nibbling everywhere as they went, stabbing-up long plumes of honey-coloured dust with their pointed hooves and dropping hundreds of pellets of moist warm dung which in turn attracted a squadron of many score dung beetles, of at least three species, who veered noisily back and fore at the rear of each raggedy ovine caravan. Despite the noise and commotion there was no evidence of anxiety amongst the Beesley birds. Not even when, perhaps interested in the bizarre antics of an alien ornithologist, the two eldest of the spear-wielding shepherd boys, both dazzlingly draped in purple and maroon check shukas, elected to fall behind the caravan and lie down on the pasture, ostensibly sharpening their blades, as it transpired, within five metres of the larks' nest.

It seems likely that, since dust-digging lark and sheep-herding man have shared this remarkably inhospitable niche for many centuries past, a degree of mutual indifference has permeated their relationship. Perhaps, as seems prudent in these days when everything must earn it's future on the global stage, we the rank outsider ornithologists should try to establish "Maasai Lark" not Beesley's Lark as the common name for the pygmy spike-heel of the plain; aka Con Benson's - Chersomanes (albofasciata) beesleyi.