Beesley's Lark

photo Zul

13 February 2007

The invitation to stay at Usa River, on an abandoned sisal estate, in our friends’ ‘datcha’ was too good an opportunity to miss. The house was converted from several workers’ cottages and apart from the absence of mod cons such as electricity, fridge and clean water was ideal for a complete break for the whole of February. The nearest neighbours were twenty minutes’ walk away. Bliss! We had the generous use of an old but excellent Range Rover which allowed access to the nearby village and, occasionally, Arusha town, but Kay and I spent most of the time on the veranda just watching nature happen, or strolling round the rapidly re-wilding estate. A brief three-day ‘safari’ to Tarangire and Manyara, and three visits to beautiful Arusha National Park provided a wider view of the area. But without doubt the highlight was a day out with James.

13 February 2007

The invitation to stay at Usa River, on an abandoned sisal estate, in our friends’ ‘datcha’ was too good an opportunity to miss.  The house was converted from several workers’ cottages and apart from the absence of mod cons such as electricity, fridge and clean water was ideal for a complete break for the whole of February.  The nearest neighbours were twenty minutes’ walk away.  Bliss! We had the generous use of an old but excellent Range Rover which allowed access to the nearby village and, occasionally, Arusha town, but Kay and I spent most of the time on the veranda just watching nature happen, or strolling round the rapidly re-wilding estate.  A brief three-day ‘safari’ to Tarangire and Manyara, and three visits to beautiful Arusha National Park provided a wider view of the area.  But without doubt the highlight was a day out with James.

Recent Reports - February 2007
African Cucko-Hawk: Photo Anabel Harries
A female African Cuckoo-Hawk in Arusha National Park and other smaller gems.

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.

At last yesterday, Friday November 10, at ten in the morning, Dismus and I trundled away from the seething mass of bureaucratic compromises that daily permeates existence here in the city of Arusha. In less than an hour, fossil oils fueling the old blue Land Rover, we had put a million years between ourselves and the dark-day rain puddles of the twenty first century African street. Yes! We were back in the sparkling silence of a little desert, the one that is called Angyata Osugat.

Angyata in the Maasai language means a treeless expanse - a type of steppe to the ecologically-minded; and Osugat their name for the seasonal watercourse (a korongo or wadi) that drains the area northeastwards toward Lake Amboseli, just inside Kenya territory. The Angyata of the Osugat is indeed a unique fragment of the earth's surface, lying as it does between three towering volcanic giants: Kilimanjaro to the east, Longido to the north and Meru to the south - one that I have come to call in these gladiatorial days "The Arena of the Larks".

A day out on the plains of Angyata Osugat in order to see Beesley's Lark is included in the itinerary of most of the tours that I escort on behalf of safari operators here in Tanzania and bird tour companies abroad. Alternatively if you are already here in Tanzania and wish to make the best use of a free morning or day in Arusha, you can contact me and arrange to visit the larks.

The Beesley's site is only an hour's drive from Arusha, along the Nairobi road, and an early start is essential. Normally we collect clients from their hotel at 6.30 a.m. After seeing the larks well, typically by about ten o'clock, we travel east a further 15 km to visit an extensive area of acacia-commiphora woodland along the Ngare Nanyuki river. Here a great variety of dry country birds and wildlife, including mammal species rarely seen on a typical East African safari - e.g. Golden Jackal, Gerenuk and Lesser Kudu - are to be found.

Pick up at hotel in Arusha at 0600 hrs.

Drive to southern gate Arusha NP to arrive by 0715.

Drive fairly slowly through forested central area of Arusha national park to Momella gate to arrive at 0800 where collect a ranger and drive to Kilimanjaro viewpoint (2200 m) on Mount Meru birding from the vehicle en route.

A leisurely walk in the higher altitude lichen-festooned forest around the viewpoint on Mount Meru (from 0900 for about one hour) should be very productive. Spectacular Crowned Eagles display overhead with attendant Mountain Buzzards, Mottled and Nyanza Swift rush past. Dusky Turtle Dove and Lemon Dove come down to the path for grit; Bar-tailed Trogon and Black-capped Mountain Greenbul remain in the treetops. In the undergrowth and middlestorey are magical White-starred Robins, Mountain Thrush, Dusky and White-eyed Slaty Flycatchers, Cinnamon Bracken Warbler, Brown Woodland Warbler and noisy duetting Hunter’s Cisticolas. The flame flowering 'red-hot poker like' Kniphofias growing around the viewpoint attract gangs of excitable Eastern Double-collared, Taccaze and Golden-winged Sunbirds. Whilst in the herbaceous tangles are far more secretive Abyssinian Crimsonwings best located by their thin high-pitched call.

Arusha 25 September: Some more Palearctic birds arriving. European Bee-eaters were reliably heard over Magongo-Kisongo on September 18 and there was a small flock over Momella on 19/9. As I write this note three central or south west Asian Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters – the first of the return - have been looping the loop and defying the ground over this Afro-urban laissez-faire bush garden on their way south. Barn Swallows are moving south east (although in small numbers) each evening through the Monduli gap between Meru and Monduli mountains.