Simon Thomsett

Simon Thomsett (Photos by Laila)

After a few grey days spent in Thika trying to take pictures of a pair of Black Sparrowhawks and an African Hawk-eagle, we returned to Solio Ranch where we had spent a few days last year. We were sad to leave the Thika house, which is a grand old Kenya farm house sturdily built in a magnificent garden set in acres of coffee. Raine Samuels looks after this house, keeping a feel of those better days when wildlife and people’s livelihoods were not so much at odds. Not far from it, the urban sprawl and dusty mess of fast-growing development is threatening the area.

Odd that one should worry about threats facing large coffee and mixed-farming estates. Virgin bush ‘destroyed’ by settler farmers in the 1920s until the 1950s converted rhino thicket into coffee. Why bother ‘conserving’ this farmland? Because it has a surprising amount of eagles, hawks, birds and small mammals on it. This differs from the general ideas regarding African wildlife conservation. Perhaps we should accept that these old established farms (with their adapted wild animals) have a role to play in wildlife conservation? Maybe there will come a time when conservation of wildlife in these human environments is considered as important as the more usual approach of conservation focused only within protected areas. It is widely accepted in the developed world but this approach has yet to be seriously considered here. Farmers protecting wildlife … an old idea elsewhere but relatively unexplored in Kenya.

Solio Ranch, on the other hand, is a fenced, protected area geared toward Rhino conservation. As a direct result, the raptors found within its boundaries are more sensitive to human encroachment. It is less than 20,000 acres and alone it cannot support a very diverse population of raptors. Fortunately it still lies within a greater area of indigenous woodland that buffers the effect of man and so preserves these eagles. By ’sensitive’ raptors, I mean the Martial Eagle and Crowned Eagle. The African Hawk Eagle, previously a fairly common eagle outside protected areas has now taken membership to this aloof group of eagles. So too has the once very common Tawny Eagle joined the club. Solio supports these eagles but as settlement and rural development devour its edges, it is debatable just how long these eagles can remain. The rhinos will remain after the eagles have gone.

We stayed with Annie Olivecrona who kindly arranged with the owner Edward Parfet for us to photograph eagles within the sanctuary. The moment we entered the protected area, there were vultures dripping from the trees. We had not seen one on the entire trip up from the Mara. Interestingly, Ruppell’s Vultures were present in large numbers. One had to wonder where these birds came from as the nearest cliff colonies are a very long way away. There were White-backed and Lappet-faced Vultures also with them. We did note a young Lappet with feathers going all the way up the back of the neck to the back of his head. I had always assumed feathered heads to be a sign of youth, and that with age the feathers retreated. Just a week previously I had climbed a Lappet’s nest in the Mara to see the chick was completely bald. So what of these feathered heads and what does it mean?

Feather-headed Lappet faced Vulture

We found a Martial Eagle pair with a nest overhanging the swamp. The male is a sub-adult. The presence of immature birds in a pair implies a lack of adults in the ‘floater’ population. It infers a population in decline. This is not surprising, for Martial Eagles are certainly a species of concern in modern Africa.

Young male Martial Eagle of the Solio pair

Very close to this pair we rounded a corner and were so fixed on finding raptors that our eyes entirely missed a lioness spread across a broken tree before us. She looked a little amused at our surprise as we scrambled for the cameras. She viewed from this vantage some warthogs and zebras and jumped off to hunt them out of our view. We met her again on this same tree the next day. Not far from there, we had earlier seen a male lion on a zebra kill. We returned to find a pair of Augur Buzzards feeding on the kill alongside a Sacred Ibis. It is not that unusual for Augur Buzzards to feed on carrion but we were still grateful for the opportunity to record it.

Lioness lounging on tree

We did of course see both Black and White rhinos aplenty. Solio has played an enormous role in the conservation of rhinos in the region and has demonstrated that you do not need that much land, or much infrastructure, to secure a large population of endangered rhinos. There is much that they could teach our neighbouring countries (e.g. Ethiopia) as well as the rest of the world (e.g. India) in the management of rhinos . and raptors.