Simon Thomsett

Category: Raptor Expedition, Vero's | Date: Oct 28 2008 | By: simonthomsett

A couple of days ago, I read my e-mails and my heart sank when I read the first line on screen. “I am sorry to tell you that Vero’s was killed …”

Martin Wheeler took on Vero’s a couple of months ago because I was closing down the raptor facility at Athi River. Vero’s, a Verreaux’s Eagle, was an Abel rescue from a small mountain near me. She had fallen 75 feet down a cliff and I ended up looking after her. Twelve years have gone by, and we built up a special eagle/human bond that few other than eagle handlers will ever understand.

I dreaded the day when we were to part company. I was too quick putting her in her box and racing to the airfield for her to be flown up to Martin who lives on a great escarpment in Samburu district at Il Ngewsi. In a moment she was airborne, carried away by a small plane. I had hoped to see her again, perhaps if things worked out she may even have joined me again, somewhere new.

Vero’s flying to Laila

Martin informed me that she was killed at night by two Samburu “warriors” as she perched in a small tree. She had killed a dik dik previously and had flown to the tree. Martin was in the process of letting her have her freedom as much as possible. The two men may have had a vendetta of some kind against wildlife for they left her body on the road to be found. Despite conservation projects focusing more and more on sharing benefits with local communities, these sorts of incidents seem to be becoming more frequent. It is very hard for me right now to get my head around the reasons why. I am trying not to be too despairing about the situation.

Vero’s flying

I loved Vero’s, as did Martin and all those that met her. She flew to the hand of hundreds, influenced a generation of people in Kenya and visitors from abroad. She was gentle despite her massive size, and harmless. That two brave warriors felt moved to bash her to death puts so much into perspective.

I was not happy that day and Laila knew it. She thought to make me more light hearted by videoing a “Work out video.” It worked. The video shows me struggling to do sit ups, straining to do some awful lower back exercise. Then we thought it would be fine to finish off with some pull-ups. We were filling in the time waiting for Tim to make his appearance.

I have a 1000 litre water (264 U.S. gallons) tank supported by a cradle of metal scaffolding. It makes a good place for pull-ups. I jumped up and for a laugh decided to fake enormous strength by using my feet on the lower scaffold. The result was recorded: The whole thing spun around and collapsed on top of me. It happened in a flash. The weight was terrifying and I thought in that fraction of time that if the crushing force was to continue I would end up in a serious mess.

The metal twisted and crunched into my left thigh. I howled with pain and the shock of the water bursting added to the confusion. Laila ran to lift up the scaffolding off my leg in a burst of strength. I lay under a barbed wire fence looking up at the sky trying to think straight. The pain was worse than a broken bone. Laila ran to the house and got a blanket and phoned for help. Of all the moments to look up into the sky and see a falcon, one appeared overhead catching termites. I was slightly light-headed but composed enough to think it was Tim returning but it turned out to be a hobby.

Laila yelled for Nicholas and he showed up with Puppy. Puppy, who is otherwise totally aloof, was distraught. She stood with her cold nose in my ear, looking very upset. Darkness fell and the rescue team arrived with David Hopcraft, Phil Tilley, Isaiah, Diane and Tim Bannister. Expertly, they strapped my legs together and got me out of my wet clothes. They put me in the back of a 4×4 truck and Isaiah and Laila took me to Nairobi hospital. It was an agonizing two-hour drive down a bumpy road.

I arrived in hospital to be quickly dealt with. Laila knows more about the next couple of hours as I was given pain-killers that made me funny. Munir showed up and I was then taken to the ward around midnight. The next morning, I was taken to “surgery” where they cleaned my open wounds and stitched me up. I have a small fracture in my pelvis that will need to mend on its own. My dislocated hip popped itself back into place.

I can’t wait to get out of my hospital bed and get back outside and continue with our plans, though they might have to be slightly altered.

More posts about Vero’s:

• Goodbye Vero’s
• Vero’s and Puppy
• 4th Nov 2007

8 responses so far

Category: aberdare national park, hyena, vultures | Date: Oct 26 2008 | By: simonthomsett

We left Sungare Ranch later than we hoped. We did not make a road count of raptors on the way as we needed to get a proper method in place. But we did see a migrant Steppe Buzzard and a local Peregrine Falcon above the road.

We were both filthy dirty when we arrived in Nairobi and dumped the car on Bali, my old friend and increasingly angry mechanic. He raised his eyebrows and temperature as we rattled off the various mods (modifications) required on the car. Mods we had so recently learnt from the overlanders the day before.

After getting a lift we arrived at home. On arrival we saw a kettle of vultures swoop and fold out of the sky to a dead cow near “my” windmill. Without stopping from a long day driving we pushed on to get pictures. One of the vultures had a yellow tag on its wing, and may have been one of the vultures that Laila and I captured last year in the Mara. We found a dead calf nearby.

Vultures

Laila insisted we make use of the dead calf by holding a “stake-out” for hyenas. We moved it close to the house, and fixed a remote camera with a cheap, and as it turned out useless, remote control firing system. The idea was to get very close up shots of hyenas as they went about their gruesome business. This malfunction was one of a number of others that ruined the evening, including no headlights on the car, the burning out of the spotlight, failure of the flash camera, rain, insects in their thousands and lack of obliging hyenas.

After our disastrous “stake-out,” we returned to the empty house. Laila sat editing pictures while I wrote on another computer. Our studious work time was interrupted by Laila asking from the next room, “What was that”? I went over to have a look and she turned over my briefcase from the wall. There crouching in the shadows was a huge and hairy spider. The body from head to rear was about 6.5 cm, but the legs were fairly short. It gave me the creeps and we both went for the cameras. Laila asked if I would put my finger next to it to show just how big it was while she took a photo. Swallowing hard, I poked a shaky finger at it, whereupon it leapt into the air and let off a growl. No kidding the thing had a voice! (The sound was more like a harsh buzz). When I ran away I was cruelly called a wimp.

Big, hairy spider

As Laila sleeps on the floor, she thought it would be best if we removed the spider lest it crawl about her face in the night. My ego bruised, I went and found a huge pan from the kitchen and a sweep. Laila unkindly turned the video camera on us as the battle began. I started scooping it out the door when with a flick, the spider dashed across the floor and vanished. I searched in vain. It occurred to me that it could be nowhere else but climbing up Laila’s leg. This conclusion was crossing Laila’s mind too, and a look of panic crossed her face. I then glanced down and saw it spread large and malignant on her leg, and asked as calmly as I could if I could have the video camera. I guess Laila knew what was coming, but the result was recorded for posterity, with loud shrieks and yells as she bounced about the house. I knocked it off her leg and we did finally get it out the house.

You can see what tough and hardy characters we are from this story … exactly what you need to undertake this trans-African expedition.

4 responses so far

Category: Eagle, Rhino, Solio, forest hog, leopard | Date: Oct 24 2008 | By: Laila Bahaa-el-din

We left Aberdare NP late yesterday evening after having had a successful couple of days. Simon has already written about the eight black servals which were stunning. We were disappointed at the few mountain buzzards which were our target species. We arrived back in Solio and were paying for a night of camping when we bumped into Annie Olivecrona again. She invited us to her place for an evening drink.

Annie is setting up an ape sanctuary in Solio which should be up and running in a year. It will mainly cater to chimps but Annie will not turn away gorillas if they show up on her doorstep. It is the bush meat trade and deforestation that have orphaned these apes. Keeping animals in sanctuaries like Annie’s maybe the only hope of hanging on to these species until these devastating activities are curbed.

We arrived at Annie’s to find two more Swedish overlander families camping. There was also the overland couple we had met a few days previously who had given tips on preparing our car (visit their Web site). Overlanders are people who kit up their cars and set off on trips by road. Discussions of car parts and expedition sponsorship continued over a few drinks and Annie insisted we stay for dinner and camp out. It was a lovely evening and great to hear from these people who had been traveling for eight months in their cars across some tough countries with their kids in tow (visit the Web site).

All the overland vehicles (including our 27-year-old Range Rover on the far right)

We were a bit groggy in the morning but we got up with the sun all the same and headed back to Solio Wildlife Sanctuary. It had rained during the night which gave us a much more successful wildlife experience than the previous visit. We saw a few migrants such as Eurasian Hobbies, Steppe Eagles and Harriers. We finally found a juvenile Crowned Eagle as well. We must have seen more than a hundred rhinos. A giant forest hog stood feeding knee-deep in the swamp. This was quite a surprise as this species usually occurs in thick forest.

Giant Forest Hog

Annie had seen a leopard the day before. It had taken a kill up a tree so we believed it would still be there in the morning. Sure enough, we did spot it, though it came down the tree and ran off on seeing us so we didn’t get the photos.

Leopard far away

How different the two experiences in Solio were highlights how difficult it is to come to conclusions about wildlife. We are sometimes too quick to judge. The simple thing of the rain falling changed our whole outlook. We would really need to spend a lot more time in Solio to get a real feel for the raptor situation but from what we saw, it is not doing too badly. We hope to return after the big rains have hit for some final photo opportunities and a data count.

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Category: aberdare national park, mountain buzzard, serval | Date: Oct 23 2008 | By: simonthomsett

Very few places can duplicate the sudden transition, in the space of less than a meter from human-dominated landscape to apparent pristine jungle, as well as the Aberdare National Park in Kenya. The moment you cross a line you have your eyes peeled for animals which are abundant and secretive. As you drive through the lower forests and make your way to the higher altitudes, the forests change in species composition. The bamboo zone is at the limit of true forests, but beyond that there is hagenia woodland and Erika heath growing as tall as trees. Although the high heath moorlands look like those in Canada or Scotland, there are elephants and leopards.

Our target species on this trip was the Mountain Buzzard, a slender and less powerful hawk than the ubiquitous Augur Buzzard. The species, as its name suggests, lives in mountainous (or more properly, high altitude) habitats. The species is very similar to the Steppe Buzzard and Common Buzzards of Eurasia. It has a near relative in South Africa called the Forest Buzzard. They are tough to separate, all having similar wing and tail shape and fairly drab indistinguishable plumage. But the Mountain Buzzard is easy to separate if one gets a close look. They are dark grey brown, seldom with rust red tint on their chest. They have uniform dark spots down the front from chin to belly. They call, make territory flights and nest, whereas all other local look-alikes do not.

Mountain Buzzard

I personally have a disturbing feeling that the species is one of the rarest and most rapidly declining raptors in Africa. In the business of birds, it pays to be a skeptic and I worry about most records of this species. However, in view of the fact that we saw individuals at a lower altitude than I would have thought, perhaps records I had previously doubted may not be erroneous after all.

The mountain buzzard’s preferred habitat is moorland and hagenia woodland, juniper forest fringes to open highland heath. It hunts rodents in the short cropped grasses and herbs and sometimes in the tussock grasses. It is poorly designed for forests. However, the few that we did see close enough to photograph well were tight on the edge of this presumed altitude boundary.

Habitat picture of moorlands

I had on an earlier trip caught a few and took blood samples for DNA analysis with a friend and raptor expert Bill Clark. They were fairly common six years ago, but we took two days of hard searching to find one. Perhaps significantly, we saw many Augur Buzzards, and on our first encounter with a flying Mountain Buzzard, we saw it get dive bombed and driven away by an Augur Buzzard. It is too quick an assumption to make that this species is being out-competed by the more aggressive and more successful Augur Buzzard. A few trips back to Aberdare NP may be more revealing.

Our attention was taken by other animals of course. I was driving when Laila turned and said “Simon!” Only a few meters from her, out jumped a Serval and raced away. We then saw another eight melanistic (black) Servals over the two days we spent on the moorlands. Melanism is predicted to occur at a higher percentage at higher altitudes in vertebrates, but the ratio seems little different with Augur Buzzards (which also has melanistic individuals) at this altitude and those at their lowest distribution.

The black Servals were stunning and we managed to call one close to the camera by mimicking the call of a squeaking rodent. It ran towards us and stopped just in front of the car.

Melanistic Serval (Photo by Laila Bahaa-el-din)

With only an hour left to exit the park and resigned to poor distant pictures of only two Mountain Buzzards, we rounded a bend to see one sitting in a tall tree. Unfortunately it was very high up, but the pictures Laila took are a valuable record of a poorly known raptor.

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