Simon Thomsett

Category: Raptor Expedition | Date: Sep 02 2009 | By: Laila Bahaa-el-din

by Laila Bahaa-el-din

We joined the Peregrine Fund’s Munir Virani and University of Swaziland’s Ara Monadjem at Lake Naivasha to see how the Fish Eagles are doing with the receding of the lake. We spent a lovely morning on the lake throwing fish out for the eagles and watching them swoop in. From there, we went to the Mara to get back to the vultures. Simon climbed up into the nest of that Lappet-faced vulture chick we had put the GSM tag on a couple of weeks previously to check on it. It seemed to be doing well and was just about to fledge. We also spent some time with Corinne again, catching a few more vultures for GSM tags.

Lappet-faced Vulture chick in the nest

Ara, Munir and Simon putting a satellite tag on a Ruppell’s Vulture

We spent one enjoyable early morning with a lioness and her three small cubs before the day got warmer and she took them into cover. We were on our way to join the vulture capture team when we stopped to watch the interaction between a big male lion and a lioness. She seemed very nervous as the male approached and lashed out at him when he got near. Then we saw three more big males poke their heads up over the long grass and as we watched, the four of them started to chase the terrified female from the area. They looked like they had murder on their minds so we were relieved when the female finally managed to lose them a few kilometers on. We wondered what reason these males might have to chase off this one female and the guides told us she was not a female from that pride.

Lioness defending herself

Often called the seventh wonder of the world, the great wildebeest migration from the Serengeti into the Mara happens around this time every year. Tourists flock to the Mara to watched hundreds of thousands of animals make the treacherous crossings of the Mara River. Panic-stricken animals usually make a mad dash across rivers, hoping to avoid land predators waiting in ambush on the banks and the hungry crocodiles waiting in the waters. Luckily for the wildebeest, but not so lucky for the crocodiles, the Mara River is very low this year, making it easier for the animals to get across safely.

Zebras and Wildebeest safely crossing the shallow Mara River

Corinne and Munir managed to see from the satellite information that one of the tagged Ruppell’s Vultures hadn’t moved in four days. Concerned, Corinne went to check the area to find that the vulture was on the ground, unable to fly very well. After four days of being on the ground like that without food, it must have been near starving. We joined them and, knowing that it wouldn’t survive, caught the bird. It was kept overnight in a shed at Intrepid’s Lodge and then Corinne drove it to Naivasha the next day where it is now being taken very good care of by Sarah Higgins in a shed next to Rosy and Girl.

Tags: lake naivasha, mara river crossing, peregrine fund, sick vulture

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Category: Raptor Expedition | Date: Aug 27 2009 | By: simonthomsett

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.

Tags: private land owners and conservation, rhino conservation

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Category: Raptor Expedition | Date: Aug 19 2009 | By: simonthomsett

by Simon Thomsett

When I dropped off Laila at the airport in South Africa, I was immediately lost in the vast city of Pretoria. I knew I was in trouble when I passed the zoo twice. Without my navigator, I soon came to grief and this was not helped by having no road map and a GPS that drew a straight line across South Africa to my destination. After wasting hours in the city, and a nearby one called Johannesburg, I found a road heading west and took it. I then proceeded by compass bearing till I saw a few familiar place names. From there I headed north to Thabazimbi to meet up again with Dr. Pat Benson.

I had to wait two days longer because of visa problems before pushing on north through Botswana with very little money. I managed to drive most of Botswana in a day, seeing little of its natural beauty. The next day I crossed the Zambezi by ferry. All went smoothly until I got into the Zambian side. four and a half hours later I emerged from some five different immigration/importation procedures, to sit a few more hours in a traffic jam of buses and lorries before exiting the border post. Late, and with no hope of making it to Lusaka, I spent the night at Taita Falcon Lodge near Livingstone. From there to Lusaka where I met relatives of a friend in Nairobi keen to rush me some 180km further south to see raptors. I am ashamed to say I turned around leaving them to go on their own as I was exhausted. I use the word “exhausted” in a literal sense. The exhaust pipe was severed pouring gases into the front, making my head pound. The next two days I was able to join Stuart Simpson and his family and he helped enormously by fixing the exhaust in his workshop.

On the road, my mind perhaps lighter than usual from various noxious gases, I would think of the trip Laila and I experienced on the way down. Certain stretches of road were familiar, and specific songs played on Laila’s fractious and temperamental “iPod” would be recalled at precise places. On the way down south it was mystery ahead; on the way back this sense of adventure was much muted. It was too easy, and Africa too small.

It is saying much that throughout the return journey from South Africa to northern Tanzania, I saw not one raptor worth stopping to take a picture of. Only one section of less than 50km yielded anything in the way of raptors and that was through Mikumi. It is a national park in southern Tanzania through which, most unwisely, the main road runs through its heart. This section and from Nata to Kasane in Botswana as well as the winding roads near the Ndzungwa’s near Mikumi was the best in terms of a ’safari’ overland experience.

I started to use the GPS sparingly. Each time I needed to communicate, socialise or talk I turned it on. I cherished asking it questions. It was my pal in an empty car. My PDA meant to record all raptor sightings was also a good distraction. At night I pulled either into a campsite or off the road, ate and read “Great Expectations” before falling asleep.

The last part of the trip I was not looking forward to. I was going “home,” as a pigeon flies back to its loft. But I had no place to go to and this confused me. My small institute of rehab eagles and hawks in the bush no longer exists. I visited Rosy and Girl, my two eagle companions, but this was difficult for me to do. I will soon release Mutt the Bearded Vulture. I look forward to the rest of our trip, now that Laila has returned. We travel again searching for all of Africa’s raptors, at the moment in Kenya but soon in Ethiopia and the Congo. It is more important now, especially as we have had so much encouragement to complete this task. It will be much tougher than we had anticipated, and more costly, but it will be immensely rewarding.

Tags: great expectations, homeward bound, simon's trip from south africa

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Category: Raptor Expedition | Date: Aug 12 2009 | By: Laila Bahaa-el-din

Vultures have been getting a lot of attention recently what with the poisoning crisis in East Africa, but still so little is known about these vultures. In Kenya, eight species occur: the African White-backed, Ruppell’s, Lappet-faced, Hooded, Egyptian, Palm-nut, White-headed and Bearded, all of which are in decline, some catastrophically. It is with this in mind that Corinne Kendal has started her Ph.D. on vultures in the Mara. She is attaching satellite tags to vultures to see what distances they travel and where they go.

On my return to Kenya, we headed straight for the Mara to help Corinne catch vultures. We had a stop on the way to check up on Rosy and Girl. It seems Rosy’s eyes are getting slowly better. The fibrin that was building up in his eyes and stopping him from seeing has started to recede. He can find perches around his shed and fly to them. Sarah and Simon are delighted to see the positive change and we now all wait with crossed fingers to see if the fibrin continues to recede.

Rosy’s left eye looking a whole lot better

On arriving in the Mara, I was glad to be back in action. The park is crawling with wildlife now as the wildebeest and zebra migration is in full swing. Tens of thousands of animals can be seen grazing, or walking determinately towards the river crossings. This is a great time for the vultures as carcasses litter the Mara plains. The big cats have more food than they can cope with and leave behind almost full kills for scavengers. It seems that vultures come from far and wide to take advantage of the feast. Now finally, with the satellite tags, we will have an idea of where they really do come from and go back to. It seems some travel hundreds of kilometers to find food.

Many Wildebeest

We met with Munir Virani and Corinne to start catching vultures. On that first day, we successfully caught four vultures, all of different species. The Rüppell’s, White-backed and Lappet were all fitted with satellite tags while the Hooded Vulture, being too small for the satellite unit, was wing-tagged. Things went a little slower over the next few days. We separated from Corinne and combed the area for carcasses. As well as doing the trapping, Simon and I spent a lot of time at kills watching vulture behaviour. They seem all to have their own personalities, some being quite affectionate while others are more aggressive. We were amused to see two Lappet-faced Vultures, obviously a mated pair, being very aggressive to all the other vultures. They would chase off a group of vultures with their bills and talons outstretched, then come together again and smooch before going to beat up some more vultures.

Smooching Lappet-faced Vultures

On our last morning in the Mara, Simon climbed a tree with a large Lappet-faced Vulture chick in it. The chick will be fledging soon and it will be very interesting to see where it goes once it leaves its parents. Thanks to the satellite tag that Corinne attached to it, we’ll be able to follow its movements.

Simon climbing tree

Lappet chick in nest

Taking measurements of the Lappet (photo taken by Simon from the nest)

Due to electrical troubles with the car, we’ve had to leave the Mara for now. We will be going back in a couple of weeks to check on the vultures and see how Corinne’s work is going. You can follow what Corinne is up to in the Mara on her blog.

Tags: mara vultures, smooching lappets, vulture behavior, wildebeest migration

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