Like anyone who has grown up watching wildlife documentaries and reading National Geographic, I had always dreamed of going to Kenya. I first went there when I was 17, invited by a relative. It was nice, but a little tame; we shared our vehicle with a group of regular tourists who weren’t interested in anything smaller than a Hyena, and therefore our driver would ignore anything with feathers except for Ostrich and the occasional Secretary Bird.

We spent all our time searching for the “Big Five”: Lion, Buffalo, Elephant, Rhinoceros (Black or White), and Leopard. For those not familiar with White Hunter’s lingo, this list includes those animals known to have caused human casualties. I guess Hippos are kept out of the list due to their lack of glamour, although they certainly kill more people than any of the others.

Lions

It was obvious back then that independent travel is not encouraged by the Kenyan game park network, when not simply forbidden. Besides, it’s a big country and in order to find the most interesting species in a limited amount of time one needs professional help.
So when I could finally afford a trip with birding as a priority, I examined the organized tour offer and chose Birdquest mainly because they were the only company offering a tour in August, the month of my vacation.

I never regretted my choice: the guides, Nigel Redman and Tony Clarke, were true experts in African birds and very thorough, and the very comprehensive itinerary included some very nice and unusual sites: apart from the “classic” game reserves of Nairobi, Masai Mara, Samburu, Mount Kenya, and Lake Nakuru, we spent some time at Lake Baringo, a beautiful place surrounded by arid scrubland and limestone cliffs on the northern limit of the country. It took us a long drive to get there, but made it possible to see species as Heuglin’s Courser (Rhinoptilus cinctus), Southern White-faced Scops Owl (Otus leucotis), and Hemprich’s Hornbill (Tockus hemprichii).
In the evening, Hippos would come out to graze in the hotel garden’s grass, and a resident pair of Verreaux’s Eagle Owl (Bubo lacteus) offered great views feeding their recently fledged young.

Yellow-and-red Barbet

The guides also lived up to Birdquest’s reputation of very serious birdwatching: we sometimes spent hours, literally, trying to find a single species of cisticola, of which we saw a total of 16. The fact that we were mainly looking for birds kept us off the beaten track most of the time, but we didn’t neglect big game and other wildlife. Apart from all the usual, and among many others, we got to see Black Rhino, two leopards, five species of mongoose, and no less than 381 bird species.

Woodland Kingfisher


Of these, to me the highlights of the trip were the four species of courser (Two-banded (Rhinoptilus africanus), Heuglin’s (Rhinoptilus cinctus), Somali (Cursorius somalensis) and Temminck’s (Cursorius temminckii)), four of sandgrouse (Chestnut-bellied (Pterocles exustus), Black-faced (Pterocles decoratus), Lichtenstein’s (Pterocles lichtensteinii), Yellow-throated (Pterocles gutturalis)) and four of bustard (Black-bellied (Eupodotis melanogaster) , White-bellied (Eupodotis senegalensis), Buff-Crested (Eupodotis gindiana), Kori (Ardeotis kori)); and Magpie Shrike (Urolestes melanoleucus), a real treat for any shrike fan and one of my main target species for the trip.

Surprises included Dickinson’s Kestrel (Falco dickinsoni), a great rarity in Kenya seen near Thika, where we also had great views of a pair of White-backed Duck (Thalassornis leuconotus), an unusual species resembling a grebe in appearance and behaviour.

The time of the year was just right to witness the Wildebeest migration through the Masai Mara reserve towards the greener pastures of Tanzania, one of the greatest wildlife spectacles in the world.
Endless extensions of grassland were covered by their huge numbers, always closely watched by lions.

Lioness yawning

As a sad note, I was surprised to find the country’s infrastructure and population in exactly the same ruinous and destitute state of 20 years ago. The roads, even those leading to the main tourist attractions, were a disaster, and everywhere small villages gave an impression of appalling poverty.

Two male lions