Jul 01 2008
Ducking Elephants to find the elusive SGT
Last week Albert and I went to the Mida area in mixed forest to monitor the elusive “SGT” - Spotted Ground Thrush. From the Mida gate we went into the forest for about three kilometers where we parked our motorbike by the track. Our transect was on the left hand (southern) side and started 10 metres in from the road. The transect we do is 1km long in the forest with stops every 100m to listen and look particularly hard for the bird. We began the work and when we reached about 400 metres away from the road saw a big branch of a tree just very recently broken by elephants…
However, we had a job to do and so did not care much allow ourselves to be scared of the Elephants and instead kept on with our work as we thought they were on the other side of the road. We managed to do the whole transect - with no sightings of an SGT - and began our way back towards the road.
Just 300 metres from where we commenced our transect we heard a bird song that was very unfamiliar that hence attracted our attention. Albert thought it might be a variation of the Red-capped Robin Chat which mimics many other species and can easily fool you, but I suspected it was a Ground Thrush as I’ve heard one sing once before briefly. The bird kept on singing which made it possible for us to creep through the bushes to find where it was that it was singing. Only about 30m in from the narrow path we were on we saw it on a low branch - still singing beautifully!! We were both very excited by it and watched the bird while moving closer excitedly and noting its behaviour. After a few minutes we heard the elephants breaking trees very close by hence interrupting our observing though we managed to take a GPS recording with Alberts GPS (mine is still broken). We were done and set off towards the road where we saw fresh footprints & dung of elephants at about 60metres along the transect we used!
Fresh elephant dung just near the SGT transect - a real sign you have to take care in the forest
We reached the piki safely and thanked God for enabling us to see the Spotted Ground Thrush and for protecting us from wild animals so that we therefore carried out our work successful.
Technorati : Arabuko-Sokoke, Spotted Ground Thrush, elephant
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