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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It was a little while back now that this happened as we’ve been having difficulty getting information to Colin who’s got the internet access for posting blogs, but I wanted to tell you about one of our typical surveys we do in the forest. It was one of our regular surveys in the Arabuko Sokoke forest; actually it was very cold that morning as we drove our motorbike to our designated transect. Our target was doing a common bird point count survey for the first two and a half of the morning hours and then doing forest disturbances as it was to be hot for the birds.

Albert Baya, an A Rocha Kenya Field technician, who has been with me for almost 14 years doing the research and monitoring of the Arabuko-Sokoke forest and the surrounding, stopped counting the birds and pointed out some cut stems which were almost 2 metres from the transect, trying to look more further away, it was bad to see the most vulnerable trees were cut.

In a distance of 5 km we were able to count 46 cut stems, for wood and carving, 4 active campsites and 2 old
camps which we thought they moved two or three months ago.

Whilst our forest is being managed by an active Forest Management Team, we are actually frustrated to see all these activities still happening.

We have several vulnerable and endangered bird, plant, butterfly, lizard species in the forest, but on the day of this survey we saw Clarke’s Weavers about 25 in one group of which we used to see 50+, and we were not able to see any male actively feeding on a Brachystegia tree. The Clarke’s Weaver breeding ground is not yet known and now the feeding grounds are being destroyed, we need to have a support to help stop this distraction otherwise we will lose our heritage. The picture here is one that was taken by Steve Garvie who is a birder and photographer who I took into the forest last year to see the specialities. These are the best photos I have seen of Clarke’s Weaver and we like to say “asante sana” to Steve for letting us use them.

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Hi there, Colin here again with some more updates. First though, to say a very big ‘Asante SANA!’ to our very generous donors for your donations. These came at a critical point when we needed exactly what was given to cover the costs of David’s driving test to get a full motorbike licence (he’s been driving on an ‘L’-plate so far which is ok but far from ideal). Thank you!!

David dropped round at the office yesterday with the news of having to get his “piki” licence (we call a motorbike a ‘piki-piki’ here which is because of the sound they make - we don’t ride Harley-Davidsons, you must understand!!. This is often shortened to just ‘piki’) and to get set up to do some surveys of the Amani Sunbird Anthreptes pallidigaster which is one of the rare and Endangered birds of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest. Part of his job is to assist with these surveys which are headed up by A Rocha Kenya but as he’s such a bird ‘fundi’ (expert) he’s The Man for the job to assist with it. So he was out early Monday and Tues this week with volunteer Dave the Brave (from Canada) who’s taking the lead on the sunbird surveys and was out early this morning with Albert and goes again tomorrow for the same thing. Amani Sunbirds are found pretty much only in the Brachystegia Woodland in the forest - one of the three major habitat types. The picture below shows a typical section of one of the Amani survey transects.

David’s written some more which we’ll be posting just as soon as we can get it typed up and get access to the ‘net again.

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