I start by saying Hallo wherever you are!!!!!!!!!!! And hope God has been good to you. We thank you for the support and are happy that things are a bit in the process of moving on in the hope that we are going to conserve our heritage at all levels of understanding.

There are few things I wanted to share with you…

It was very early in the morning one day at the end of last month as Albert and I went for a Spotted Ground Thrush survey, a bird species confined to humid coastal forest, a scarce and local non-breeding migrant from the southern tropics between April and October. Most records of this rare bird around here are from Gede Ruins forest and Arabuko-Sokoke Forest.

The weather was very cloudy and there was a short shower of rain. As we alighted from the car it was 05:55am at a place that is meant to be a camp site and in the first light of day we saw two men with five hunting dogs and a bow and arrows. They ran very fast from us, and sincerely, it is very concerning as the Rangers outpost is only five hundred from this position E 0599368 N 9921785!!

Reporting incidents like this is always part of our regular job, but we often feel the action we’re taking is being done is always in vain as little comes of it.

Continuing the survey a short way we saw a movement in the leaf litter - a Spotted Ground Thrush! - at a distance of 30m from our position, and it jumped happily and started feeding. It was a good and fantastic view. At least we saw one of those birds after doing almost seven transects in the mixed forest for this year and having seen none others.

The frustrating thing again was the cutting stumps of the vulnerable Manilkara zanzibarensis for timber. We actually would invite any ideas concerning this issue in how to stop the destruction and we need immediate help to keep our surveys going so as to help conserve our forest for the coming Generations.

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