We are really thrilled, therefore, to have Caroline Lumosi joining us in August as the Manager for FoASF. The very generous donation from Nancy in April is what is allowing us to take Caroline on. It is a crucial position she will be filling as her job is to make all the wheels go round in the organisation and for things to really happen - to date they’ve been happening in fits and starts when we’ve had the time and space to do it.

I met Caroline in Nairobi on Sunday and had a long meeting with her explaining all about the ins and outs of the organisation. She’s currently finishing up some voluntary work in Kakamega forest in western Kenya and will go down to Watamu in the first week of August. She will be taking DAvid’s data he collects on illegal activity, mapping it and producing reports to circulate to stakeholders. She’ll also revive the ‘Friends’ scheme and help Mary at the Visitor Centre in her work. She’ll also be taking over the main updating of the blog - so watch this space!

A cut stump photographed by David using his new camera

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Below is a snapshot of the data that I just downloaded off the GPS David’s borrowing to do the work. It’s downloaded into the Map Source program from Garmin and will later be properly mapped using a full GIS program.

You can make out the boundary of the forest where David has been following it. There are still two sections that he needs to do on the north west and the eastern edge. The mass of waypoints to the north-east of the forest is around the forest station and where David has done quite a few surveys for illegal activity.

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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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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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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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Once again a big THANK YOU to Theresa for the generous gift to get the camera…

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In April David was called to Naivasha - a lake in the Great Rift Valley where the birding is awesome - for a week of training on bird guiding with about 20 other Kenyan bird guides. For this they had input on planning itineraries, marketing as well as further practice in bird identification which took them on a safari down to Tsavo West National Park and to Lake Jipe on the Tanzanian border. One of the typical birds of Tsavo is the Rosy-patched Shrike (pictured here by Simon Thomsett)

Otherwise most of the birding practise was done around the grounds of the Elsamere Field Study Centre where the course was taking place. This was Joy Adamson’s (of “Born Free” fame - the story of her lioness Elsa which became world famous in the 1970s I believe it was) old home. The old house is now a lodge / hotel but in the grounds a field study centre has been built that does a great job providing facilities for courses such as this one for the guides as well as a lot of environmental education with local school groups. Another bird seen regularly along the lake front of Elsamere is the world’s largest kingfisher - the Giant Kingfisher - pictured here in a shot borrowed from NatureKenya.

David has been working actively with Francis Kagema (the FoASF Secretary and David’s direct line manager) to fight against some of the quite serious corruption that has been going on in the forest especially with regard to illegal logging. Only a week or so ago a lorry loaded with illegally cut logs was caught leaving the forest and taken to the Police station in Watamu. One such lorry I remember that was impounded with illegal logs a few years ago was grounded and stayed put in the forest station for almost two years before the case was finally completed… This lorry (truck) was released within 24 hours…!! Also the guys who managed to escape when it was stopped were not followed, apparently on orders from “on high”. This sort of frustration is what we are facing almost daily though we were thrilled to hear of the Gede Forester being transferred to another forest as there have been a LOT of implications as to him being deeply involved with much of the illegal activity going on (why these guys can’t just be sacked mystifies us…!). Anyway, he’s gone which is great news - though we fear for where he’s gone…

We’re in the process of taking on a manager for Friends of ASF who will be able help David get his blogs posted on a regular basis which will be great news. Meanwhile, we’ll do what we can to get a bit more news of David’s activities up on the blog…

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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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We went into the forest which at that point is what we call “Mixed Forest” as it isn’t dominated by any one type of tree. Only about 40 metres in we found many trees that had been freshly cut for timber and removed. I counted a total of about 39 new stumps (see picture).

This is me recording details of one of the cut trees.

Another of the cut trees we found - one of these trees would have taken probably 100 years to get to this size… and only 20 mins to cut down.

After we had finished the survey and after Albert had gone (with the camera), I was near the elephant fence on the edge of the forest and I saw a Green Mamba - a long, bright green, and deadly poisonous snake - which had recently swallowed a Golden-rumped Elephant Shrew. All I could see of the elephant-shrew was the tail sticking out of the snake’s mouth! Pole sana fugu! (”Very sorry, elephant-shrew!”)

I was really upset about the cut tree situation. When I returned to the Forest Station at Gede after my survey, I reported the cut trees to the Assistant Warden, Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) for the forest. About three days later he sent me back to the site with Sergeant Musa to show him the cut trees. Apparently they had also just caught a tree poacher the day before in the forest.

We urgently need to do more patrolling in the forest and to support KWS and the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) in protecting it. Since that day I have found further cut trees but have not been able to take photos as Friends of ASF doesn’t have a digital camera for me to use - the pictures above were with a borrowed one. If anyone would like to contribute to purchasing a camera, it would make a huge difference as we need photographic evidence to support the reports we do.

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