Filming Wild

Category: birdlife, changing seasons, our life in the wild, wild animals | Date: Jun 20 2008 | By: filmingwild

It must be! For it’s not just the geese who are breeding – it’s the Plovers too, and the Hornbills, and even the Squirrels!

For those of you who read my Wilderness Diary, do you remember our Spur-winged Plover Stories from last year? There was the family two kilometers upriver, which we followed for three weeks (remember the heart-ache when the river flooded and took with it “our” three-week old chicks, who had so bravely withstood all challenges up to that point?), and then there was the pair much closer to home, which we could see from the balcony – probably the very same pair who are nesting again now – who last time lost their eggs to another flood. When (if ever) will these plovers learn not to nest in the river bed where any rise in the water levels threatens their offspring? This pair have not learned any lessons, for wait until you hear where they have nested this time!

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I only managed to spot the nest because I noticed one plover foraging on its own below the house (normally you always see them in pairs) and then I heard their mating call…this made me actively seek out the nest with binoculars from the vantage point of our balcony…and eventually I found it, up to the left of the house, right where the grass is starting to come through, attracting all manner of grazing animals with hooves that could destroy those precious eggs with one misplaced step. There is no cover whatsoever for the nest – what on earth made them build it there? The parent birds have merely scraped out a small depression, collected together a few sticks and stones, and there the mother has laid three perfect eggs.

Perfectly camouflaged eggs

Now, of course, not having noticed it straight away, I cannot say precisely when the eggs were laid, but – coincidentally – I was looking through some of my photos from before I went to Nairobi – I had been photographing various animals grazing on the newly-grassed sandbank, and there in one of the photos of an Egyptian Goose is the plover, already sitting on its nest! So we now know the birds were already sitting on their eggs then (that was 30th May), so they must be hatching soon….?

This is the photo where by chance I noticed the plover sitting on its eggs (see the far left hand side of the picture)

What’s unusual about this pair of nesting plovers, is their “quiet approach” to potential intruders. As you’ll remember, most plover parents are noisy and boisterous in the extreme, in order to drive potential nest-raiders or wreckers away…but this pair seem to be adopting another approach: merely hunkering down and staying firmly put atop their nest, no matter who or what passes by.

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Having said that, occasionally they do get a little nervy and revert to type, emitting their high-pitched chit-chit alarm call and trying to goad the intruder away by “shamming” – pretending they are sitting down on their nest, but in fact are just leading the enemy astray.

Recent daytime passers-by the nest include impala (frequently, including our beautiful young One-Horn and his friend), the Egyptian Geese, Waterbuck and the Hadada Ibis. We’ve also been seeing the tracks of a small leopard on the beach, but hopefully it will leave the plovers in peace.

In all the images below, if you look carefully, you can see the plover crouching low on its nest…also note the Oxpeckers on the back of the young Impala…

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Further down the beach is another pair of plovers, and these are boisterous in the extreme – perhaps they are nesting too? This morning I watched them dive-bombing a troop of vervet monkeys, who did not seem the least concerned, much to the plover’s consternation.

By the way, as I write this, the full moon is flowing in through my office window…so beautiful… I don’t know when I’m actually going to be able to post this, as we’re having problems with our internet connection and only getting about five minutes access to the net every 24 hours…very frustrating, as so much of our work is internet-dependent, as is this blog of course… Living in the middle of nowhere certainly has many advantages, but when your internet is down, you are completely isolated…

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Anyway, back to the story…yes, love must be in the air for it’s not just the Spur-winged Plovers who are feeling broody – the petite Treble-banded Plovers are at it too. The other day, as I was down at the beach photographing their bigger cousins, I happened to catch a glimpse of the little guys mating. The Spur-winged Plovers did not take kindly to that, and immediately chased the Treble-banded Plovers away (how ridiculous is that, I ask you? They’re about a third of the Spur-winged Plovers’ size and no threat to man nor beast…unless you’re a worm, I suppose!)

The Pied Kingfishers were also having a go, but way across the river where I could only get a poor shot of them in flagrante. The Von der Decken Hornbills are courting too (below), and so are the Sparrows!

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Even the Unstriped Ground Squirrels are getting up close and personal. I notice they’ve been digging a huge network of burrows behind the house. It’s all going on here, you know! As an aside, take a closer look at the Ground Squirrels – don’t you think they are just so perfectly adapted for camouflage in the red Tsavo dust? Their mottled fur practically blends into the background.

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As for the Rock Hyraxes, it seems like they have led the way in the love stakes. Here are a couple of very cute little babies as proof, emerging from our woodpile to warm themselves in the morning sun…

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I saw the Dwarf Mongooses again today – their youngsters (which we saw being carried by their nannies back on the 24th May are now big enough to run along with the band themselves, but they’re still quite small and baby-faced. Unfortunately, they had dashed across the road and disappeared into the undergrowth before I had a chance to photograph them.

I took this shot of our road home, just to show you how dry the landscape is becoming inland. Where this photo was taken is only three or four hundred yards from the river’s edge. No wonder a lot of the animals are moving back to the river at the moment…despite the cold, grey, very windy weather, and the temptation of rain clouds which never fall, the country really is getting very dry. The long rains which are meant to fall April through June, have not been good this year.

The big one-horned Impala ram is still at the helm of his harem - we seem them all daily down on the beach.

I went back up to the old Hammerkop nest but could see no sign of the female goose in the nest…either she was hunkering down, or she is not nesting there…the mystery continues…

(It’s almost midnight, so I’m off to bed now - but at least I’ve caught up on a lot my posts which I wrote while our internet was down…a few more to go, and I’ll be up to date again…)

Tags: africa, animal, athi river, bird, birdlife, hadada ibis, impala, kenya, nature, nest, plover, tsavo, waterbuck, wildlife

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Category: birdlife | Date: Jun 20 2008 | By: filmingwild

As you can see, now that we have our internet connection back again, I’m posting like a mad woman, trying to catch up on all the stories I wrote while we were out of touch!

Not long before we went to Nairobi (on the 31st May, to be exact) I was happily photographing the female Egyptian Goose taking a wash in one of the pools by the river’s edge, when the male goose suddenly approached her, making a real racket and looking like he was up to something. Without the slightest provocation, he reached over and bit the female on the neck. Hang on! I thought, what’s going on here? The next minute, he was on top of her, and they were mating. What a rough mating ritual indeed! I’ll let the sequence of photos speak for itself. It amused me how, once the job was done, the male puffed himself up and was so obviously pleased with himself. And the female? Well, she just returned calmly to her bathing…

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I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time to witness this, for the geese had been courting for a while, the male hovering around the female at all times, making a lot of noise and flapping his wings, as if trying to impress her. (She didn’t strike me as being all that impressed, mind you.)

Since they mated, the female goose has been disappearing for long stretches at a time, leaving the male alone to graze on the new grass growing so green and lush on the sandbank….so it is safe to assume she is on the nest – but where? The day I saw the geese mating, I went up to the dam (weir) on the small Mtito River at the top of our property, where the two old hammerkop nests are (which the geese and the hammerkops have both been using on and off for years. Those of you who follow my Wilderness Diary may remember me talking about them last November (when I obviously did not have time to post photos…) Well, several things have changed since my last visit to the site: one of the old doum palms has fallen down, taking the older hammerkop nest with it. The newer hammerkop nest looks in ship-shape condition – in fact, the nest hole has been widened which suggests it is being prepared for use…perhaps by the geese? I must go up there again as soon as I can to see if the goose is sitting…if she’s not there, well then, I know not where she is! (In this description, I am assuming that the female goose is the one sitting – for in reality, both sexes look the same, but judging by the behaviour of the one left behind on the river, I think he’s the male.)

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Spare some pity for the tiny goslings, whose first task in life will be to leap from the nest (above), which is more than twenty feet off the ground, and land on a dry barren riverbed (the Mtito River is dry at this time of year), before walking a full kilometre on their tiny legs to the Athi River where they will thankfully find water and food. Fortunately for the goslings, nature designed them to bounce so – somehow – they survive this leap into the unknown, which is just the very first of many perils they will have to face before they reach adulthood. Despite the best efforts of their aggressive parents, the tiny goslings are much in demand from eagles and any other small predator which would make an easy mouthful of them…

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Talking of aggression, the male goose has become aggression personified since he mated. Any other goose that appears within or even near his territory (which seems to be a stretch of river about 800-1000 yards long, to the left and right of our house) gets treated to a ferocious chase and merciless assault if caught.

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The other day I watched as “our” male goose chased down a pair of geese that had appeared further downstream. Somehow he caught up with them (they had taken off the minute they saw him take off, but somehow he found the speed to catch them even though they had 200 yards head start) and launched himself at the other male, sending him crashing headlong into the river. This in turn startled a big crocodile who was dozing at the river’s edge, sending him crashing into the river too…you certainly can’t accuse the lone male goose of not taking care of his own!

Whenever the female rejoins the male on the river bank (normally late evening and early morning), it’s always a dramatic affair with lots of quacking and flapping of wings and posturing. In fact, in the early morning, I see the two geese flying from the direction of the old hammerkop nest, over the top of our house and back to the Athi River, so I wonder whether the male roosts alongside the female in the nest?

Re-visit the story of our Egyptian Geese when they had their last clutch of goslings in September 2007…

Tags: africa, athi, bird, birdlife, breeding, egyptian, geese, goose, kenya, mating, nature, tsavo, wildlife

3 responses so far

Category: birdlife | Date: Jun 19 2008 | By: filmingwild

Our internet has been down for two days, and now is coming on and off sporadically…this is not helping with my intention to catch up on a whole range of stories. For the same reason, I apologise for not responding to all the comments you have been leaving…thank you for them all - as soon as our internet becomes stable again, I’ll be responding…in the meantime, here’s an update or two (if I have time before the internet goes down again (keep your fingers crossed!):

You may remember that we’ve been seeing the Spot-flanked Barbets around and about the place for a while now, usually in the commiphora thicket behind the house, but they’ve always been quite shy. So you can imagine our delight when one of these Barbets turned up on the bird table! They always seem to come when the Bulbuls are there too – it’s as if they feel safe with them around – or perhaps it’s just because they are both fruit-eaters that they end up foraging together…although if I were a Barbet I’d try to get in there before the Bulbuls who are so voracious (below)!

The birds are not the only ones in competition for the fruit – even the bees (or are they big flies?) have taken a liking to mango. Whether the lizards are here for the fruit or merely for the ants which have been attracted to the fruit is hard to tell, but they aren’t shy of the birds.

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Spot-flanked Barbet feeds on sanseviera fruit

The Spot-flanked Barbets (above) are also showing a particular penchant for the sanseviera robusta fruit, which are ripe and orange now. I often see them in the sanseviera stand below the kitchen window, plucking off the plump round fruit and swallowing them whole.

There seem to be a lot of White-capped Shrikes around at the moment (above), making their presence felt with their noisy chatter.

A gaggle of Superb Starlings has been in the area too – strangely they have yet to visit the bird table (normally they are among the first to come to bird tables in Kenya, but perhaps they have been put off by the larger and equally boisterous Glossy Starlings, below).

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As you can see by the photos above and below, the weather has been grey and cold. When the Helmeted Guineafowl passed by right below the house, it was just my luck that the light was dull, but I’m sure you can see nonetheless that they are quite spectacular, cheerful looking birds.

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The Go-Away Birds (below) really seem to have grown accustomed to the house and all its accompanying activity – we see them daily from our balcony. The Black-faced Sandgrouse continue to fly in at 8.30am each morning, come blue skies or grey, to gulp a few quick mouthfuls of water before racing back to the dry hinterland again, completely unconcerned by our presence. The Blue-naped Mousebirds with their appropriately long tails and (believe it or not) blue napes have also been feeding and drinking along the river’s edge recently.

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The Hadada Ibis, as it forages along the river’s shore, is followed by a Spur-winged Plover and a couple of opportunistic Pied Wagtails (below), hoping to catch an insect or two disturbed by the larger bird…it’s interesting to see the Plover subdued (for once) and not trying to bully and intimidate the Ibis, as it does with so many other much larger passers-by.

Hadada Ibis followed by a Spur-winged Plover and two Pied Wagtails

This Grey-headed Kingfisher made me laugh as it watched an eagle fly overhead…obviously it wasn’t too pleased but I’m not quite sure what it hoped to achieve by hunkering down like a stalking cat! In these photos, you can easily see the chestnut belly of the Grey-headed Kingfisher, which distinguishes it from the otherwise similar Brown-hooded Kingfisher, which we also see from time to time here on the property.

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The Spotted Morning Warbler (below) is an extraordinary bird, not only for the incredible mud nest (like a little cup, perched atop a branch) which it builds, but for the way it mimics other bird calls. Its repertoire is quite amazing.

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Those Fish Eagles are not doing much better with their fishing…As the river level drops, fish are getting trapped in pockets of water, like sitting ducks. The Pied Kingfishers hover and dive all day, picking off the hapless fish. The Fish Eagles however, seem to be eternally unsuccessful…no wonder the young Fish Eagle (bottom photo, below), sitting in a tree opposite the house and whining, is making his displeasure heard! As for us, we have been having a great time eagle-watching…I have taken endless photos of these majestic looking creatures diving and swooping for their prey…if you’d like to see them, there’s a wider selection of photos here.

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View more bird images from: May 2008 and June 2008…

Tags: africa, animal, barbet, birdlife, birds, eagle, ibis, kenya, kingfisher, nature, plover, starling, tsavo

3 responses so far