All you need is lovebirds

Yellow-collared Lovebird, Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania, Day 1

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania Day 1

Read on for lovebirds, elephants, lions, baobob trees, and more!

Birds of Agahozo Shalom Photo Gallery

Welcome to the gallery! This post features photographs of birds that visit or live at Agahozo Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) in Rwanda, on the eastern edge of central Africa.

All of these pictures were taken at ASYV. This page contains 91 species, about 70% of the roughly 130 species recorded at ASYV from December 2010-November 2011. For a more in-depth guide to the birds of ASYV, check back soon for the upcoming photographic guide.

Reflecting on 2011, a big year in birds

Lesser flamingoes in Arusha National Park, Tanzania

365 days. 525,600 minutes. How does one measure a year in the life?*

Toucans, Barbets, and the Toucan Barbet

Collared Araçari (Pteroglossus torquatus),
near Maquipucuna Reserve, Ecuador

I can. You can. Toucan.

Earth on the Wing

Meyer's (brown) parrots (Poicephalus meyeri) on the left with a male
African orange-bellied parrot (Poicephalus rufiventris) on the right,
Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

Yellow-billed storks (Mycteria ibis) on the wing,
Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

White-crested helmet-shrike (Prionops plumatus), near Kibungo, Rwanda

Denham's bustards (Neotis denhami),
Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda

African paradise flycatcher (Terpsiphone viridis),
Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

My final photograph in Africa. Although I am no longer in Rwanda,
you can read about my continuing experience with birds,
ecology, and sustainability at Earth on the Wing.

The crane they call Umusambi

Grey-crowned cranes (Balearica regulorum) live in Africa. In Rwanda,
this is the bird they call umusambi.

Grey-crowned cranes range from Uganda (where they are the national bird)
and Kenya down along the eastern half of sub-Saharan Africa nearly
to the tip of South Africa. 

Grey-crowned cranes are omnivores, and they often feed in grasslands, as
they are in this picture from Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania.

Adult cranes have a wingspan of almost two meters, In this picture, they
are flying above the plains of Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

Cranes fly around to find food but when they breed, they make nests
of broken grasses in shallow waters. They often find spots in wetlands
that have both shallow water and tall plants for seclusion and protection.

Both male and female cranes look similar. According to Animal Diversity 
Web, grey-crowned cranes are monogamous and may mate for life.
It takes a young bird about one year to look like its parents.

Sadly, the population of grey-crowned cranes is decreasing. Habitat loss
and capture from the wild have put serious pressure on the cranes. One
day in June, a man showed up with a baby crane and tried to sell it to
Michele and me. We declined.

People capture cranes for food, traditional practices, and the domestic and
international pet  markets. Taking a crane is illegal in Rwanda, but a payday
of 20,000  Rwandan Francs (about $33 USD) makes it an attractive crime.
As much as we wanted to buy the crane to let it go, we did not want to
give the man economic incentive to take this one or another one later.
My guess is this crane was taken to a bigger city for sale but if that failed,
it was probably eaten. Birdlife International lists this bird as vulnerable.

We could not save that umusambi. It was sad to witness it. Michele drew
this picture shortly after to try to put the bird back in its home.

Fly away, umusambi, fly away!!! Organizations that help to conserve crane
habitats and prevent their removal from the wild include:
Uganda Wildlife Education Center
Wildlife Conservation Society
International Crane Foundation

Works consulted

• BirdLife International (2011) Species factsheet: Balearica regulorum. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 03/12/2011. 
• Ryan, P. and Sinclair, I. Birds of Africa south of the Sahara. Struik Nature: Cape Town, 2003.
• Thairu, M. 2011. "Balearica regulorum" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed December 02, 2011 at http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Balearica_regulorum.html.
• "The Cranes: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan." 2006. U.S. Department of the Interior-U.S. Geological Survey. Accessed online December 2, 2011 at http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/cranes/baleregu.htm.
• "Ugandan Cranes Declining Due to 'Witch Doctors.'" National Geographic News. October 19, 2007. Accessed online December 2, 2011 at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071019-crane-potion.html.

Visiting the relatives

We share around 98% of our genes with chimpanzees, according to the San Diego Zoo. In Kibale National Park, Uganda, these relatives rule the forest.

Chimpanzees construct nests to sleep on at night

We visited five different forests between Uganda and Rwanda that are known to support populations of chimpanzees. In our experience, they are not always easy to find and even when you do see them, it may only be a brief encounter. Most tracking hikes give you just a brief shot at observation in the wild. However, in Kibale, you have the unique option of tracking them for the whole day. On November 5, at 6 am still in the dark of morning, Michele and I jumped off the back of a motorcycle and began our search for Pan troglodytes.

Our guide had been a ranger in the park for many years. We started searching for a group of chimpanzees not-yet-used to people but discovered only smashed figs from a recent meal. We later found a lone mother and child collecting and eating fruits in a tall fig-like tree. We eventually followed a habituated group (used to human observation) as they wandered the forest. We counted 18 individuals in the group, but a few more could have been out of sight. Because they were used to humans, we could sit/stand around ten meters back observing them while they ate, groomed, played, climbed, and rested. We even saw a skirmish with olive baboons!

At around 2:30 pm, it started to rain. A flurry of excitement filled the chimpanzees, and our guide told us "the rain dance" was imminent. Male individuals ran back and forth on two legs and used their hands to shake and pull young trees (normally they walk on all fours using feet and knuckles). Other individuals crowded close to big trunks to avoid the bursts. We watched until every chimpanzee had seemingly ran off or vanished into the rain. 

Even though chimpanzees and humans appear very different from each other on the surface, consider that our cells are nearly identical in form and function, and we have nearly identical internal anatomies. Check out more similarities and differences between humans and chimpanzees. 

Humans are in such a different world than chimpanzees, but we share the same earth, the same biology, and a common history. Various populations of chimpanzees in Africa total up to two hundred thousand (200,000 chimpanzees). We are at a population of seven billion (7,000,000,000 humans). Our worlds collide as our demands on the forests of Africa grow. Is the earth big enough to support both species? Will we be able to visit our closest genetic relative in the future? I do not know the answer to these questions, but I hope the answer is yes. 

Leave only footprints

Hippo prints, Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda. Note the tire track
on the right came before the hippo passed.

Tracks from the past

Impressions in the mud

Here but now gone

Our footprints linger on

Leopard print, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

Take only memories

Leave only shapes

Elephants, hippos,

Leopards and apes

Chimpanzee foot and knuckle prints, Kibale National Park, Uganda

Casts left in African soil

As animals make their way

The stories mud could write

Of the details of the day

Elephant print, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

Rain falls heavy from the sky

Washing away yesterday’s marks

But leaving the dirt soft

For fresh footprints to start

Human footprints, Rwanda

Take a virtual bird tour of Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village!

Interested in nature? Great! New to birdwatching? No problem! Join us for a virtual tour of the birds of Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village.

Black-headed herons (Ardea melanocephala) visit ASYV- so should you!

The sun rises at about 5:45am here, and we could start our bird walk this early if you like. Birds tend to be most active in the morning (about 6am-10am), but the real draw of the early start is that the sun lights up the sky as it appears from behind the hills.

Worth the early wake-up... sunrise at ASYV

If you are staying in the guesthouses, the bird that greets you in the morning is the lesser striped swallow. Don’t let its laser-like sounds alarm you- the birds just want to rest on your laundry line!

Lesser striped swallows (Hirundo abyssinica)

We take the lower village road that circles around the houses and separates the farm from the residential area. Here we see many widespread East African garden birds, such as brimstone canaries, common bulbuls, common fiscals, and red-eyed doves. Variable sunbirds and bronzy sunbirds dart around in pursuit of nectar. We scan a tall dead tree about 50 meters away for raptors such as black-shouldered kite and common kestrels. This road is one of the easiest places at ASYV to spot the white-browed coucal. Also, the East-Africa endemic black-lored babblers can be found along this road, but rarely elsewhere in the village.

Black-lored babbler (Turdoides sharpei)

As we wind around the road up towards the dining hall, we see speckled mousebirds, arrow-marked babblers, common stonechats, pied crows and hopefully yellow-throated longclaws. At the dining hall, we pause for breakfast, but we won’t be able to ignore the grey-headed sparrows and African pied wagtails scavenging the crumbs on the floor! Red-rumped swallows can usually be seen October-March flying around this area. We fill up our water bottles if we need the amazi (water).

Yellow-throated longclaw (Macronyx croceus)

As we start up the hill toward the high school, greenhouses, and nature park, we see male pin-tailed whydahs chase females with their streamer-like tails and yellow-backed weavers dazzle along during their November-May breeding plumages. Through December-May, the male southern red bishop may be one of the highlights of your bird walk. These birds all breed in the bushes along the road! Tawny-flanked prinias and white-browed robin-chats are also easiest to see along the dirt road up the hill as they come out from the brush.

White-browed robin-chat (Cossypha heuglini)

Once we have climbed the hill, we look for some of the gems of Agahozo. Red-cheeked cordon-bleus, red-billed firefinches, and green-winged pytilias are tiny birds but they can be easily spotted if you look. As we make our way to the nature park, we scan the eucalyptus trees for cinnamon-chested bee-eaters, which is an East African endemic bird that is highly sought after in the Ngorongoro Crater highlands, Nyungwe Forest National Park, and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, but they live right here in our backyard. Sooty chats are another uncommon bird we will very likely see up close.

Cinnamon-chested bee-eater (Merops oreobates)

In the nature park, the bird show continues. White-headed saw-wings cruise overhead for insects. We will probably encounter yellow-fronted canaries, Baglafecht weavers, and yellow bishops. The park is one of the best places to watch for birds of prey like African harrier hawks, black kites, and augur buzzards. We’ll listen for the duets of tropical boubous, and we’ll wait for them to pop out and search for another perch in the undergrowth.

Tropical boubous (Laniarius aethiopicus)do not pose in the open often-
this is my only picture despite seeing them all the time!

While many of the birds you have already seen are present in the park, the mix of grasses, flowers, and trees in the park provides habitat to birds you won’t find anywhere else at Agahozo. Brown-backed scrub-robins, scarlet-chested sunbirds, and spectacled weavers breed in or near the park and can be observed fairly regularly. The park is also the place to find most of the visiting birds that do not live at Agahozo. No one day’s list is the same, but fairly common visitors include African thrush, mackinnon’s fiscal, African paradise flycatcher, long-crested eagle, blue-spotted wood-dove, brown-crowned tchagra, grosbeak weavers, fawn-breasted waxbills, and streaky seedeaters. Some lucky visitors have been treated with birds like black cuckooshrikes, ross’s turacos, and meyer’s parrots, but these are only observed once in a while.

Brown-crowned tchagra (Tchagra australis)

Before you know it, in about two hours, you will have seen about 35 species, even if you are birding for the first time! Yesterday, I birded with two visitors who observed 41 species although they were new to birdwatching. The record for the day at ASYV is 63 species, but for more experienced birders, you will probably find 40-50 species in 2-3 hours.

Southern red bishop (Euplectes orix)

The ASYV bird list continues to grow, and now surpasses 120 birds. It always amazes me that we see new birds here. Last week, I found a white-eyed slaty flycatcher on the property for the first time in the last year, and yesterday we had a booted eagle flyover and visiting African golden-breasted bunting, both new records for the property. Who would have guessed a residential/agricultural hillside with a tiny nature park could host so many types of birds?

Thanks for taking our virtual bird tour. If you can make it to Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, beautiful birds await!

The ones you miss (Ballad of the Birding Blues)

Get ready for some heartache... as much as birds can cause.

First, think about basketball. You have to take shots to score. It is the only way to get points. Inevitably, you are going to miss some of those shots too.

If you want to see a wide variety of birds, you have to go out looking. To see new birds, you may have to travel and spend money/energy/time to find them. Sometimes you get the birds. Sometimes you don't.

Green-breasted pitta, painting at Kibale National Park headquarters.
Never saw it in the flesh (in the feather!)

There are plenty of birds we missed in East Africa. For example, we missed the endemic or localized birds of Kenya, Pemba Island, and Southern Tanzania, because we never made it to those areas. Missing those birds doesn't bother me so much. There are migratory birds that do occur nearby but just never flew my way. Again, they don't bother me much. It's the resident birds of Rwanda, Southern/Central Uganda, and Northern Tanzania that we spent money/time/energy to find that we truly missed.

At the end of this post, I will list birds that we hoped to see and missed, but I want to share stories about two birds we missed (called "dipping" in birding linguistics). 

Papyrus gonolek, illustrated in Birds of East Africa (Stevenson/
Fanshawe)

The papyrus gonolek is an insect-eating resident of papyrus swamps inhabiting just five countries: Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and western Kenya. Michele and I have gone looking for this bird numerous times, even visiting sites specifically because they are known to support a population. In Uganda, we spoke to several local guides who told us the only way people ever see it is by playing tape recordings which may draw a bird in (we don’t have the capability, though I don’t oppose the practice). This information never stopped us from standing or walking around papyrus swamps for a couple hours just in case it popped out.

Papyrus swamp, Lake Mugesera, Rwanda

We have heard the gonolek call, but we have never seen it. The last time we heard it, in Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary in Uganda last Friday, the fact of missing it set in, but it had long occurred to me that this would be a bird we would miss. I am sad not to see it but have grown used to the idea that we would not. Fortunately, we have seen the much more common black-headed gonolek many times. Both gonoleks are very similar birds, and so it is like missing a close relative of the same type of bird. 

Not all misses are so easy to swallow. As soon as I moved here, I made a list of the top 200 birds I wanted to find. Although that list would look very different knowing what I do now, at the time the African green broadbill was #23. Broadbills are classified into two families, and can be found in forests in tropical Asia and Africa. I have never seen any type of broadbill so this is not only a new species but a new family of bird I have no experience with (we also missed the African broadbill and rufous-sided broadbill, species of broadbills from the other family in East Africa. Both were also in that top 200). Observing such a diverse species is highly alluring to me.

Furthermore, the African green broadbill population numbers no more than an estimated 2,500-10,000 individuals and the species is only known from three sites in the world. Two areas are in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, in a war-torn, dangerous region with poorly developed tourist infrastructure. The other site is Bwindi Inpenetrable Forest, a national park in southwestern Uganda. If I didn't make it to that park, it would be easy to write this bird off because hey, I never got close. If only that were the case...

African green broadbill, painting at tourist information center, Kabala,
Uganda

After an exciting experience in Kibale National Park in central-western Uganda this past weekend, Michele and I traveled over bumpy dirt roads in 5-person sedans packed with 9 passengers and a driver back to central-eastern Uganda (Mbarara). There were two species we wanted to chase: the green broadbill and the African finfoot. The finfoot is found all over sub-Saharan Africa but is difficult to see. It is rumored to be much easier to locate at Lake Mburo National Park, about 60 km from Mbarara. Theoretically, we could go to Lake Mburo, look for the finfoot, make our way south, and go for the broadbill before continuing further south back to Rwanda.

National parks are expensive, and we were exhausted from the previous days of traveling (and the past year of working). We could only afford to go for one of the species if we wanted to stay in our budget, and after much deliberating chose to bypass the chance at the finfoot to go for broadbill. We took a ridiculously slow 120 km public mini-bus down to Kabale, the nearest city to Bwindi, checked into a guesthouse, and got some rest. Several knowledgeable people we talked to told us we would have no problem showing up at the park, getting permits, and hiring a ranger.

We talked to the tourist information center in the town the next morning and of course the tour operator told us we should employ his bird guide. We considered it, but the guide wanted $100 USD for 1 day (in addition to transport costs, park fees, lodging, etc.). It would be great to have a guide, and we love employing local guides, but that is a lot of money. We opted to go without a guide. We tried to hitch on trucks without luck, and thus had to hire a private car to drive us the 50km to the park. Half the road was unpaved, muddy and holed up from the rains, but the forest was beautiful. Get the bird or not, it looked like we would have fun trying to find it the the lush greenery. The beauty of the forest, however, was the only enjoyable part of this trip.

Montane forest at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda

We arrived at the gate and inquired about paying fees and hiring a ranger for a walk. The man at the gate told us they do not allow afternoon walks because it would be dark soon. It was not yet 2pm, and since the sun sets at 7pm in Uganda, I suggested we could take a short walk on the trail. The man inquired why we wanted to walk in the forest (on a trail that has been there for years, mind you, this is no off-the-trail adventure). When we told him that we were looking for birds, he said we needed to have a bird guide. Though no bird guide is required he said, we should really hire one and come back. I politely told him that we could not hire an outside specialist and would only need the services of an escort. Finally, he agreed to call a ranger and have him meet us. Keep in mind, these are services we are buying, not favors they are doing for us; we pay every step of the way. A light rain hit but quickly the sky cleared, giving us perfect weather for searching.

We finally got a hold of the ranger in nearby Ruhija but he said there were elephants in this part of the forest and we could not take the trail. I respect that elephants are dangerous animals. But we had just come from hiking all day in Kibale where there were also elephants around (their dung was all over the place the ranger pointed out to us). We had hiked in the highland forests of Ngorongoro Conservation Area where elephants were very near. Rangers carry weapons for this very reason. We asked if we would be able to take the trail in the morning, but were told that the elephants may still be around. So, after paying to drive all the way, we faced two choices: leave now and cut our losses, or pay for lodging, pay for park fees, and maybe get to look for the bird the next day. We would have had only a chance of finding this difficult-to-see bird, and it seemed like we may not even get a shot. We decided to leave.

This is the part of the movie where Harold and Kumar realize that
White Castle is just out of reach, with no hang-glider to save the day

Seeing the bird is not the only fun part; the chase is pretty exciting too. There was no chase here, just getting close and being disappointed with no chance to even look.

As we were waiting for the Ruhija gate to open and let our driver take us back, we sat within meters of the best place in the world to see this rare bird. Meters from the trail, but worlds apart from the bird. I am now 50 kilometers from that trail as I write. Soon I will be back in Rwanda, hundreds of kilometers away, and quite soon thousands of kilometers away in the United States. I thoroughly enjoyed East Africa and would love to come back, but there are many other places I want to visit over my lifetime. Even if I do get back to East Africa (a region almost three times the size of Texas), I may never make it back to this spot.

It stings. It's not like seeing this bird is really important in the scheme of things. It's not like your sports team winning a national championship is that important either. In fact, that's exactly what this feels like. I remember a team I loved losing by a 3-point shot in the NCAA national championship game. They had the chance to tie it at the end, but the shot was blocked. End of game. I haven't forgotten that loss or what might have been if the shot went up, and I suspect I won't forget the time I missed out on looking for the African green broadbill either.

Bummer. Drag. Such are the birding blues. But we live to bird another day...

Narina trogon,
painting at Kibale
National Park
Headquarters

Birds we heard but did not see: Papyrus gonolek, Fischer's turaco, Afep pigeon, mountain sooty boubou, Usambara akalat, green-throated sunbird, yellow-billed barbet, yellow-spotted barbet, Nahan's francolin, red-chested flufftail, Neumann's (short-tailed) warbler, western green tinkerbird, chocolate-backed kingfisher,  standard-winged nightjar (all of these were in the presence of guides who knew the sounds)

Birds we hoped to see but never did, despite being in appropriate habitat: narina trogon, tacazze sunbird, yellow-eyed black flycatcher, white-winged warbler, spotted eagle-owl, green-breasted pitta, greater flamingo, all four crimsonwings, African pygmy goose, African finfoot, wooly-necked stork, abdim's stork, rufous-bellied heron, african skimmer, white-collared oliveback, and plenty of others!