Run like an antelope

Thomson's gazelle (Gazella rufifrons) in Ngorongoro Conservation Area,

Tanzania. Look at all those flamingos in the background! What a life, to

run around free and enjoy the birds, without a care, except for lions,

cheetahs, leopards, and hyenas, of course.

The name antelope refers to a wide variety of mammals. Although antelopes are extremely diverse, they all share some basic characteristics.

White-bearded gnu (a subspecies of blue wildebeest (Connochaetes 

taurinus albojubatus) in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania.

Antelopes are even-toed, hoofed mammals. They share this foot morphology with hippopotamuses, warthogs, giraffes, and deer, but none of those are "antelope."

Female eland (Taurotragus oryx) in Akagera National Park, Rwanda.

Antelope are classified in the family "Bovidae" along with cattle (buffalo) and sheep. Something that distinguishes the Bovids from other even-toed, hoofed mammals is that Bovids have horns.

Kongoni (hartebeest) (Alcelaphus buselaphus cokei) in Serengeti 

National Park, Tanzania.

Topi (Damaliscus lunatus) in Akagera National Park, Rwanda.

Antelope have horns, not antlers. Deer, for example, are not antelope. If you think about the common white-tailed deer, you may remember the male has antlers. His antlers branch; horns of Bovids do not branch. Additionally, antlers are shed each year and then regrown. Horns are permanent and do not shed.

Female waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus) in Akagera National Park, 

Rwanda.

Most antelope species also exhibit sexual dimorphism. Sizes, coloration patterns, and the presence of horns may differ between the males and females depending on the species. Adult males of all antelope always have horns, but some females have them too. Male and female elands, for example, both have horns but differ in their shade of brown and how much hair they have on their necks. Male impala have horns but females do not (males and females also differ in size but otherwise look the same).

Bush duiker (Sylvicapra grimmia) in Arusha National Park, Tanzania.

Kirk’s dikdik (Madoqua kirkii thomasi) in Tarangire National Park, 

Tanzania.

Antelope vary greatly in size. Eland males can weigh nearly 950 kilograms whereas Kirk's dikdik reaches just 7 kilograms. Some dikdik species are even smaller (2-3 kilograms).

Bohor reedbuck (Redunca redunca) in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

Some antelope species live in large herds, such as wildebeest and impala, but others like duikers live alone or in small groups. In some species, like waterbuck and gazelles, in the breeding season, the males split apart from herds and defend a territory. 

Impala  (Aepyceros melampus) in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

Uganda Kob (Kobus kob thomasi) in Murchison Falls National Park,
Uganda

All antelope are grazers. What they graze upon depends on their habitat. Antelope inhabit ecosystems from desert to grasslands to dense rainforests. They eat plants and serve as the link in the food chain between the sun and the predators.

Male bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus) in Akagera National Park, Rwanda

Big antelope are preyed upon by lions, cheetahs, leopards, and hyenas, but smaller antelope are eaten by a wide variety of predators. Life as an antelope is a life on the move, in search of food and avoiding being the food. Run antelope run!

Works consulted

• Gomez, W., T. Patterson, J. Swinton and J. Berini. 2011. "Bovidae" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed October 31, 2011 at http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Bovidae.html.
• Kingdon, Jonathan. The Kingdon Pocket Guide to African Mammals. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004.
• Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. "Horns and Antlers." 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed October 31, 2011 at http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/topics/mammal_anatomy/horns_and_antlers.html
• "Mammals: Antelope." 2011. Zoological Society of San Diego. Accessed October 30, 2011 at http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-antelope.html

Advice from little hornbills

Crowned Hornbill, Tockus alboterminatus, in trees near the shore 

of Lake Victoria, at Mabamba Swamp, Uganda

My first exposure to hornbills was likely Disney’s Lion King, where Zazu tries to keep Simba out of trouble. Much to my dismay, Zazu appears to be a fictionalized hornbill species. I can’t find a match*. The only “little hornbills” are the dwarf-hornbills of the Congo rainforest and Western Africa, and even they are not that small. Certainly, none of the hornbills have given me any advice, although I am no king lion.

Red-billed Hornbill, Tockus erythrorhynchus, West of Arusha, 

near Tarangire National Park, Tanzania. This is the species the Lion King

character Zazu is based, but see my discussion at the bottom of the page.

Hornbills are pretty special birds. They have long tails and are relatively large compared to most birds, ranging from 38 to 100 centimeters in length (about 15 to 40 inches). Hornbills have thick, down curved bills; some hornbills have large keratin casques that extend from the head over the bill. Hornbills are loud in their calls, hooting, rasping, and piping various sounds. Especially with the bigger species, they are noisy in flight too. In the West Usambara forests of Tanzania, I took pause to describe in my notes the sound of the Silvery-cheeked Hornbill in flight, a “huuh-huuh-huuh,” each “huuh” being a downward thrust of its wings. 

Von der Decken’s Hornbill, Tockus deckeni, West of Arusha, 

near Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

Hornbills are omnivores. They eat fruits, invertebrates, and small vertebrates like lizards. You will sometimes see a hornbill flick up its bill, tossing the food into the air, and catch its food further back in its mouth. 

African Pied Hornbill, Tockus fasciatus, Mabira Forest, Uganda

There are about 56 hornbill species in the world and that number may increase if certain subspecies are considered distinct. Different hornbill species live in different habitats, from savannas to rain forests. Twenty-four species (of the 56) can be found in Africa. The rest are in tropical Asia. We have a couple of birding friends who have lived in Asia and tell us that African hornbills have nothing on Asian hornbills. If that is the case, I have no idea, because all my hornbill sightings have been in Africa. 

African Grey Hornbill, Tockus nasutus, Akagera National Park, Rwanda

Michele and I have seen twelve species of hornbills, including the ground-hornbills. In some places, hornbills are quite common. In central-eastern Uganda, where native trees and even small patches of forest remain, hornbills could often be heard and fairly easily seen, especially the large Black-and-white-casqued Hornbill. In Rwanda, in my experience, I have only seen one hornbill out of a national park once, and that was by one of the only tiny native-wooded areas left. The Black-and-white-casqued Hornbill was present in Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda, but it was never easily seen (in fact a group of birders that we met there missed them altogether). I suspect that Rwanda’s lack of abundant hornbills outside protected areas has to do with the fact that nearly all its large native trees outside the parks are gone (hornbills breed in large trees). 

Black-and-white-casqued Hornbill, Bycanistes subcylindricus,
Entebbe Botanical Gardens, Uganda.  Note that the male on the left has
a larger casque and the female on the right has red bare skin around her eye.
This is a good example of sexual dimorphism, which means that males
and females of the same species differ in shape, plumage, or size.

With the sunbirds or weavers, the males are bright, and admittedly I photograph the males more than the females. But upon reviewing my shots of the hornbills, they were also all male. Female hornbills are very similar if not identical in plumage and their bills only differ in size of the casque and sometimes color. Why were there all males in the pictures? Michele suggested that maybe the males are showier; in fact, she was very close!

White-thighed Hornbill, Bycanistes cylindricus, Budongo Forest, Uganda.
The male and  female display very similar sex differences as the above
black-and-white-casqued hornbills. These two species are very similar
but can be told apart by amount of white on their primary feathers and the
differences in their tail feathers.

Hornbills have a unique reproductive strategy that makes the females less visible during parts of the year. The female hornbill seals herself in a tree cavity with the eggs, where she incubates them and rears the young. The male brings food to feed her and the young until the young birds are nearly ready to fly out. She even molts, losing her flying feathers, during her time inside the tree. All species of hornbills breed like this except the ground-hornbills.

Silvery-cheeked Hornbill (female), Bycanistes brevis, Amani Rainforest,
East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania

Silvery-cheeked Hornbill (male), Bycanistes brevis,
Lake Manyara National Park, Tanzania

The ground-hornbills are unique (endemic) to Africa. Ground-hornbills are also different from all other hornbills in several ways. The two species of ground-hornbills have different ranges, with one basically in Africa north of equator and the other in Africa south of the equator. Visually, they differ in two main ways. First, the casque on the bill of the Abyssianian species is larger and more pronounced than the Southern species. Second, the coloration of the exposed skin on the neck and face of each species is different. The Abyssinian has blue skin around the eye and on the neck with the male having a red neck with a blue patch. The Southern has red skin around the eye and on the neck with the female having a red neck with a dark blue patch. It sounds confusing, but these are huge birds without much overlap in range, so they are easy IDs.

Southern Ground-hornbill, Bucorvus leadbeateri, Lake Manyara
National Park, Tanzania. While this photo is poor, is hows the bird
in the process of flipping up food to catch further back in its mouth.

Abyssinian Ground-hornbill (male), Bucorvus abyssinicus,
Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda

Abyssinian Ground-hornbill (male), Bucorvus abyssinicus,
Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda. They fly too!

Abyssinian Ground-hornbill (female left, male right), Bucorvus abyssinicus,
Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda

The two hornbills that we saw but did not photograph are the Piping Hornbills and the Trumpeter Hornbills. If there is any advice to be taken from hornbills, it is that you need to take a lot of photos to get a good shot. And to keep big native trees so that birds can nest in them!!

* According to the Lion King Wiki, Zazu is a red-billed hornbill. This species would make sense in terms of distribution and habitat. The bill is red and it does have some yellow at the base. However, there are some serious differences between Zazu and red-billed hornbills. Differences are extremely important in birding, and the following differences are more than enough to say Zazu is not a red-billed hornbill.

Zazu’s tail has a white line going across the center of his tail feathers; red-billed hornbills have white trailing down the edges of their outer tail feathers with no white line going across. Legs and feet of Zazu are red, whereas red-billed hornbill legs and feet are black. Zazu has one white bar on his wings whereas red-billed hornbills have white splotches all over their wings. Zazu has no yellow bare skin around the eyes whereas red-billed hornbills do. Zazu is blue, light blue, and white. Red-billed hornbills are black and white.

These differences are major enough to rule him out as a red-billed hornbill (the argument of simplification in kids’ movies is possibly valid until you see that other illustrated birds in animated movies have the details near-exact). I am not trying to split hairs here with Zazu’s illustrators or imply that an animated bird should be true to form. I think it is cool to see species that are famous from movies or are exhibited in zoos; in this case, there is no Zazu species to see.

Works Consulted

• Fanshawe, J. and Stevenson, T. Birds of East Africa. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002.
• Pearson, D.J., Turner, A.T. and Zimmerman, D.A. Birds of Kenya & Northern Tanzania. Christopher Helm: London, 1999.
• Roberson, Don. "HORNBILLS: Bucerotidae." Bird Families of the World. Accessed 21 September 2011. http://creagrus.home.montereybay.com/hornbills.html
• Roberson, Don. "GROUND-HORNBILLS: Bucorvidae." Bird Families of the World. Accessed 21 September 2011. http://creagrus.home.montereybay.com/ground_hornbills.html
• Ryan, P. and Sinclair, I. Birds of Africa south of the Sahara. Struik Nature: Cape Town, 2003

Safari at Akagera National Park, second visit

A visiting teacher to Agahozo from New York was interested in a safari and told me she was a “wannabe birdwatcher.” I jumped at the idea… let’s split the cost and go birdwatching at Akagera National Park!

A vervet monkey on the move! (Cercopithecus aethiops pygerythrus)

Our driver was an hour late to pick us up this past Sunday, but it did not matter much as it rained from around 6:30am to 10am. Dark grey clouds loomed in all directions, and it did not look like a promising day for birds or any sort of fun.

Hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) are easy to see at Akagera

We got to the outskirts of the park around 8am in our 4x4 jeep. The road up to the park entrance goes through some rather flat woodland. From what we saw in the rain, I estimate that it would be some excellent birding on a sunny day. There were of course common birds like grey-headed sparrows, red-eyed doves, red-cheeked cordon-bleus, ring-necked doves, black-lored babblers, and white-browed robin-chats. We also picked up white-headed black chats, grey-backed fiscals, Ruppell’s long-tailed starlings, European bee-eaters, greater blue-eared starlings, and lilac-breasted rollers, which are all pretty nice looking birds. We were treated to some helmeted guineafowl along the side of the road, and three African grey hornbills rested all wet from the rain in a tree. We drove up a hill to reach the gate, as the rain still fell.

Helmeted Guineafowl (Numida meleagris)

At the entrance gate, we stopped at the welcome desk. We filled out a form, met our park ranger, and paid our $30/person entrance fee. As we were walking out the door, the receptionist noted that we were birding and that the fee would actually be $70/person. I could not find any extra services we would be offered for the higher fee so I informed her that we would not look at birds and would just stick with the $30 “game drive.” The guides are pretty good with their birds, but of the two I have had at Akagera, they do not always know the birds at the species level (bee-eaters are bee-eaters, starlings are starlings, etc.). Plus, birds are the easiest group of wildlife to see. If they expect to get a premium price from birders, they better up the services, because I can bird just as successfully for $30 as I can for $70.

Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis tippelskirchi)

With our guide, we backtracked slightly to take the giraffe viewing road. We spotted one giraffe in the woodland, but the rain still poured. We picked up a neat mammal, a small antelope called a bush duiker, along the way. The only new birds we added were sooty chats and a lonely Senegal lapwing.

Olive baboon (Papio anubis)

The end of the giraffe road is back at the entrance gate, and I had our driver take us up to the Akagera Safari Lodge. I stopped in at the desk to get their most up-to-date contact information, as the Bradt guide and all the internet sources I have found were not current. Two olive baboons did show some interest in our car but quickly wandered off. We went to the lodge to look for the red-faced barbets that supposedly nests in a dead branch of a tree in the parking lot (I have seen in two sources, so I thought it was worth checking out). We found the ficus tree near the entrance to the parking lot that supposedly hosts the barbets, but the only dead branch had broken off and lay on the ground. We did get out and look around in the light rain, but did not find the barbets, which is a species endemic (found only) to the area west of Lake Victoria and in between the mountains separating Uganda/Rwanda/Burundi from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I had hoped to see this bird, but we missed it here and on the day overall.

Hildebrandt's Francolins (Francolinus hildebrandti)

As we descended a giant hill toward Lake Ihema (the biggest lake at Akagera), we saw two fairly large antelope, waterbucks,  foraging in the grass. We found hildebrandt’s francolins, emerald-spotted wood doves, white-browed coucals, and a soaring African fish eagle. As we reached the edge of the lake, a few vervet monkeys captured our attention; they are very cute, a mostly grey-furred monkey, with a black face surrounded by white. A woodland kingfisher, Egyptian geese, African open-billed storks, and squacco herons populated the banks and nearby vegetation. A lone hippopotamus swam in the waters offshore. And then, some stunning blue-cheeked bee-eaters landed in a bush not far away! These, according to the African Bird Club list for Rwanda and the Birds of East Africa, are migrants and do not breed in Rwanda. They were very pretty, and the rain was finally stopping enough for me to take a few pictures through my spotting scope.

Blue-cheeked Bee-Eaters (Merops persicus)

We continued along the lakeshore, picking up African jacana, marabou storks, spur-winged lapwings, and long-toed lapwings along the way. We drove past a fishing village and through some woodland to another much smaller lake called Shakani. Here we saw a great white egret (same as great egret In Americas but here it is a different subspecies), numerous cattle egrets (many in breeding plumage), one intermediate egret, two little egrets, glossy ibis (same species as in Americas), hadada ibis, some great cormorants, and a grey heron. We had one sandpiper, but we had a poor view and did not bother to identify it at the species level. The highlight of this lake was a single yellow-billed stork, which we had previously only seen from afar; this bird was close, and modeled for our cameras. A single Nile crocodile swam across the lake, showing just enough to be seen- if you are looking- but it posed a certain danger to any unsuspecting bird or mammal.

Yellow-billed Stork (Mycteria ibis)

On the road away from Shakani, we checked the mousebirds but only found speckled mousebirds (no blue-naped). A bare-faced go-away bird and an African green pigeon hung around on separate branches for some great views, and we added long-crested eagle, fork-tailed drongo, and white-winged black tit to our day’s list. We passed some bushbuck (a bovine mammal) and arrived at Lake Birengero. There is an area that you can get close to the lake and scan the papyrus along the shore of the opposite side for the shoebill, an absolutely unique and amazing bird. The shoebill is only found in Africa, is specialized to eat lungfish in mainly papyrus swamps, and is not easy to see. The rain had stopped and the sky was clearing so we stayed for around 40 minutes, scanning the shore, back and forth. We did not find the shoebill. This is a bird that Akagera and tour operators advertise, and it is frustrating how hard it is to access in “one of the most accessible shoebill haunts” (Bradt Guide). Much of the opposite shore is not visible, being blocked by trees, reeds, and papyrus that are on our side of the lake. The shore is far enough away that even if you did find the shoebill, it would not be a great view. It would be easy to put an observation tower here. While canopy towers in the rainforest might be expensive to construct (with trees 150-200 feet tall), the trees by Birengero are much shorter. A tower would be unobtrusive to the habitat of the shoebill and allow Akagera to actually show one of its top animals. If the shoebill were reliably seen here, I have no doubt that many more birders would come to this park. On Birengero itself, we found a single grey heron, a great cormorant, an African fish eagle, and one grey-crowned crane.  As we looked for the shoebill, a white-headed saw-wing whizzed around, common bulbuls sat in a tree, some common waxbills darted around the reeds, and a spectacular double-toothed barbet landed low in the vegetation to our left. The Fanshawe illustration in Birds of East Africa does not do this barbet species justice; it is so much prettier in person. No shoebill though. We moved on, sad to miss this species for the day (we did not see it in other marshes in the park).

Lake Birengero (the papyrus marshes are mainly
to the right across the lake, so are not shown in this picture,
but may hold resident shoebills)

We saw yellow-fronted longclaws, little bee-eaters, and a spot-flanked barbet on the way to our picnic spot on Lake Hago.African grey hornbills and lilac-breasted rollers were particularly showy here, and they looked sharper than in the rain earlier. Some hippos nearly joined us for lunch, as they exited the water down shore and eyed us cautiously. A few pied kingfishers rested on bare branches next to the lake and African wattled lapwings were also present. We ate our hard-boiled eggs, wheat rolls, amadazi (fried dough rolls), pineapple, and bananas while contemplating what we had seen and what we might see next. On the drive to our next spot, we found an immature black-chested snake eagle, Levaillant’s cuckoo, and one of the finds of the day, a black-bellied bustard standing atop a termite mound in the distance.  Our guide pointed out the bustard and much credit to him for the difficult spot. It would be the first of three black-bellied bustards we would see that day. And also, perhaps my favorite of Akagera’s mammals, the common warthogs trotted about, looking silly with their tails sticking straight up. We had good luck with warthogs after this and saw quite a few (no pictures though).

Black-bellied Bustard (Eupodotis melanogaster)
(the last bustard we saw- picture taken on the plains)

We arrived at Plage de Hippos (hippo beach) to look for ducks and waders. We saw hippos and basking crocs; we saw three white-faced whistling ducks, spur-winged geese, Egyptian geese, water thick-knees, and a malachite kingfisher. A large number of African open-bill storks were around, so many that they were actually blocking the views of most of the ducks and geese. A Eurasian marsh harrier flew by, but we turned up no other birds and decided to move on. A black-headed gonolek flew in front of the car, but other than me, no one got good looks at it.

Two crested barbets (Trachyphonus vaillantii)

On our drive to the plains, we spotted three great birds. The first, perhaps the find of the day, was a pair of crested barbets. They flew into a fruiting tree and snacked, only giving a great view at the end. The birds we saw had much more red faces than Fanshawe illustrates, but otherwise the drawing was accurate. Stevenson’s text notes that it has a red-speckled yellow face; it looked nearly all red to me. In any case, it is a spectacular-looking bird, and it was Michele’s favorite of the day. As we drove on, a Ross’s Turaco flew by and a green wood-hoopoe also flew by, showing its orange bill and spotted and lined wings.

A large topi (Damaliscus lunatus) looks at us
 with the much smaller Bohor reedbuck (Redunca redunca)
to the right in the grass

As we reached the plains, black-headed gonoleks gave much better views for all to see. We found some African buffalo with yellow-billed oxpeckers on their backs. Many topi (an antelope with a black face and leg patches) dotted the savanna and a Bohor reedbuck went sprinting by. We found many more buffalo and checked every oxpecker to see if we could pick out a red-billed, but they all were yellow-billed. Crowned lapwings, Senegal lapwings, and many African wattled lapwings surrounded the mud holes or scattered in the grasses. A single black-shouldered kite rode the otherwise empty sky. Two giraffe roamed a hillside in the distance. We found one European roller in a bush and finally got a good picture of the black-bellied bustard. The sun was nearly behind the hills, and it appeared that we might miss zebra altogether. We hoped our visiting friend would see this unique animal. As we left the plains, and drove toward the exit in the hills, common zebra finally showed themselves. We had some sacred ibis fly overhead, and two unidentified nightjars (with white-wing spots) flew in front of the car. We drove out of the park in the dark and started the 2-hour journey home.

Common zebra (Equus quagga) finally showed themselves
just before dark

Although we missed some birds we wanted to see (shoebill, red-faced barbet), we left the park having identified 73 species of birds and 13 species of mammal. Looking at the list of birds, it is heavily skewed toward larger birds. Entirely missed are many groups of smaller birds. We did see many of these birds, but from a moving car it is very difficult to ID them. Even if a small bird lands in open view, we must get the driver to stop, possibly back up, possibly get out of the car, and then look for the bird. This is not easy to do for every little bird, especially if you are trying to cover the whole park (we wanted our visitor to see the plains game in the north, and we also wanted to look for certain birds in the south). Numerous cisticolas, warblers, sunbirds, and two cuckoos did go by, but we did not get the chance to ID them. For future reference or for other birders, if you want to go for smaller birds or concentrate on certain species, you must cover less ground. For this trip, I am glad we did go the whole distance as two of our top birds (crested barbet, black-bellied bustard) all came from the north.

Sunset over savannah and wooded hills in Akagera

Mammals:

Olive Baboon

Vervet monkey

Common Zebra

Hippopotamus

Common Warthog

Giraffe

African Buffalo

Bushbuck

Bush duiker

Bohor Reedbuck

Waterbuck

Impala

Topi

+2 species of mongoose, but I am unsure which ones (one small, one larger)

Reptiles:

Nile crocodile

Tortoise, unsure which species

Birds (73 species):

Great Cormorant

Cattle Egret

Squacco Heron

Little Egret

Great Egret

Intermediate Egret

Grey Heron

Yellow-billed Stork

African Openbill

Marabou Stork

Glossy Ibis

Hadada Ibis

Sacred Ibis

Egyptian Goose

Spur-winged Goose

White-faced Whistling-Duck

Black-shouldered kite

African Fish-Eagle

Black-chested Snake-Eagle

Western Marsh-Harrier

Long-crested Eagle

Helmeted Guineafowl

Hildebrandt's Francolin

Red-necked Spurfowl

African Jacana

Grey Crowned-Crane

Black-bellied Bustard

Long-toed Lapwing

Spur-winged Lapwing

African Wattled Lapwing

Senegal Lapwing

Crowned Lapwing

African Green-Pigeon

Emerald-spotted Wood-Dove

Ring-necked Dove

Red-eyed Dove

Ross's Turaco

Bare-faced Go-away-bird

Levaillant's Cuckoo

White-browed Coucal

Speckled Mousebird

Pied Kingfisher

Woodland Kingfisher

Malachite Kingfisher

Little Bee-eater

Blue-cheeked Bee-eater

European Bee-eater

European Roller

Lilac-breasted Roller

Green Woodhoopoe

African Grey Hornbill

Spot-flanked Barbet

Double-toothed Barbet

Crested Barbet

Barn Swallow

White-headed Sawwing

Yellow-throated Longclaw

Common bulbul

White-browed Robin-Chat

African Thrush

Sooty Chat

White-headed Black-Chat

Black-lored Babbler

White-winged Black Tit

Grey-backed Fiscal

Black-headed Gonolek

Fork-tailed Drongo

Yellow-billed Oxpecker

Greater Blue-eared Starling

Ruppell's Long-tailed Starling

Village Weaver

Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu

Common Waxbill

Safari at Akagera

This past Sunday, our volunteer group headed out from the village for a safari at Akagera National Park. With over 1000 square kilometers, Akagera provides habitat for hundreds of species of animals, including large mammals such as hippo, giraffe, zebra, buffalo, lion, and elephant. Its bird list includes over 500 species, including the shoebill. With such potential, I could hardly sleep the night before, and I stayed up studying other peoples’ trip lists and the plates in the field guide for what could be a bonanza of new birds.

Akagera National Park

Only three of the nine people on the trip were birdwatchers so we agreed to try for a balanced safari with a mix of birds, mammals, plants, and any other wildlife we could find. Our chances for some animals were pretty slim due to the events of the past twenty years. Akagera has lost over half of its original space due to people settling and cultivating its lands (about 1500 square kilometers lost), and several of its big animals have been devastated by poaching. Still, it is a giant space… what did we see?

Once inside the park gate, interestingly enough, the first bird we saw was a red-necked spurfowl, and it gave great views. This was such a contrast to the experience with the spurfowl that I described in the last post (In Search of Inyoni). Whereas it took us days to get a good look at ASYV, the spurfowl were fairly easy to see throughout the day in Akagera. Soon after passing some impala (a type of antelope) but before even reaching the park headquarters, we found two excellent birds, the crowned hornbill and the African grey hornbill.

African grey hornbill (Tockus nasutus)

The park cost $30 for each person to enter, and you have to have a vehicle to enter the park (luckily we had a vehicle for the day). A guide, paid for in the entrance fees, accompanies visitors during the safari drive. Our guide was named Charles, and although he claimed his bird knowledge was just ok, he proved to be a great companion in helping identify difficult birds and in sharing his knowledge of the local ecology.

Nile Crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus)

At our first lookout point near Lake Ihema, we found Ruppell’s long-tailed starling, African open-billed storks, an African fish eagle, an African darter, glossy ibis, Egyptian geese, a pied kingfisher, and a woodland kingfisher. The spot seemed to be ripe for finding birds. We were not, however, permitted to stay long or wander away from the specific place we had stopped. One drawback to Akagera is that you are not allowed to leave the vehicle except at lookout points and then not allowed to stray from those points. This was a major challenge to finding birds.

Hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius)

As we drove through the park, we found two types of primates, the vervet monkey and olive baboons. Nearly all of the bodies of water contained hippos, and we saw a good number of Nile crocodiles too. Birds like African jacana, black-collared barbet, helmeted guineafowl, and bare-faced go-away birds impressed even the non-bird folk. A few warthogs darted in and out of the bush just long enough for us to see. As we approached the northern section of the park, the big mammals became more numerous. Impala, bushbuck, waterbuck, topi, and zebra grazed in the woodland that surrounded the road or even crossed it in front of our vehicle.

Common Zebra (Equus quagga)

African open-billed storks (Anastomus lamelligerus),
spur-winged goose (Plectropterus gambensis),
white-faced whistling duck (Dendrocygna viduata)

We stopped for a picnic lunch at a body of water called Lake Mihindi. The view was spectacular and made up for the simple lunch of bread and bananas. With hippos and crocodiles further out in the water, open-billed storks, spur-winged geese, white-faced whistling ducks, spur-winged lapwings, and water thick-knees populated the banks. Shortly after lunch, we passed a tree with a couple European bee-eaters. Michele and I had searched and searched for this species in Israel in August 2009 but we never found them; they had already migrated from the area for the year. No worries after all- we got them in Rwanda!

African buffalo (Syncerus caffer)
with yellow-billed oxpecker (Buphagus africanus)

Once we made it onto the plains, we found three additional very large mammals: the eland (largest antelope in the world), the African buffalo, and a single giraffe. These brought the mammal count to 11 for the day. As everyone took in the beauty of the open grassland and its wildlife, Ido spotted three grey crowned cranes far in the distance. A black-chested snake-eagle soared overhead, giving us a total of 54 species of birds on the day. The variety of life on the plains was a thrilling conclusion to our visit, and we soon reached the park exit.

Grey crowned cranes (Balearica regulorum)

Seeing 54 species of birds is a mere scratch of the surface of Akagera. I am eager to return and explore different parts of the park. I really want to find spots that allow for some out-of-the-car bird watching, such as trails, but they may not exist. Let me illustrate how few birds we saw, relatively speaking. On average, I see about 36 species each morning at ASYV in about two hours; ASYV is not a park nor does it contain a variety of habitats. In about nine hours at Akagera, which contains several habitat types, we saw 54 species. Covering so much ground on the safari and being limited to searching for birds from the car made this not so much a bird watching trip but a get-lucky-and-see-what-is-around-while-doing-other-things type of trip. The car had to keep moving on, or even if we did stop, the birds sometimes flew just out of sight from the car. I have read that the outskirts of the park are also quite good, and you are not bound to stay in a vehicle. The birdwatchers among us vowed to return to try to see some of the other roughly 475 species that live in or visit the area.

Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) with Homo sapiens Ido and Michele