Kenya continued

Every safari has its highlights and lowlights. For me there were a few real highlights. The group of Montagu’s harriers on the ground at Samburu was quite exceptional. We spotted one, then two and finally we found 5 sitting amongst the wispy grass. There were 3 females and 2 males. With the sunlight softening and falling they looked quite beautiful and as they allowed us to approach reasonably close and flew barely 50m when we crossed the invisible line of tolerance, I suspect they were on migration and simply too tired to care. I have seen Monties before. My first was in Spain about 15 years ago and I had even seen an occasional bird in the UK but never at such close quarters. If you look at the images at the bottom of the previous post you can see just how good they look with the yellow eye gleaming. The male is a particularly smart bird and I have an image of one flying away from us.



There is a real chance of confusion for the inexperienced birdwatcher. Male Montagu’s and Pallid harriers are easily confused if you don’t get a good view of the wing markings. The shape of the black marking on the outer primaries / secondaries is less extensive on the Pallid and comes to a point. The Montagu’s has a black bar on the inner secondaries and underneath has beautiful chestnut streaking. The Pallid is a clean bird, often described as ethereal. It does have a ghostly pallor as it quarters across the grassland. My photo above shows the shape of the Montagu’s black wing tip markings and the secondary bar.

Females are more cryptic and my previous post showed a female Montagu's. Here are 2 female Pallids (or actually the same bird in different poses). Look very carefully at the facial markings.






Particularly noteworthy is the pale necklace that shows from above the ear coverts to the neck.

Just to reassure you that Kenya has bugs and indeed larger beasts, here are 2 more pictures from the trip. The moth is Bunaeopsis oubie of the family Saturniidae and the other is a cat.

On the road with Mrs. Ha in Kenya or MAMOBA!!

I had heard the expression “Miles and miles of bloody Africa” before but did not know that it came from Hemingway. Given in my Google searches as “MMBA”, I prefer “Mamoba”. It has more of a Kiswahili ring about it. This certainly captures the spirit of the vast, open, grassland landscapes of the Mara but to me it encapsulates also the clouds of thick, clogging dust, the corrugated roads that make your spine feel like it has a road-drill vibrating inside it and the swirling, pebble-glass haze of heat that distorts your vision. We visited Samburu and Masai Mara, two very different places.

Samburu is a bird paradise but you have to earn your rewards. A sort of BirdMiles scheme perhaps? We flew in from Nairobi to the Samburu airstrip but our lodge was still nearly 90 minutes away. The road was rutted stone, bone-jarring every inch of the way. By the end of a day in the field the sandy grime matted the hair and clung to the clothes, forcing its way in to your eyes, nose and throat. And heat. Endless gulps of bottled water kept us hydrated as the sun slowly baked the sardine lid roof of the safari bus. Thank heavens we had the bus to ourselves.

Mara is cooler. Our lodge airstrip said we were at 5,500’. Much better tracks, smoothed by the greater commercialism of dozens of vehicles criss-crossing the grassland, desperately trying to sate the clamour for the “Big Five” from eager voyeurs. Fewer trees. More open landscapes with lush greens shading to arid browns, truly breathtaking. For us, Mara meant fewer birds but a greater chance to relax and enjoy the Kenyan experience as you see it in the glossies and on the endless wildlife programmes. But don’t expect a “kill a minute”, Big Cat Diary style. Game drives are leisurely affairs on the whole, gentle giraffes chewing on acacia thorns or lolloping along at a measured pace; herds of buffalo, grazing contentedly then staring directly at you as you approach, unsure whether to back off or snort and snuffle aggressively; timid gazelles, aristocratic elephants, demanding respect and trumpeting occasionally to remind you and each other, who is where and who is in command. Contrast the cool, polished Topi of the Mara with the tinder dry Oryx of Samburu. There are of course sudden changes of tempo in Mara as a bus finds something special. Lion, cheetah, black rhino……in 3 days no sign of leopard anywhere. Anything feline provokes dust storms of F1 style driving as the drivers try to out-position their peers so that their clients have the best vantage point and photo opportunity. High stakes here as end of tour tips tend to be correlated with success on the savanna. Our experience was that the lions were invariably asleep (although we did witness one brief copulation) and the cheetahs more active. We saw one aborted hunt and two days in a row we found the same mother and cubs, providing us with fine entertainment. To Mrs. Ha’s relief none of the cats decided to use the vehicle as a vantage point. I think it was Jonathan Scott, who once had the privilege of being underneath a stream of Cheetah pee as he sat inside the Land Rover or Land Cruiser and the cheetah walked across the roof, relieving itself as it did so.

No balloon trips at Samburu either. Mara is cool, Samburu is the spiky teenage rebel. Mara is the Range Rover whilst Samburu is the Defender.

And I learned a lot about photography. It is a cliché that photography is all about light. Cliché it may be but nowhere is this truer than on an African safari. I had done some bird photography in Kenya in 2005 but this time I was much more aware of quality rather than quantity.

I used almost exclusively my Canon 400mm F4 DO lens with a 1.4x TC on a 1D mk III body. This on a bean bag gave excellent results. It is amazing what 2kg of rice can do to your photographs! In poor light I did a few times shoot at ISO 3200 with acceptable results. Such is the quality of the Canon sensor.

I learned that the soft light of morning and evening can indeed give a warm, luscious tone to a picture but it can also play havoc with whites, caught by the sun. Spangling or dappling effects can create sharp contrast that the human eye can cope with and a digital sensor can not. Try getting a cheetah correctly exposed in late afternoon sun and see what I mean. At times I had to use -2 2/3 compensation to hold the whites and stop them burning out. Yellows were especially challenging. The Yellow-throated longclaws were particularly hard to get right and I deleted far more images than I kept. There were recurring problems with highlights on acacia thorns, elephant tusks and bird legs, all of which reflected a great deal of light. Getting unobstructed images was often tough with grass and thorns obscuring part of the target. Over time I disciplined myself to take fewer pictures and be more selective on when to squeeze the shutter button. Sometimes it is simply better not to take the picture. A few horror moments also reminded me of the need for “re-set hygiene”. Simply put, after shooting I always returned the settings to AV, F5.6, +/- 0, Single shot, “silent” shutter mode.

The real eye-opener for me was the way Mrs. Ha took to photographing birds. I set her D30, 400mm F5.6 combination to take small jpeg files (I took RAW and jpeg combined) and she rattled off a huge number of images. Yet she deleted ruthlessly and her eye for composition is better than mine. She soon was in the swing of jostling me for the optimum shooting position and getting the driver to move a yard this way or that to get the light “just right”. Good on you, my love!

Our guide was from Nature’s Wonderland Safaris. I will provide unbiased references on request. A few logistical comments. We could not get our preferred lodge at Samburu and ended up at one in Shaba. There are 3 adjoining reserves, Samburu, Buffalo Springs and Shaba. As I mentioned above, Shaba is not close to the airstrip, the roads are grim and there is little “big game” Shaba side. You go to Shaba for birds. We stayed at a lodge that was to put it kindly, tired. The rooms were ok but hot with little airflow and the “aircon” only a noisy fan. After a bad first night we were told we could leave our windows open at night (contradicting what we had been told the previous day) and this gave us much relief. The food was ordinary. But the restaurant did boast a Shikra sitting on a branch next to the breakfast buffet on day 2. The grounds also held Giant kingfisher so not too shabby! After a fairly tense exchange with our reluctant guide, whom I had told to drive us on a route that would allow us to pass a lodge (any lodge) for a toilet break at some stage in our 12 hour all-day marathon, we found the lovely Ashnil Samburu Camp. 25 minutes from the airstrip in beautiful surroundings we were welcomed, walked around and shown the rooms and we rapidly wished we had stayed there. It is newly opened and had not a single guest the day we visited. Well worth a look.

At the Mara we stayed at Keekorok Lodge. This was a big improvement on our Shaba experience. It was very busy, many groups seemingly from France and Japan with a few Brits thrown in, presumably spending their last pounds before the currency and country sink without trace under GB’s “leadership”. This lodge is comfortable, well equipped, friendly and has lovely grounds. It is 5 minutes from the airstrip (2.2km the sign says). We enjoyed our stay here but again the food was pretty ordinary and none of the meals started on time. This is not a problem at lunchtime but if you want a 6.30 breakfast before you go off on a game drive it is annoying when the service starts at 6.45. However tea, coffee and biscuits are available from 6.00.





Mr. and Mrs. Montagu' S Harrier


To be continued