Langata Nature Centre (Giraffe Centre), Karen, Nairobi
24 April 2005

One day’s birding in Kenya - one WHOLE day in a country with a list of about 800, unforgettable birding highlights, a huge range of habitats and scenery…it was always going to be a little frustrating…

However, I’m not someone who dwells on what they’re NOT going to see (most of the time anyway).
Short of birding time but want to see birds? Get out early, go somewhere you know something about, and stay as long in the field as you can…you’re bound to see SOMETHING…

How is this relevant? Well, about this time last year I’d stumbled on a quiet and well-laid out little bird reserve called the AFEW Nature Sanctuary, attached to the Langata Giraffe Centre in Karen - about 8 miles/15km from Nairobi City Centre, or a twenty minute taxi ride - and been pleasantly surprised to get good views of White-starred Robin, Hartlaub’s Touraco, and Black-throated Wattle-eye amongst others.
Though the Giraffe Centre itself attracts a lot of tourists and noisy visitors (it’s a tiny place, but who can resist the chance to get licked in the face by an orphan giraffe? A colleague of mine, Mike, obviously couldn’t (right) - much to the disgust of his wife who I thought quite understandably was muttering darkly about Mike having to drink a bucket of Listerine mouthwash before he’d get anywhere near her again…) the dry forest sanctuary was practically empty of people and full of birds.
It doesn’t have the diversity of the huge Nairobi National Park (which it virtually connects with) of course, but on a sunny Sunday it wasn’t going to have the traffic and the crowds either - and there’s no chance of a sleepy, pedestrian birder being mauled by a Lion too (which is a major plus in my book)…

The reserve intially looks fairly unpromising to be honest. Though it is obviously outside Nairobi city and in a rural area, there are quite a few people milling around most of the time and as you look at the forest (with your back to the Giraffe Centre) it’s equally obvious that it is small and that there are settlements on either side of it. This is very much a remnant area, but the fence around it looks secure and it has actually got a decent list: a quick check on the net before I went revealed that on top of the birds I’d seen on my first visit Narina Trogon and Yellow-throated Longclaw had been recorded - both of which would be lifers…

Entrance to the sanctuary is through a single main gate, which is locked until 09:00 and must be opened by one of the Centre’s staff - who on both occasions I’ve been have been very friendly and helpful by the way. Once the Giraffe Centre is open, you need to buy a entrance ticket from the main kiosk - this gives access to both the giraffes and the forest. Current price was 500Kshillings (about 3GBP/5USD).

Even though the reserve doesn’t open until 09:00 it’s still worth getting there early, because there is plenty of good birding to be had by walking along the left-hand boundary fence on a wide, well-used track (left). This track (which drops and climbs quite steeply) often has villagers on it (I’ve had no hassle, but the usual advice is to be careful of course) as it connects the main road with one of the settlements: the productive part of it is only about 1000m long as it soon opens out into a thoroughly degraded farmed area, but it first goes through a slice of open country thick with acacias and bushes and gives good views back over the valley that the forest is situated in.Variable Sunbirds are everywhere, and it’s good for “common” birds like Kenya Rufous Sparrow, Western/African Citril Finch, Red-billed Firefinch, Fiscal Shrike, Black Cuckoo-shrike, Streaky Seedeater, and (on both occasions I’ve been there) has had Black Saw-wing hawking over it.
If you live in Nairobi you’d probably not give any of these species much of a second glance - but I don’t live in Nairobi and the sunbird especially is a real gem!

Kenya Rufous Sparrow

 

Western (or African?) Citril Finch

 

Streaky Seedeater carrying nesting material

 

Variable Sunbird (male, left, and female, right)

Going off on a bit of a tangent, which regular readers have probably come to expect by now, one of the predominant bird sounds here is the very odd call of the endemic and beautiful Hartlaub’s Touraco. It’s a very hard call to descibe, but if you’ve ever seen the film “Crocodile Dundee 2″ (stay with me - this will make sense) there’s a section where Mick “Crocodile” Dundee whirls a wooden blade on a long cord around his head to contact his aboriginal buddies: he calls it the “bush telephone”. This “instrument” makes an unwordly “skwaww, skwaww” sound that echoes across the Northern Australian plains - and sounds like a Hartlaub’s Touraco…you’ll know what I mean when you hear it…

Anyhow, it’s probably not worth spending much more than an hour exploring here, as the best birds are - inevitably - inside the peaceful nature sanctuary. The birding is very different to that outside the boundary fence, as the sanctuary protects a patch of dark, enclosed forest that follows the bed of the virtually dry Gogo River and is a completely different habitat - and that’s the area to head for to see the White-starred Robin and forest bulbuls etc.

Immediately through the main gate there is a choice of trails to take - the Ndege Trail and Jock’s Trail. In fact, the choice isn’t too difficult to make as the they are, in practice, two arms of the same trail, and whichever way you go from here will lead downhill through some pretty thick scrub towards the river bed. Slightly confusingly, there are a number of other named trails winding through this scrub - all lead down, then all lead back up again. The forest is too small to get lost in, and if you do wander off the trail you soon end up against the boundary fence - which once again leads back to the top of the hill and the main gate…

Having said that, it is probably more logical to turn left and follow the Ndege Trail - a selection of tree species along the route are numbered, and these are labelled in this direction.

There are plenty of birds along these trails of course. I took the photos below of Cape Robin, Singing Cisticola, White-eyed Slaty Flycatcher, and Grey-backed Camaroptera here for example, and had good - but not photographical - views of Rupell’s Robin and the rather gorgeous rufous-flanked Black-collared Apalis.

White-eyed Slaty Flycatcher

 

Cape Robin

 

Singing Cisticola

 

Grey-backed Camaroptera

The best area - to my mind - is down by the river bed. The trees here are larger and more widely spaced, and the ground is full of holes/burrows and looks like it’s been attacked by huge rabbits - I think the work of warthogs, though I didn’t stick my head into them to find out so I may well be wrong!

The river appears to have either been diverted or dried out long ago, but the old course is still very evident. Crossing over the bed leads into the more open ground - which is where the White-starred Robin is found, and where the Narina Trogon sadly wasn’t. Oh well…The robin is best looked for just by wandering in circles until you find it. When perched it’s almost invisible - and the species does seem to spend a great deal of time sat in cover endlessly preening (it has good reason to be pleased with the way it looks though, so why not…). I’ve not heard it call incidentally, though it must do so occasionally.

Other species here include African Paradise Flycatcher and Black-throated Wattle-eye, and various bulbuls join feeding-flocks.

A surprise on this occasion was a Mountain (aka Long-tailed) Wagtail picking its way around the few rock-pools that are left in the river bed: this is a species I’ve only ever seen along fast-running upland streams before, so I assume that somewhere along it’s length the River Gogo must have water in it. At one point the wagtail was joined by a Sedge Warbler - a common Palearctic migrant, and another species I really wasn’t expecting to see in a dry river bed in a forest in the Kenyan highlands. But then (all together now) it’s sightings like these that help to make birding so endlessly fascinating…!

 

White-starred Robin

 

Mountain (Long-tailed) Wagtail

 

African Paradise Flycatcher

One other area perhaps also worth looking at is the continuation of the open “savannah”-like habitat that held so many common birds outside the sanctuary. Walking through the river bed forest and out the other side leads uphill again to open, thorny scrub which - naturally - holds the same species as I was looking at in the morning. It is though a little less disturbed, and better for photography: I took the photos of the Klaas’ Cuckoo and Bully Canary below here.

Bully Canary

 

Klaas’ Cuckoo

All told, I spent the entire day in the sanctuary (much to the amazement of the staff when I finally emerged after seven hours), wandering around the trails and sitting out the hottest part of the day in the shade in the forest. There are drinks and some basic hot foods at the Giraffe Centre, but if you take some water in there’s really no need to come out at all.

If I’d had access to a car, or had been birding with someone else, I imagine I’d have only spent a few hours here before hurrying on to the next stop - probably the Nairobi National Park - but I’d have missed out on the peace and quiet of the place and not had the kind of views I had of some usually less visible species…

Would I recommend a visit? Well, of course I would…

From left top: Female Red-billed Firefinch; Black-throated Wattle-eye; Sedge Warbler; Mountain Wagtail.

Trip List:

English and scientific names mainly from “Birds of Africa south of the Sahara”, Sinclair I. and Ryan P., Struik, 2003:

Bostrychia hagedash 5-6; Black Kite Milvus migrans 10; Red-eyed Dove Streptopelia semitorquata 3; Hartlaub’s Turaco Tauraco hartlaubi c)10; Klaas’s Cuckoo Chrysococcyx klaas 1; Senegal Coucal Centropus senegalensis 2; Little Swift Apus affinis +, in city; Speckled Mousebird Colius striatus 4; Cinnamon-chested Bee-eater Merops oreobates 3; Yellow-rumped Tinkerbird Pogoniulus bilineatus 1; Black Saw-wing Psalidoprocne pristoptera 6; Lesser Striped Swallow Hirundo abyssinica 3; African Pied Wagtail Motacilla aguimp 2 (hotel garden); Mountain Wagtail Motacilla clara 1; Black Cuckoo-shrike Campephaga flava m&f; Pied Crow Corvus alba fairly common in city; +; Black-eyed Bulbul Pycnonotus tricolor +; Cabanis’s Greenbul Phyllastrephus cabanisi 6-10; Yellow-throated Greenbul Chlorocichla flavicollis 1; Olive/Mountain Thrush Turdus olivaceus/abyssinicus 1; Rupell’s Robin-chat Cossypha semirufa 2; Cape Robin-chat Cossypha caffra 2; White-starred Robin Pogonocichla stellata 1; Sedge Warbler Acrocephalus schoenobaenus 1; Singing Cisticola Cisticola cantans 1; Black-collared Apalis Apalis pulchra 2; Yellow-breasted Apalis Apalis flavida 2; Tawny-flanked Prinia Prinia subflava 1; Grey-backed Camaroptera Camaroptera brevicaudata 3-4; African Grey Flycatcher Bradornis microrhynchus 1; White-eyed Slaty Flycatcher Dioptrornis fischeri 2; African Paradise Flycatcher Terpsiphone viridis 1; Black-throated Wattle-eye Platysteira peltata m and f; Common Fiscal Lanius collaris 2; Tropical Boubou Laniarius aethiopicus 2; Red-winged Starling Onychognathus morio 2, in city; Scarlet-chested Sunbird Chalcomitra senegalensis 4; Variable Sunbird Cinnyris venustus +; Montane White-eye Zosterops poliogastrus 4; Kenyan Rufous Sparrow Passer rufocinctus 3; Baglafecht Weaver Ploceus baglafecht 10+; Red-collared Widowbird Euplectes ardens 1; Red-billed Firefinch Lagonosticta senegala 4; Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu Uraeginthus bengalus 4; Violet-eared Waxbill Granatina granatina 2; Yellow-bellied Waxbill Coccopygia quartinia 2; Bronze Mannikin Spermestes cucullata +; Brimstone Canary Serinus sulphuratus 1; Western Citril Serinus frontalis 1; Streaky Seed-eater Serinus striolatus 3-4

All photographs © Charlie Moores