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Back in June 2008 when I first posted about the Endangered Sharpe’s Longclaw - which is endemic to the grasslands of the Kinangop Plateau near Nairobi - I had no idea at all just what the year would bring in terms of our (10,000 Birds) developing relationship with the local community and especially with a [...]

It’s a happy situation to be in I suppose, but all three of us here at 10,000 Birds are really struggling to keep up with all the posts we want to write (darn those day-jobs which pay the bills, eh). Mike and Corey have just spent a fantastic week in Guatemala and Honduras respectively and [...]

Yesterday I wrote what was intended to be a short post about a visit I made last month to the Mugumoini Primary School in Kinangop with Dominic Kimani and James Wainaina. Typically I became more enthused the more I reminisced, and finally ran right out of time before I’d been able to post a series [...]

In a post a few days ago I tried to explain in more detail the direction our Sharpe’s Longclaw/Kinangop Grasslands campaign was heading, and highlight what the impact was of posting photos of communities that wouldn’t under everyday circumstances see themselves on the internet. I put online photographs of the members of the monitoring team [...]

The bloggers of the 10,000 Birds team are or have been on their travels this week, and as I’m first back - from another amazing day in Nairobi with Dominic and the Friends of Kinangop Plateau - and Mike and Corey don’t have internet access (though Mike has somehow managed to get connected long enough [...]

Native Kinangop Grasslands…

….lost to potato cultivation

 
The Kinangop Plateau, home to the endemic Sharpe’s Longclaw and numerous other endemic forms of fauna and flora, is rapidly being converted from native tussock-grass dominated grasslands to sub-divided agricultural plots where - in particular - potatoes and cabbages are grown.

Prior to the early 1960s most of the land on [...]

“That season” is fast approaching again - you know, the one with the pine trees and the reindeer, the jolly chap with the beard (no, not your dipso uncle Harold, the other chap) - and 10,000 Birds is getting in the mood by asking you to give AND to receive…and help us take the next [...]

Regular readers will know (because they helped pay for it!) that 10,000 Birds recently set up the “Small African Fellowship for Conservation” which helps fund a young Kenyan researcher called Dominic Kamau Kimani. Dominic (with Luca Borghesio, the Friends of Kinangop Plateau, and Dr Muchai Muchane of the National Museums of Kenya) is trying to [...]

As part of the ongoing co-operation between 10,000 Birds and the teams working on the ground in Kenya to plot the distribution of the Sharpe’s Longclaw, a pipit-like species confined to the Kenyan Highlands close to Nairobi, Luca Borgesio has sent through a field report from the core of this Endangered bird’s world-range. We are [...]

As I wrote on my first post about my amazing day-trip to Nairobi last weekend (see Life Changing Moments in the Kenyan Highlands) one of the highlights was a visit to the Njabini wool-spinning workshop run by the Friends of the Kinangop Plateau* with Nature Kenya (the Birdlife International partner in Kenya).

The Njabini Wool-spinning [...]

I’m just back from Nairobi, Kenya after one of the most motivating and inspiring days I’ve had for many years. It’s going to take me a week or so to fully write-up everything that happened - which included speaking at a village school in the grasslands below the Aberdare Mountains, being made an honorary Kikuyu [...]

I’m off to Kenya at the weekend for a very short trip, and I’m really looking forward to it. Why? Because despite the fact that I’ll only be spending about thirty hours in Kenya in total, this is the weekend I’m scheduled to meet up with Luca Borgesio and Dominic Kamau Kimani (and hopefully [...]

I thought that 10,000 Birds readers may be interested to know that the first part of the donations raised for the Small African Fellowship for Conservation has been deposited in Kenya, and funds will start to be distributed on a monthly basis to Dominic Kimani from the start of October as planned.

I’m sure anyone who [...]

Our appeal to raise funds for the inspirational young Kenyan Dominic Kimani (photo left) is drawing to a close, and as the ‘Chip In’ widget in the sidebar shows thanks to a small number of our conservation-minded readers we’ve collected more than the 2000 USDollars we were aiming for (when I wrote this you’d [...]

More fun to support “The Small African Fellowship for Conservation” our serious campaign to help save the Sharpe’s Longclaw (the what now? click right here to find out). I asked last week for your ’snarky’ or otherwise captions to the photo below (me and a whale on the kind of diet plan that most [...]

Our campaign (in partnership with the National Musems of Kenya) to raise funds for the “Small African Fellowship for Conservation” - in essence to support the admirable Dominic Kamau Kamani in his struggle to promote awareness amongst his own community of the threats facing the Endangered Sharpe’s Longclaw - is going very well, thanks to [...]

I can’t imagine staying at a hotel in the US, Europe, or the Far East without being able to plug in and broadcast (via 10,000 Birds of course) a stream of words and photos to a waiting world - I’m exaggerating of course, but that’s what I like to pretend to myself sometimes - and [...]

 
A Conservation Project is born.

In June (2008) I was fortunate enough to be on a short birding trip in Nairobi with Shailesh Patel and George Kamau. Amongst the birds Shailesh and George were able to show me was one that I had never seen before and knew almost nothing about: the Endangered and highly range-restricted [...]

We’ve been saying some bold things lately about how we’d like 10,000 Birds to become involved in genuine conservation initiatives, and how we’d really like to support local “community-based” conservation projects. Time to put our blog where our mouths are, so to speak…

So, okay, if you add up the following, what do you get?

Sharpe’s Longclaw [...]

I recently wrote an enthusiastic review of “A Guide to the Birds of East Africa: a novel” by Nicholas Drayson (you’ve not read the review? You should - it’s a great book!). I really enjoyed this charming and highly entertaining novel - but did highlight a few mistakes I’d found concerning a couple of the [...]