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Kenya 2011 – Jon Hall

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Kenya 2011 – Jon Hall Kenya 2011 – Jon Hall Kenya, more than any other country, is responsible for my interest in mammals. Not that I had been there before 2011: but I did watch a lot of wildlife documentaries on TV in the 70s as a small child most of which seemed to have been filmed in Kenya. And I also loved the show Daktari, which was about a Kenyan vet - well I imagined he was Kenyan - if I remember right. So from a very young age I can remember begging my Dad to take me to Kenya. He said he would. He never did. And it wasn't until November 2011 that I got there. My Kenya Airways flight from Bangui to Nairobi was fine. Their onward connection was a farce. It was due to leave Mombassa at 20.00. The incoming plane was late. ETD 21.00. We took a bus to the plane and en route they discovered a technical problem with the aircraft. Back to the terminal. We finally left at midnight after a frustrating but amusing few hours. Several passengers decided to harangue the airline staff. A crowd gathered around them to video the scene which was really very entertaining. When, finally, we were led onto the tarmac it became apparent the Kenya Airways guy leading the charge did not know which aircraft we were heading for. So 200 people were led backwards and forwards across the tarmac doing the airport conga. The queue was strung out so, after each U-turn, we ploughed into the tail end of the line. We even went up the steps to the wrong plane. Twice. God knows how many people missed the flight (or how many arrived in Mombassa expecting to be somewhere else). Chaos above and beyond even EasyJet's levels of incompetence (a phrase that I once thought inconceivable). When we finally made it to Mombassa I took a cab to the Serena Beach Resort, a palace of a hotel which I had hoped to enjoy for more than the few hours I did. It was pleasant to scratch my Central African insect bites in comfort. Grevy's Zebra, Samburu National Park I traveled around Kenya in a car from Erikson Rover Safaris. They have a fleet of old but well maintained Land Rovers and Range Rovers. They can supply camping equipment and also offered me a driver (check - useful if you want to sleep during the day and also invaluable for spotlighting, though it turned out we couldn't actually spotlight in any of the parks) and a cook (check - useful if I didn't want to live off tins of beans for a week, my usual camping menu ... cooking wastes valuable time when you could be looking for critters). The people at Erikson's were good to deal with and its a relatively cheap way to travel around. However I forgot how much petrol Range Rovers guzzle. They use an insane amount of fuel and I would have been much better hiring a slightly more expensive diesel Land Rover off of them. Sadly they don't have any Toyotas.... John the driver, and Juma the talented cook, were both nice, reliable people and I was glad to spend the week with them. Arabuko-Sokoke Forest National Park Golden-rumped Elephant Shrew, which is found only in Sokoke Forest Compared to the Central African Republic, the drive from Mombassa to Gedi and the Sokoke Forest was closer to Florida than Africa. I exaggerate ... but it is one of the more developed bits of Africa I have seen, where the bars and grills come with Wifi and happy hours. The Sokoke forest is less than 2 hours north of Mombassa and is one of the last remaining tracts of an ecosystem that used to stretch a long way down the coast. Its home to some very nice mammals and top of my want list was the Golden Rumped Elephant Shrew. We set up camp and I decided to hire a local guide Johnson M Kafulo who was waiting for business outside the park. I have no idea what the other guides are like at Sokoke but Johnson was pretty good, especially at finding several of the species I was chasing. I would use him again if I went back. We began with a visit to Pangayamba Cave, where I was told there were many bats. It is signposted from Gedi Village as a tourist attraction. I'm not sure why any tourist would visit. It is a not very interesting cave though it does have a wooden bench inside and a mask from when a witch doctor set up shop there in the 1970s. But it was home to a small colony of Heart-nosed Bats. A really nice species that I hadn't seen before. Heart Nosed Bat (Cardioderma cor) We were camping at the main gate. There are several campsites in the forest and this was probably not the nicest, and certainly not the quietest, but it seemed to be in the best area for the Golden Rumped Elephant Shrews. Johnson quickly spotted a pair feeding in a thicket next to camp. We had good views through the undergrowth of this fabulous animal. A few minutes later I spotted another out in the open amidst stands of bamboo. Golden-rumped Elephant Shrew In the late afternoon we drove a kilometre or two into the forest to look for squirrels and saw a Zanj Sun Squirrel (I presume though it looked a lot like the Red-legged Sun Squirrels I had been looking at a few days earlier in Central Africa) and several of the pretty Red-bellied Coast Squirrels. The area is also good for Four-toed Elephant Shrew and we heard a couple rustling and giving their foot drumming alarm but couldn't see them. Blue (Sykes') Monkeys are very common around camp and in the forest. We also saw a troop of Yellow Baboons. Red-bellied Coast Squirrel Walking back to camp in the dark we looked for Galagos: both Northern Greater Galagos (Otolemur garnettii) and Lesser - presumably Senegal - Galagos) are here. We heard both calling but couldn't spot either. Back at camp, John and Juma had had a pair of Lesser Galagos jumping around the tree right above where they were sitting. I couldn't find them but did see at least one Greater Galago near camp that was very vocal. Greater Galago In the morning Johnson and I headed further into the forest to look for Ader's Duikers and another Elephant Shrew species which he said was Round-eared but was presumably one of the Sengis. We drove through the Mida Gate along the road to the viewpoint at 6.15am, stopping to talk to one of the park researchers who was walking along the road. He'd just seen a Sokoke Dog Mongoose - a species I derided not to bother looking for when Johnson told me he hadn't seen one during 7 years working in the park. This I then realised was a function of his not being in the right areas after dark. If I went back I would try to find this interesting species. When we got into the red soil country we left the car and walked for over 3 hours through Duiker habitat. Judging by the number of tracks they are quite common. We heard at least 4 animals (Johnson got split second glimpses of two, and the other two made alarm calls). A number of other rustlings may also have been Ader's Duikers. Or they may have been Four-toed Elephant Shrews, which are also abundant judging by the number of tracks we saw. Blue (Sykes') Monkey Caracals and Aardvarks are two other nice species that are probably not terribly hard to find after dark in this area. Although we had heard lots we didn't see anything so at 10am we headed to a section of the forest known as the Sokoke Scops Owl site, another area heavily used by Duikers. There were very fresh tracks and droppings all around and we heard more animals but couldn't spot them. They are super-wary animals and so I think the best technique would be to sit at a spot like this and wait for a couple of hours to look for them. After packing up camp we visited another cave we had heard about, which the locals called the Ali Baba Cave. It was along the road past Jimbu Primary School and took some finding (most of the locals claimed never to have heard of it but I think that was because they didn't trust strangers). We found it eventually. It was much more impressive than Pangayamba Cave. And though it didn't contain many bats the two species I saw were both new for me: a few African Sheath-tailed Bats and a handful of Angolan Fruit Bats. Angolan - Bocage's - Fruit Bat ( Lissonycteris angolensis) By 2pm it was stinking hot. Probably too hot to see the "common tree squirrels" - Ochre Bush Squirrels I guess - that Johnson said were best seen around the Gedi ruins. So we set off for Tana River. African Sheath-tailed Bat (Coleura afra) Tana River Primate Reserve Tana River Crested Mangabey It is about 200km from Gedi to the Tana River Primate Reserve. The road was crappy but we had good directions as neither John nor Juma had been there before. At the last police checkpoint before Hola we were told to drive 55 kms and turn right at the signboard.
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