African Affinity Birding: a Kenyan pilgrimage to the ringing mecca of Ngulia, November 2019

I was besides myself looking forward to this trip. Not only had it been a few years since I'd been, but that Charlotte was coming out too!
We set off from Nairobi to the coast to go stay with Colin Jackson at his wonderful Arocha site at Watamu, but first we stopped off at a concession in Tsavo East for a night to break the journey. On the way we caught an Eastern-chanting Goshawk, a bird I'd wanted to catch for years! So much like their Dark and Pale cousins, but also quite different.
At Tsavo, we were greeted by a pair of quite large male lions sitting in the track! In the morning we had a drive around and saw a few nice birds, in particular QUAIL-PLOVER!! a bird Ive wanted to see!! and also a very good record (eg, Colin has never seen one!).
At the coast it was great to se Colin, Roni and young Kai, but the rain!!! The weather was against us and we only managed to put nets up one morning and caught a few local species. We went to Mida Creek, (I'd not been here for 35 years!) a famous site for wader ringing and saw a good high tide flock of mixed waders, including a flock of CRAB PLOVERS!!
Back to Tsavo East for a week, before Ngulia, and through the eastern gate. There had been some really good early rains and the savannah was alive with displaying Golden Pipits, Chestnut-headed Sparrowlarks, displaying Hartlaub's Bustards, Somali Bee-eaters, Von der Decken's Hornbills, Taita Fiscal, Martial, Tawny, Steppe, Lesser-spotted Eagles and many ringtail Harriers.
It was nice to see one of the strangest antelope in Africa, the Gerenuk, such a wonderful looking beast!! Vultures were thin on the ground, but we did see 2 Egyptian, some Lappet-faced and Ruppell's. But the best sighting was seeing a Striped Hyena trotting along the track in front of us!
Back at our lodge we found a Verreaux's Eagle-owl in a tree and dropped a trap for it with an instant response and caught it. When getting the bird off the trap, it made a good lot of bill clacking, which in turn brought into the tree; 2 other Verreaux's Eagle owls (mum and juv) a Wahlberg's eagle and last but not east, a Martial!!! Crazy tree full of huge raptors! unfortunately before i could get the trap out agin, the birds disappeared. Charlotte was very happy, the one owl she wanted to catch more than anything!! We next got a Pygmy Falcon, such a wonderful little raptor, and in very different habitat from Southern Africa.
Ngulia.
On arrival at the gate, it was so good to see Ian Kerton and Phil Jones and to finally meet Martin Cade. Conditions for this session looked so good, great mists, even in the day!! but the birds were few and our best night was just shy of 3000 birds ringed, mostly Thrush Nightingale, Marsh Warbler and Whitethroat. The final tally was just shy of 10,000 bird ringed at the end of the November session, not the best of catches, (Ive been here when we have caught 28,000 birds in 10 days!). Other friends arrived, Richard Charles, Paul Roper and Keith Dean whom we all got raptors for. Charlotte and I road trapped and got another favourite of Charlotte's, Auger Buzzard, including a massive female of 1.5kg! We managed to get in total, 9 Eastern-chanting Goshawks, 2 Wahlberg's Eagles, 2 Brown Snake Eagles, 2 Pygmy Falcons and 4 Auger Buzzards.