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When you mention “Africa” to a birder, it is likely that at least two thirds will instantly think “Kenya”, and for a good reason: it is home to over 1,060 bird species and boasts many globally important birding areas. There are loads of travel guides to East Africa and Kenya in particular.
More than 150 bird species are known to have become extinct over the past 500 years, and many more are estimated to have been driven to extinction before they became known to science. The Gray Crowned-Crane is a new addition to the list of the world’s Endangered species, creeping up a category from Vulnerable.
A single morning birding the thorny desert of Baringo in Kenya’s Rift Valley yielded several species at a rate I at times struggled to keep up with. Lake Baringo and the surrounding desert scrub at just over 3,000 feet elevation is one of the most profitable birding hotspots in the country, boasting approximately 470 species.
I had the good fortune to visit Lake Nakuru in Kenya in 2019, one of the high elevation rift valley soda lakes. Obliging species like Grey-headed Kingfisher , Long-crested Eagle , and even a pair of Greater Blue-eared Starlings ensured we didn’t get anywhere quickly. There were many other species around this prolific area.
This map shows the distribution of the World’s bird species, based on overlying the breeding and wintering ranges of all known species. I used to live in Botswana, where there are about 450 bird species in an area a few dozen miles from the capital; then somewhat naively moved back to Serbia with mere 250 species around the capital.
4%: Mexico, West Papua (Indonesia), New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya. Yet, the fact that tiny Panama is as popular as huge Brazil, with twice as many bird species, speaks volume for Brazil’s stage of ecotourism development. 6%: Antarctica, Argentina, Indonesia (including the votes for West Papua), India. 8%: Brazil, Panama.
While Uganda does not have the international reputation of its neighbors Kenya and Tanzania, the experience there is no less extraordinary – and in many ways, particularly for the birder, it’s even more so. In the relatively brief period, my group had something on the order of 450 species.
Elephant The big – two species of elephant are now recognized as occuring in Africa, the smaller and more secretive Forest Elephant and the larger, more familiar African or Bush Elephant. Prime destinations for seeing African Elephant in the wild include Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Uganda.
and dreaming of a place where the heat is moderate, beer snake-cold and birds innumerable… Let’s say, where the average annual maximum varies from 22 to 24 degrees Celsius / 72 to 75 Fahrenheit and where some 700+ bird species – 24 of them endemic – are waiting for an intrepid birder… Answer to the riddle?
This country boasts over 1,000 bird species, vast wildernesses, a superb network of protected areas, the greatest concentration of large game and predators on the planet, excellent lodges and friendly people. This 12,000 square mile ecosystem stretches across north-western Tanzania into the Maasai Mara in Kenya.
Its great diversity of habitats hosts an incredible bird count of over 900 species, including Africa’s 2nd highest list of endemics and near-endemics (after South Africa). Recent publicity about these remarkable tribes has resulted in tourists wanting to experience this wild land and its attractions for themselves. Yellow-billed Stork.
Additional back of the book material includes a Glossary, Biographical Details, a Select Bibliography, Notes, Credits, an Index to Species and a General Index. Cocker writes about the species within each family with a literary specificity softened by a tone of conversational patience. Eagles are national symbols of the U.S.,
On my 21-day Kenyan safaris we reckoned to find around 600 species of birds and around 60 mammals, both impressive totals. One of my most memorable outings was a night-time game drive in Kenya when we saw an aardvark and a zorilla, so we ticked off both the first mammal in the field guide’s index, and the last.
The first time I went was for my Masters Field Trip, studying tropical ecology in Kenya (otherwise known as the best month of my life). Volunteering provides a very different experience to tourism though. You may not get the species counts that the race delivers, but you’ll have memories burned into your skull.
In my younger days I was very keen on what is generally known as Big Day Birding, or trying to see as many species of birds as possible in one day. Called The Big Bird Race , it tells the story of how my team, representing Country Life magazine , recorded 155 species in 24 hours in East Anglia (Suffolk and Norfolk).
Frigatebirds (Fregatidae) Five species of frigatebird ply the planet’s tropical skies and seas. Ringer Cormorants and Shags (Phalacrocoracidae) Cormorants are more speciose than other families in the order; 30-40 species range widely on every continent and many islands. Corey Mar 12th, 2011 at 8:29 pm Now wait just one second.
Grief, friendship, gratitude, wonder, and other things we animals experience. A few years ago while I was watching elephants in the Samburu National Reserve in Northern Kenya with elephant researcher Iain Douglas-Hamilton, I noticed a teenaged female, Babyl, who walked very slowly and had difficulty taking each step. by Marc Bekoff.
Will the threatened species make it through if there are no birding tourists to make those birds and their habitats valuable to local people just the way they are (as opposed to tropical timber)? What will be left of birding tourism? I was trying to find that answer for a while and it turned into a very annoying experience.
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