Bird-survey on the Sabaki River estuary

After catching up on sleep, Saturday morning saw me up early with Colin Jackson, Albert and Andrew to join 5 members of the Sabaki Wildlife trust for a four hour survey of the birds present at the mouth of the river we had seen on our trip to Malanga. Here evidence of the effect of soil erosion upstream was in no doubt – 15 year ago, the river had been three to four times as wide as it now was. Nevertheless there were still loads of exotic – well exotic if you are from the UK – birds to see, plus the added frisson of fresh hippo tracks leading to and from the places on the river bed where we now stood to count the birds. I am not an ornithologist in the true sense of the word, I couldn’t dedicate a Saturday morning to counting terns, but it was wonderful to be out in the stiff wind, with mud up to my knees on one occasion and just learning.

After the bird-spot, we stopped off for tea and some kind of doughy cake in Malindi before heading back on the road which was becoming more familiar to me through Gedi. Saturday afternoon was taken up with catching up on Skype and emails at Ocean Sports before settling down to watch the Lions v South African rugby. An evening watching the Lion King cartoon on DVD with some of the German guests brought yet another interest-filled day to an end.

On Sunday it rained for longer than at any time since my arrival, but that was much laer than was usual. I tried my first ride in a matatu – complete with dvd playing – screen up front, speakers at the back – 18 people crammed in where there were seats for 15! And then a twenty minute walk with some of the guests and volunteers south down the beach to swim (splash about in my case) in the heavy surf.
And on Monday I travelled to meet the family in Nairobi – but that is a whole new chapter in this blog, the details of which will follow in a week or so. (In brief: they arrived tired but safe – and much earlier than I did, and managed to meet up with Megan Wood from St Cuthbert’s as well)