1st December 2007

Patchy drizzle today again, but another beautiful evening. We meandered back down to ‘The Peaceful Place’. The geese were there, but further along towards the well, and wandered down onto the beach when we arrived. The goslings are still in tow, each with white flashes on their wings now – looking more and more like adults by the day.

A new woodpecker pair was tapping tapping away at one of the doum palms on the river’s edge – the Bearded Woodpecker – yet another new bird for the list. We’ve already reached an incredible 154 different bird species here in this small patch of Africa – plus quite a number of “unidentifiables”.

We observed some interesting avian behaviour in one of the Little Serengeti’s two large Delonix trees which are covered in lush green foliage now, adorned with lustrous yellow and white flowers, and alive with different birds - from a Nubian Woodpecker to a pair of precocious Go-Away Birds.
We watched as a Spot-flanked Barbet chick was fed by one of its parents. When the adult first landed, and the chick started begging, it looked like the adult had brought nothing to eat, but it then started regurgitating food, which the chick ate directly from the parent’s mouth. Amazing how each and every creature has evolved and developed a system for survival and continuation of the species.

On the subject of birds, the Village Weavers who are nesting in the small Baobab tree up behind our house were in a frenzy of nest-building this morning – perhaps the rain that seems to have come back again is kick-starting a new breeding craze. The morning light highlighted their red eyes which looked startling and beautiful against their bright yellow feathers and the crisp green Baobab leaves (how the tree has changed since the birds first started building – the rain prompting swift leaf proliferation). The birds were bringing in long strands of grass which they deftly wove into their nests. It was quite a spectacle to watch. In amongst the frenzy, I noticed another weaverbird, which I could tell by the pale eye could not be a female Village Weaver, but must be the female of another species. (The females are mostly difficult to tell apart, as they are all fairly uniformly yellow, and there are so many different types of weaverbird.) Eventually, using the distinctive pale eye as my guide, I decided the bird must be a breeding female Lesser Masked Weaver.

PS. I am sitting writing this in our downstairs office. Just now, I was startled by a bang on the window right behind me - I swung round to see one of our resident Genet Cats with its nose up against the glass - hunting insects which have collected on the window sill. The genet ran off when I moved, but I can hear it now, crashing around upstairs, chasing bugs to its heart's content (good lad).

In pictures: Indigenous wild flowers of Kulafumbi...
In pictures: Resident birds of Kulafumbi...
In pictures: Genet Cats and other "small fry" at Kulafumbi...