Roadside Hawk

The only other bird I had images of from August 11, 2015 were those of this bird ...

... the African Harrier-Hawk. Which we saw while driving that day.

We saw over fifty different bird species that day. But I only have photographs of two of them.

And now you've seen them both.

🦅  🦅  🦅

Note there is a bird named "Roadside Hawk", which I've seen on a number of occasions in Central and South America, but do not have any photos of. This is not that bird. Sorry for any confusion.

Also at the Hotel

But not a guest was this bird.

Image courtesy Laura Keene

A Pennant-winged Nightjar in breeding plumage.

I had spotted the bird, actually two of them, while enjoying a beer sitting outside my hotel room (I had hoped to see them; chance and the prepared mind). Patty and I quickly went and alerted our other tour mates. It was a life bird for all, including Adrian our guide. Laura took this photo the next morning, it being too dark when we first saw them.

🐧 🐔 🐦 🐤 🦆 🦅 🦉 🦃 🐓 🦜 🦢 🕊 🐣

Laura Keene did a ABA region Big Year in 2016, the year after our Africa trip. And she came in third. With 814 species seen. That's a lot of birds. For comparison, lifetime in the ABA area I've seen 565 species.

I better get out there looking ...

One of One Hundred and Twenty-one

The next morning, outside that hotel at Lake Kivu, we saw, among other birds, these.

Double-toothed Barbets.

The tree was full of them.

Just one of the 121 different species of birds we saw in Rwanda. It was a fun trip.

Hanging In There

In August 2015 Patty and I found ourselves in Rwanda at the Lake Kivu Serena Hotel as part of a safari tour.

And we found these hanging in the trees outside the front door of the hotel.

Straw-colored Fruit Bats.

Very large and very cool members of the order Chiroptera.

We arrived in the early evening, and the bats were coming into roost. Each image shows several bats settled in for the night An unexpected treat at the end of a long day of traveling.

🦇  🦇  🦇

Like many birders, I use eBird to report my bird sitings. And like many birders I occasionally get an email asking for more info about a particular bird reported. And so it occurred that I received such an email on March 30, 2019 for a siting on August 11, 2015, in Rwanda.

eBird relies on a volunteer workforce to review submitted reports and sometimes they fall a bit behind.

Anyways, as part of looking into my records of the siting I reviewed the pictures I took that day. I did not have any images of the bird in question, an Abyssinian Thrush. But I did have images of these bats.

I hope you like them. I enjoyed seeing them.

🐘  🦍  🦓  🦒  🦛  🦏  🐃  🐆

We went on safari with Wildside Nature Tours. We've gone on several of their tours. Highly recommended.

L'Hoest's Monkey

After our Chimpanzee adventure we headed to the park offices to drop off our local guide and avail ourselves of the restrooms and small snack bar (I had a soda).

These monkeys apparently had the same idea.

And whereas we had to pay for our snacks, they found them for free.

In special receptacles set up at the park (this fellow is sitting on one).

So while it is verboten to feed the animals, one can discard food in the rubbish bins, and thus indirectly feed them. Bringing them in for excellent photo ops.

Not that we would do such at thing (but only because we didn't think of it at the time; besides, we had given away all of our extra food to the villagers where we began our chimp trek).

Bananas are clearly a favorite.

But any fruit would do.

While we watched they came down one hill, across the highway through the park, and then over to the park office area.

We spotted one. And then another. And then another. One by one they made their way across.

They kept coming and coming. Up the hill to where we were waiting with cameras in hand.

They were wary but not afraid of us. And if we weren't vigilant they would have been in our luggage.

Note the two plastic bags in the back window. These were the only two plastic bags we would see in Rwanda, and we brought them in. Plastic bags are banned. And this is one of the main reasons Rwanda is such a clean country. We saw very little trash anywhere. Contrast this with Kenya where there was trash everywhere. Rwanda has a culture of cleanliness. And it shows.

But they were easily chased away. Our encounter was a nice way to end our time in Nyungwe National Park. We all agreed that it would have been nice to have another day here. But we were off to the Mara ...

Chimps!

Our last full day in Rwanda was spent in a quest to see the other great ape that calls that country home, the Common Chimpanzee.

And as you can see in this image we were successful.

The chimp is right there in the center of the image. See?

Ok, so that shot is reminiscent of one you'd see in a story on Bigfoot. Here's a (slightly) better one.

I did say slightly.

One more try.

The chimps were walking up the path that we had just walked down. Had we remained on that section of the trail they would have walked right past us. But we, on the advice of the trackers, were rushing up and down the trail. Unlike with he Golden Monkeys or the Gorillas, we had to work for our time with the chimps.

And I was glad I engaged a porter on this trip as we had to bushwhack a hundred plus meters up the side of a hill after they turned off the path. We did have a lead guide with a machete whacking some of the bush, but it was a strenuous climb in spots. Too strenuous for our tour guide ... more on that later.

Once up the hill we did get good, albeit somewhat distant, looks at the apes.

They were gorging on figs (the round fruits in this and the following images).

Once up the hill we found a path that led to the trail we had been on. It made for an easier trip down. And would have made for an easier trip up had we known where the chimps were headed.

As with he gorillas we had an hour to spend watching these creatures. We watched as they munched on figs, playing with their food. We saw several scramble down trees, surprisingly quick and agile for such large animals.

In all we saw six or so different individuals, on the path, in trees, and noisily moving through the forest.

And our tour guide? He stayed down on the path and had several walk right on by.

Golden Monkeys

Those volcanos in the prior post are in Volcanos National Park.

In Rwanda.

And among the beasts that live on them are mountain gorillas.

But that is a topic for another post.

This post will feature a different primate, the Golden Monkey.

The photo above shows how we mostly saw them, up in the bamboo, munching away.

The visits to the monkeys are controlled by the park authorities. There are two troops which have been habituated to human visits. Groups of eight visitors lead by a park ranger can visit the troop for one hour. There is only one visit per troop per day. Doing the math that means on sixteen visitors per day. So you need to reserve your place and get your permits well in advance. Fortunately, our tour company, Wildside Nature Tours, did just that.


The adventure begins at the park, where we are entertained by a group of native dancers.

Then after a introductory review of the park, the monkeys, their habitat, and the rules of engagement, its a short drive to the trailhead.

The trail starts in a village and winds through farms fields towards the park. The monkeys can be anywhere in the park. Thus the hiking time to them is unknown. Fortunately there are spotters in the forest, tracking the monkeys, so our ranger guide knows where to take us.

And before we even get to the park we come upon this fellow. All alone in a potato field. This would be a good omen.

Munching on potatoes. The farmers do not chase or harass the monkeys, as they are protected park animals. It also helps that the farmers are reimbursed for the loss of crops to the monkeys.

We continued on to the park. There are two things to notice in the image below.

One is the stone wall. While this helps to restrict access to the park to specific points of entry, the wall is easily climbed over. But as the fees for visits to the park are funneled back into the local community, there is strong incentive to protect the park and its inhabitants. Children are taught in school to respect the park and its animals. And thus the wall isn't really to keep humans out.

The second thing to notice is the gun.

Perhaps it is protect us from this guy?

Naw, he's just yawning.

No the gun, and the wall, are for the same animals. Elephants and cape buffalo. The wall to keep these large forest denizens from wandering into the farm fields and villages. The gun to protect us should one of these beasts take exception to our presence in "their" forest. Alas, we were not to encounter any animals other than the monkeys in the forest.

The main reason for this is that we did not go very far into the forest. The monkeys, as perhaps foretold by the lone male we encountered on the hike through the fields, were just on the other side of the park wall.

There was a large group of monkeys all around us, albeit up in the trees and difficult to see.

All too soon our hour was up. It was time to go.

It seems the monkeys were not quite ready to say goodbye.

Or maybe they just wanted some potatoes.

In either case they followed us out of the park. And we got more monkey time.

Whereas we can only spend an hour with the monkeys, they are under no such constraint when it comes to spending their time with humans.

And so we got very nice looks of the troop, out in the open, in bright sunlight.

A wonderful way to end a magical encounter with these sadly endangered creatures.

Foreshadowing

There are beasts on them there volcanos ...