Meru National Park - Quest for the Pel's Fishing Owl

Back in the June break my friend Rosie invited me to jump in her Prado and drive up to Meru National Park with her son. We stayed there for 4 night and it was absolutely awesome. This will be a summary of the highlights rather than a detailed account.

At the top of my mind was to try for the Pel's Fishing Owl at the Rojeweru River crossing. I had searched extensively with Jack and Martin one year ago. We didn't see any but we an amazing encounter with a Finfoot and a Leopard, respectively. 

A species like the Pel's is a bird of chance, so it's all about trying again and again until you get lucky. So that's what we did. 

Here are a couple of spots along the river that we checked. I started by drivng to the river at the crack of dawn before the others woke up. We were at Bwatherongi campsite, the public campsite which costs 250 bob and has a swimming pool. The site is located in the middle of the wilderness. We could hear hyeenas at night and even a lion roaring once. Later in the evening, we would drive back to the river and check again for this elusive owl. Once, we paid a ranger to accompany us to several spots along the river. 

I found this three-banded courser in the campsite on my first pre-dawn drive to the Rojeweru River. We heard them nighly but I only saw one once. 

This took a little while to arrange and required us to visit the airfield. While waiting for the ranger (who had been summoned), we took a peek into the hangar which housed their anti-poaching small aeroplane. A request to accompany them on one of their daily anti-poaching flights was duly denied. 

My thinking is that he could take us on short walks to check potential roosting sites along the river. He was completely against this, saying it would be too dangerous. In the end the ranger was of zero use in terms of owl finding, but it was at least handy not to worry about getting lost, and he did direct us to the rhino sanctuary. 

We watched hippos mating at the hippo pools along the Rojeweru River

We got there during the heat of the day the rhinos had secluded themselves in some shade somewhere. I think they have about 300 rhinos, a combination of blacks and whites though I may be wrong. The sanctuary is of an impressive size, all surrounded by elephant-grade electric fence. 

It was very hot at the rhino sanctuary, so we sat under some shade to drink water and share our bounty of tropical fruit with the two rangers on duty. One of the rangers named Moses gave us a lot of interesting information and stories about the sanctuary. Locals from the nearby community routinely bring in their livestock (I've seen this in Meru). They sometimes carry an AK-47 for self-defense, but they are quite opportunistic and will gun down a rhino if given the chance. Moses said that if a rhino were to be let loose outside the sanctuary, it would just be a matter of time before it got show. Its horns would then be sawed off and carried to the village, buried in someone's backyard, sometimes for months, until a suitable buyer could be found. It is an impossibility for rhinos to exist in Kenya without being under direct protection by armed rangers. 

The next day, we did a morning drive then spend a good part of the day enjoying the freshly filled swimming pool. The pool had been emptied for cleaning and as luck would have it, the water truck had just come to fill it up with cool, clear water. It was perfect for a blazing hot day. Just a bit after 4pm, we jumped in the Prado to go check the river again (for the 5th time). Upon rolling up to the bridge around 4:45 pm, we noticed a Bateleur perched in a very large tree just before the bridge. It stayed put but a larger bird flushed from the back of the same tree, toward the river. I was struck by its huge size and the stealthy sort of way that it flushed.

 COULD IT BE!?!?

I got out of the car and stealthily walked in the direction it had flushed in. Right away I could see a Pel's Fishing Owl perched in a tree some distance away. After snapping a couple photos, above my head another one flushed from cover and perched a short distance. It was against the sky but I still managed a half-decent photo. I was elated. I think this is the best bird I've ever seen in Kenya. They're just so damn hard to find. This was my 3rd visit to Meru. 

I got back in the car and we drove a short distance, toward the Rojeweru special campsite. About halfway between the road and the campsite we could see both owls perched some distance apart, getting soul-stealing views in the binoculars. I got de decent photos although the bird was obscured by steveral dead branches. I had previously though that the presence of baboons and Syke's monkeys would be a disturbance for the owls, but they seemed to ignore eachother. After a few minutes both owls flew up-river and we let them be. What an exhilirating encounter. When you long to see a bird so deeply for so many years and the moment finally arrives, it hardly seems real. My hands were shaking when I held up the binoculars. All 3 of us got to enjoy top-quality views for several minutes. This was one of the scarce moments of glory that only happens a handful of times in a birder's life! 

Elephants mating, spotted on the way to the rhino sanctuary

The next day, we made the longish drive to the rhino sanctuary bright and early in the morning. We didn't have any success driving arount the web of small tracks that cut through dense bush, even though there were tracks and droppings EVERYWHERE. Clearly this was a rhino's paradise. But the massive beasts are extremely crafty at staying hidden! 

We drove into an open expanse of short grass and a combination of dry and wet mud which they call the 'swamp'. I think it's more of a seasonal swamp. At this point, the park was very lush from rains that occured about a month before, but by this point the swamp was pretty much dried up, with pockets of remnant mud here and there. We found 3 white rhinos in the middle of the expanse and enjoyed watching them roll around in the dirt and mark their territory. 

Can you spot this elusive mammal?

African Pygmy Falcon

Lesser Kudu

We'd spent so much time driving around exploring the further parts of the park that it actually got dark and we spent a decent amount of time driving in the dark. I anticipated spotting a leopard or lion but it didn't happen. We passed a surprising number of vehicles in the dark who were returning to their lodge near Elsa's Kopje. 

We were back safe and sound for another campfire in the wilderness with hyenas serenading us. 

We came a cross a pack of these at the junction that leads to the campsite

On the last day, we took a drive to the Tana River. We didn't see much in the way of birds or animals (it was very dry). Of note were Golden-breasted Starlings, White-crested Helmet-shrikes and an extremely large number of Dik-Diks. We maybe about 5km into Kora National Reserve, which had endless miombo woodland as far as the eye could see. A sign said 'Tana River Campsite 50km'. We were not up for that so we turned back. 

On the second-last night, we spent the night at the Rojeweru Special Campsite, hoping to get another encounter with the Pel's FIshing Owls or perhaps hear them at night. A little to my surprise, ther was no sign of them. I guess we'd been extremely lucky the night before! 

The final morning, we simply drove to the park gate because we had a long drive ahead of us and wanted to be back before dark. On the way, we saw many elephants and I was very surprised to see a couple of Great Spotted Cuckoos! Surprising because early June is not typically when you see a Eurasian migrant in Kenya. In fact, I remember seeing those in Spain during late April before. Maybe this one was just very slow!