Birds by the Lake

Last Saturday we finished the last Kiswahili lessons in a refresher course, meant to be at intermediate standard, but ended up being good revision as we found we had forgotten a fair bit of what we were taught in Morogoro. We were sharing a tutor with Jim and Sue, so our weekly lessons in their home had a very exclusive feel and as a celebration, J & S suggested we go for a picnic to the Lake and do some bird watching. It was a beautiful day, and Val joined us, which was fun especially as she makes the best banana cake in Kagera!
We drove north from Bukoba for about 30k, on a pretty good road, through villages and communities with schools and churches and even a couple of clinics. Road ended at Rabafu the most northern part of TZ looking over a stretch of water to Uganda.

We had a picnic of guacamole and egg mayonaisse sheltering under bushes from the fierce sun. Under Jim’s guidance we saw a large number of birds. First a fish eagle flew over with a fish in its claws and landed on a suitably close branch for us to observe it tearing its lunch up.

Then came a succession of sightings:

Saddlebilled stork, a pair of hammerkops, redchested sunbird, wattled plover, longtoed lapwing, a pair of Egyptian geese, cinnamon chested bee eater, pintailed whydar, squacco heron, little egret, pied kingfisher and of course cormorants. A water snake swam across the inlet but the highlight was a family of four otters who popped their heads up repeatedly to have a good look at us.