I am totally going to steal that line to use in one of my travel threads!
As long as you use proper references that is fine
Day 3 Bishangari – Dinsho
Though today’s destination was the Bale Mountaind National Park, I did not leave Bishangari before I had birded some more. Again my internal clock woke me up at 6:30 and I was off to the larger forest immediately. My goal was to get better views of the
Narina trogon and that proved to be exceptionally easy. Before I had entered the forest proper, a trogon that had just caught a praying mantis, landed in a small tree next to me and offered good views. And 20 minutes later I saw another trogon in the forest. I had expected that seeing trogons would be difficult and thought that I might miss them, but the trogon gods were in my favour this week. Just before I left the forest I saw another bird that was still missing from the list: an
Abyssinian ground trush. This bird likes to skulk in the dense undergrowth, so I did not get very good views unfortunately. On my way to breakfast I however did see more new birds on the lodge grounds.
Gabar goshawk are supposed to be common throughout Africa, but I had not seen them before,
green twinspot and
black cuckooshrike are however trickier birds to find. But I obtained good views of both of them. I was especially pleased with the twinspots, as twinspots are very neat small finches, that are not that common.
This time my driver was on time and we started our 5 hour drive to Dinsho. Nice birds on the first stretch included
bare-faced go-away-bird, black-billed barbet and
Thick-billed raven. Thick-billed ravens are endemic to the Abyssinian highlands and are possibly my favourite Ethiopian birds. They are extremely large, even for a raven and have a ridiculously large bill (hence the name), this make them look very prehistoric and very cool. Fortunately these birds are very common in the highlands, even inside towns, where they visit rubbish dumps… After a good glass of Avocado juice in the town of Shashemene, we started our ascent to the Bale massif. Before we would arrive in Dinsho, where the park HQ is located, we would have to climb about 2000 meters altitude to a pass at 3600 meters above sea level. Right after Shashemene we passed the most ridiculous collection of speed-brakers, along a stretch of over a kilometre there was one huge speed-braker every hundred meter. After this section, two smaller sections of speed-brakers followed, all with the same ridiculous principle. Normally you cannot travel fast on Ethiopian roads because of potholes, but if they have a new road without any holes, they add bumps all over to keep the feeling the same as before there was good tarmac…
Birding along the way was quite boring, though I saw a
white-headed vulture, which means that except Cape vulture I have now seen all African vulture species. Apart from a few birds and wide vistas over farm land, we saw a lot of social unrest. Ethiopia consists of many different tribes and cultures and they in general do not get along very well. The country is ruled by minority tribes from the northern highlands, mainly Tigrayans. We were travelling throughout the southern highlands in the Oromiya region. The Oromo people are by far the largest minority and especially for their size a very neglected one. Last year’s elections saw the ruling party win all seats in parliament bar 1, so opposition is now something of the past in Ethiopia. For some reason, people do not really like that and the great drought of 2015 (el nino….) did only speed up the building tension. And though the rains have been very good since April, people are still not happy. All along the road we saw old road blockades and in several villages the houses of government officials or government offices were burnt down. Armed military was off course also present. It all seemed to me as a ticking time bomb and within a few years Ethiopia will see very large unrest, at least that is my prediction as a biologist… And unrest can never be a really good thing for the remaining wildlife (which is not that much anyway).
Enough politics… After we passed the pass, we descended into the Gaysay valley, which is part of Bale Mountains NP (Bale is actually pronounced as Baaleeh, so not like the football player). The Gaysay valley is a broad valley full of wet grassland with tall Juniper forest on the hills on either side. The first pool next to the road is the home for several
blue-winged goose, another highland endemic. And throughout the valley there are dark-brown and chestnut-brown blobs grazing. Unlike in the rest of the country these are not cows and horses but
Mountain nyala (Gedemsa) and
Bohor reedbuck. Except some few remnant pockets in other parts of Ethiopia, almost the total remaining population of Gedemsa is concentrated in the northern parts of Bale and they are very common here indeed. Not only antelopes call this valley home,
warthog and
olive baboon are also very common and Ethiopian wolf is also supposed to occur here, though we did not see any. Birding was also good with Fan-tailed widowbirds, Ethiopian cisticola and many Rouget’s rails.
After passing the small town of Dinsho we left the main road and entered Bale NP again, this time the Juniper – Hagenia forest around the park HQ. Several hundred meters behind the gate in the middle of the forest lies the Dinsho lodge, which would be my place to stay for the next 3 nights. Though the location is amazing, the “lodge” itself is a bit run-down and looks more like a hostel than a lodge. It was also privatized recently, which meant that prices increased insanely. For a small 2 person room you would now pay 65 USD, which is an increase of several hundred percent. I was however the only guest and they offered me this room for 25 USD, which I gladly took as I am not the pickiest person, except when it comes to good views. Around the lodge
mountain nyala are extremely common and within 1 minute walking of the lodge there is always at least 10 present. Together with
Menelik’s bushbuck (a dark mountain subspecies),
Bohor reedbuck, Common duiker and
Warthog, this made up for good company. It was also the only company I would get, as all three nights I was the sole person staying in the lodge. An hour walk in the forest with my guide yielded some rabnge-restricted birds such as
white-backed black tit,
Abyssinian ground trush (again, but now with good views),
Chestnut-naped francolin and other nice birds such as
Yellow-fronted canary. Also all antelope species were abundant and we even saw a small group of
Colobus monkey. After a short rain I met up with the owl man, who keeps track of the day-time roosts of the owls in this forest. This guy has amazingly sharp eyes and every morning he finds Abyssinian owl, African wood owl and Verreaux’s eagle owl. As the owls tend to choose a different spot daily, it takes him about 3 hours every day to find the owls back, which is still astonishingly fast given their camouflage. Within one hour he showed me 1
Abyssinian owl, 2
African wood owls and 3
Verreaux’s eagle owls. We also heard many
Abyssinian catbirds, a very charismatic (and loud) endemic, of which I only got good views the next day. After the owl man left for home I decided to try to get some pictures of Gedemsa and I was following a mother and her calf. I left the path and was not partly concealed by a bush. Then I thought I heard some movement on the path and when I took a step back, I was watching straight at a
Serval. The Serval was watching back and decided quickly he disliked me and he vanished. But 5 seconds later a second Serval appeared, which stood on the path for 15 seconds before following his mate. I then tried to find them back, but only saw a Bohor reedbuck. Somehow I have been incredibly lucky with cats this week, which I was not before, as until last week the only wild cats I had ever seen were Lions in Etosha NP. I went to bed early, as the next day I would try to see Ethiopia’s most famous endemic mammal.
