Lark Plains and Manyara

Myself and Tom awoke early and left the others sleeping as we drove north on the Nairobi Road to the Lark Plains. Tom was exhausted and slept all the way. I stayed awake but didn’t see too many new birds en-route, just White-necked Raven, Tawny Eagle, and Capped Wheatear.

After about an hours drive, we pulled off the tarmac road and Abdul pronounced that this was the Lark Plains. I awoke Tom as we drove down a sandy track, and quickly came across our first Larks: Rufous-napped Lark and Red-capped Lark, shortly followed by Fisher’s Sparrow-Lark. We continued down the track where we were due to meet our Maasai guide, scanning along the way and finding more of the same Larks as well as Yellow-bellied Eremomela. Before too long however, we stumbled upon two interesting Larks that turned out to be Beesley’s Larks! We managed to get very close to the birds as they seemed reluctant to fly and managed some reasonable snapshots of one of the world’s rarest birds…

With the pressure off, we met with our guide (a young kid who failed to find anything – fortunately we had found the Beesle'y’s!) and went on a walk across the plains for another couple of hours. Unfortunately only one other Lark species could be found, Foxy Lark, though we did manage three more Beesley’s, several Yellow-throated Sandgrouse, and a Greater Kestrel.

It was now getting very hot, so we decided to drive around for a while to see what we could see, managing a few new species for the trip: Ostrich, Black-shouldered Kite, Rueppell's Griffon Vulture, Martial Eagle, Desert Cisticola, Schalow’s Wheatear, White-headed Buffalo-Weaver, Grassland Pipit, and a Scrub Hare.

With time pressing on, we made a dash back to Arusha to meet the others for lunch. We arrived behind schedule, and Sam also wanted a dip in the pool so we were late getting away. Michelle also wanted to visit a couple of markets, so our drive south to Manyara was fairly quick. We did manage a few roadside stops, picking up Red-bellied Parrot, Hartlaub's Bustard, Black-faced Sandgrouse, and Yellow-necked Francolin.

From the car we also managed Crowned Lapwing, Lilac-breasted Roller, African Grey Flycatcher, and Red-billed Quelea. We arrived at the Twiga Budget Lodge shortly after dusk, and soon found out why the village we were staying in was named Mto Wa Mbu, Swahili for Mosquito River.