Kenya in January 2025

 Kenya January, 2025

Conservation, ecotourism and birding (avitourism) have a close relationship in Kenya. 

The whole story sounds like a joyous one, its long and complicated, and growing! 

Of course, being a conservation scientist, I find the experiance of visiting Kenya with Kenyan experts invaluable. This time we spent a wonderful six days familiarization trip and explored some of these important conservation aspects. We were participating in a project to explore citizen science promotion in protected areas and wetland areas. This work follows our first trip in Kenya in 2024 (which I detailed with 8 posts on this blog...use 'search' button - 'Kenya' - to find them on this blog...).

JANUARY 2025 TRIP   

Some points on ecotourism development in this country that I find interesting:

-      Birding is amazing in Kenya (as it is in other East African countries I guess). Species diversity is high and fantastic-looking birds, many amazing non-passerines, are easy to see espeically in open areas and wetlands.

-      In my prespective, birding is not well promoted despite the presence of an excellent revised field guide book to East Africa, many eBird hotspots, many easy birds to see in combination with game spotting. Most tourism targets protected areas such as National Parks and private conservancies.

-      Many great birds are outside the NPs or other protected areas; but, there is no need to stay at the very pricey game lodges if you are on a budget. Tropical nature is everywhere if  you can plan carefully.

-   The open-cover (open habitat) protected areas and the typical game-spotting experiance also produce amazing bird lists. The vehicle is a 'hide' and you traverse extensive areas with constant stops; its a great birding introduction and incredibly easy to see lots of species up close. (Most people are looking mostly at large mammals; but they inevitablly see birds, some are shocked by the birds!). However, again, birds are not the main target...can this change?

Of course its not just birds and mammals, there are so many other biodiversity interests in this country, and the landscape and the agro-pastoral cultures. It is very interesting to me because in some way it the landscapes do have similarities to Mediterranean landscapes (i.e., goat/cattle grazing/ wood-gathering/ occupational wildfire influences). 

Kenya Fam Trip 2025 details

First you may ask what a Fam trip is? A Familiarization trip for me is a field-based trip where me and my team participate in order to learn, collaborate, experience and think about what to do together with local experts on research items of common interest. It is like going ot a conference but with very specific targets on the research theme. This was my second trip to Kenya. Again we discovered that a self-guided trip of only 6 days can be extremely interesting for the naturalists involved. We found that a short-trip, a familiraization-educational trip like this can bequite easily done. However it needs a lot of preparation, pre-trip preparation. 

These are the areas we visited this year:

·         Kuranguru Coffee Estate near Thika (farm ponds and coffee plantations)

·         Chania Falls at Blue Post Hotel and associated river habitats

·         Great Sagana Resort (and the upper tributary of the great Tana River)

·         Naro Moru Area (specifically near the Tree Hyrax Guesthouse and surroundings)

·         Ol Pejeta Conservancy

·         Mount Kenya National Park (Naro Moru Route Park Gate Area)

·         Nyahururu Area

·         Lake Nakuru National Park

·         Southern Part of Lake Elementeita

·         Lake Naivasha (northeastern shore only)

·         Mungo Swamp (near Limuru)

·         Nairobi National Park

This is our circuit loop taken in January 2025. This was organized intentionally to be comparable with the circuit loop of 2024. We counted birds at each of the 19 sites we visited using eBird as a citizen science platform. Our work is supported through invitation by a member of the National Museums of Kenya.

Some snapshots follow:

Lake Nakuru. This is near the airport landing strip where you can get out of the car and sit under the Yellow Fever Trees. Total bliss.

Lake Nakuru: African Harrier-hawk - Polyboroides typus, one of Africa's many amazing and unique raptors.

Lesser Flamingos at Lake Nakuru.

The morning scene at the southern edge of Lake Nakuru.

Inspecting agricultural wetlands at one of the coffee farm near Thika. Warmest thanks to the staff of Kuranguru Coffee Estate.

At the Blue Post Hotel at Thika you can get up close to wild monkeys such as this one. This is a good place to see wild (habituated to human presence) Kolb's Monkey (Cercopithecus mitis kolbi) a rather rare range-restricted subspecies. This is a species is related to Sykes' Monkey that is more widespread (according to iNaturalist mapping). 

The Tree Hyrax Guesthouse on the lower slopes of Mount Kenya. This is a good base for the agro-pastoral and forest landscapes on the western slopes of the mountain.  

Western slopes of Mouny Kenya, at the National Park Gate (Naro Moru Park Gate Area). An amazing place but it is potentially dangerous to walk like this due to buffalo presence. We stayed close to the main road. This was frowned upon by the local rangers, and I understand why. Best to be in the company of a trained ranger in such situations. Despite the risk, we say some fantastic birds and also o herd of water buck (these big red deer sized animals showed some alarm and actually approached us a bit; as if perhaps to shoo us off...).  

Ol Pejeta Conservancy. Wild elephants; these are my first.

This is our first lion sighting. You will not easily see lions in Kenya. We did not do lion tracking or have a  safari guide with us. But we were looking hard, especially at this wonderful place, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

This is NOT something I would ever do and I guess my partner is OK with this photo and I wil show it to give you a sense of the road-side situation in Central Kenya. In many areas away from official protected areas you see antelope and zebras and sometimes they are really not wary of people. These are wild animals and potentially dangerous. They are oblivious of people more than scared or approachable. Please stay at a safe distance if you are not aware of the local tempermant of the animals. They are wild. (Photo is from the wonderful landscapes around Lake Elementaita).

This is Manguo Swamp, a well-known birding hotspot west of Nairobi (and yes, the donkeys are domesticated). Although it’s an important wetland, it’s not nearly as peaceful as this photo makes it appear—there are people around almost constantly. If you decide to visit, please be cautious with your car, valuables, and personal safety. We were approached by a group of young men who seemed more than just curious, and we fortunately managed to get back to our car and leave quickly.

Worldwide, there is no other place I know where a capital metropolis is so close to wildlife.

Lioness at Nairobi N.P. (We were so fortunate to find her on an intermittent stream-bed sunning herself). She was totally oblivious to the jeep.  

Vassiliki Vlami and our researcher friends at Nairobi N.P.

Nairobi National Park. Of course we were interested in the landscape. Note the grazing patterns (and despite the lack of elephants here). 

With our research friends at the Athi river in Nairobi N.P. 

Nairobi National Park is something of a pilgrimage area for urban naturalists. I can honestly say that if you have just a few days, you can easily visit from Europe and just ramble around Nairobi; this N.P. is a must for anyone visiting. 

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