Shorebirds galore! The Sabaki River Delta

Sabaki Birding trip Nov 2009

Make sure you pack
Binoculars
Sun hat
Water - 2 liters min
Sun block (factor 30 +)
Shoes that you don’t mind getting muddy
A snack
Telescope a great advantage
Camera with a zoom lens if you want photographic evidence

Getting there
From Watamu 50 mins
From Malindi 15 minutes (depending on location)
Drive from Malindi on the Lamu road for 9 – 10 km, when you come to the only significant river this is the Sabaki. Cross the bridge and take the first right, following the sign for the Sabaki River Delta Hotel on the right hand side. A rough track, vehicle accessible and 4x4 only, takes you around 2km down towards the estuary mouth. You can leave your car at the Delta camp/hotel, or, if you want to, you can even leave you car nearer the delta mouth. We left it in the Delta camp under a tree, worked out just fine. There is a charge listed on the sign for parking but no one collected. 500 kenyan shillings for a 4x4.

Birding!
So coming through the scrub onto the estuary edge is often productive, and some common sightings were spotted flycatcher, Golden Palm Weaver, some cisticola that bugged us all morning, and the odd speckled mousebird.

A great spot early on was the Zanzibar Red Bishop, just moulting into breeding plumage, and Yellow Wagtail and then we were on to the edge of the receding tide mudflats where the shorebird action went into overdrive.

Lots of Curlew Sandpipers, Common ringed plovers and both greater and lesser sandplovers close together to allow easy comparison. Almost all birds were in non breeding dress and none more so than the Grey plover. Lots of spur winged plovers were also apparent and also less shy than many of the other shorebirds. Fred pulled a good paleartic bird up on the scope, the broad billed sandpiper and the bar tailed godwit followed by a Eurasian curlew and a ruff. Lots of lesser flamingoes in the shallows and soft mud.
The Sabaki estuary offers a variety of habitats, and so we meandered past some mangroves, not overly productive, and over to the north to a marsh area, much more productive. Here some very obvious birds were the greater flamingoes, black winged stilts and sacred ibis and then with some more careful observation marsh sandpipers and greenshanks. At this point I was up to 4 lifers, fred only 2. There were also lots of wood sandpipers in the same marsh as well. Fred helping explain the jizz to get me up to speed!


Turning towards the beach we were rather frantic to find a malindi pipit and definitely had a couple of stringing moments there as we spotted a rather drab looking yellow wagtail and then a grassland pipit but alas, no Malindi pipit today.
Down to the beach and onto the shoreline revealed white fronted plover, grey heron, sanderling and some gulls which we didn’t identify properly to identify (to be honest).

Heading back up the estuary there was plenty of tern action. The larger Caspian tern and then the lesser crested tern were plentiful. There were a few whimbrels around and Eurasian curlews on the far bank. Suddenly a flurry of flight and frantic toing and froing meant only one thing (or two) a predator was around. A Peregrine swept in from the West and on missing flew around the estuary rather erratically trying it’s luck before heading off again.

Once the chaos had settled we spied some lovely greater pelicans and pied avocets. Rather interestingly a sandpiper (marsh?) was skimming the water in a very avocet like motion back and forth and then also deeper movements into the water as well. Interesting stuff.

On the way back out we got our shoes thoroughly muddied. The car was still there and relatively cool as we left it under a tree. Back to Watamu, fresh tuna for lunch!


November 30, 2009 – Ake + Fred