Travels in the Tana Delta, by Olivier Hamerlynck
We were in the Tana Delta again from March 29th to April 1st 2009...
The Tana Delta is teeming with Palaearctic migrants these days, with large numbers of European Rollers, Golden Orioles and Eurasian Cuckoos living in any area where there are trees. The derelict wastelands of the failed JICA irrigation scheme (TDIP) are now becoming bushy and small Acacia are sprouting up, with regular Red-backed and Red-tailed Shrikes in all of them. The mesquite shrub (Prosopis juliflora), introduced by the other failed Worldbank Bura irrigation scheme upstream, is also invading the area and becoming a real threat all over the delta. However, the delta is also being destroyed by the local people, who often see little alternative but to chop down the forest for charcoal and timber.
After the demolition of the dam at Sailoni, the three lakes to the east of the TDIP have been dry since 2006. There is now no more fishing and the riverine forests are dying and being burnt from the eastern side. Tragically, there is still no progress being made on the 2005 proposal by Quentin Luke et al. (Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund) to restore the area and create forest corridors. Very soon there will be nothing left to connect.
Back to the migrants: a late Eurasian Marsh Harrier was still floating around over the floodplains, a Eurasian Hobby was flying with its lunch just upstream from Kipini and a dark form Booted Eagle over the Tarda guest house at Gamba.
The sand quarries used for the Garsen Lamu road are increasingly becoming significant wetlands with 40 White Pelican fishing in one of them, dozens of hippos in another, plus the usual visitors of Yellow-billed Stork, African Spoonbill, Sacred Ibis, Long-tailed Cormorant, Spur-winged Plover and the occasional Goliath Heron all easily visible from the road. Some of these sand quarries also seem to be becoming salty, a trend to watch carefully now that groundwater recharge from flooding is in terminal decline.
At the Kipini sandspit on the southern bank of the river, thousands of waterbirds still come to spend the night. We counted some 2,200 Glossy Ibis arriving in small groups at sunset before it got too dark to distinguish them from the Whistling Ducks, Knob-billed Ducks, several thousand terns and around 600 gulls. In the morning we watched the Glossy Ibis taking off in a wide band low over the river. Normally we would see hundreds in the floodplains during the day, but this time there was only one. However, during their annual maximum (December-February?) we expect that there could be more than 10,000 in the Delta, hopefully all going to the same roost in countable batches.
We took the boat from Tana River lodge to Lake Mbililo and, though waterbird numbers are much lower than earlier in the year, we still tallied:
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| The rare Pel's Fishing Owl |
• 10 African Darter
• 18 Long-tailed Cormorant
• Hundreds of Cattle Egret
• 2 Black-capped Night Heron
• 1 Common Squacco
• 3 Green-backed Heron
• 5 Intermediate Egrets
• 5 Goliath Heron
• 2 Purple Heron
• 1 Black-headed Heron
• 3 Grey Heron
• 2 Hamerkop
• 19 Yellow-billed Stork
• 1 Abdim’s Stork
• 11 Woolly-necked Stork
• 9 Open-billed Stork
• 18 African Spoonbill
• 30 Spur-winged Goose
• 60 Egyptian Goose
• 6 Knob-billed Duck
• 180 White-faced Whistling Duck
• 30 Fulvous Whistling Duck
• 13 African Fish Eagle
• 4 African White-backed Vulture
• 64 Water Thick-knee
• 150 Collared Pratincole
• 320 Spur-winged Plover
• 3 Long-toed Plover
• 2 Ruff
• 1 Greenshank
• 60 African Skimmer
At Mbililo itself there were about 200 hippos and many crocodiles. On the way back we had the privilege of observing a Pel’s Fishing Owl dozing away in a large tree. White-throated and Northern Carmine Bee-eater are abundant, but there are also still a few Blue-cheeked to be seen. In addition, during our visit we saw a pair of Black-headed Plover, a Broad-billed Roller, some Lesser Kudu and a dozen Waterbuck.
The Tana River is water level is worryingly low, with people crossing it on foot in places! The floodplains are so dry that the vast majority of the tens of thousands of cows have moved into the forests, which, as in the rest of the country, are continuously being burned. At great cost the Water Department is digging trenches everywhere to try to force the river back into its “old” bed (incidentally closing off the main water supply to the western floodplains, enraging the Orma and Wardei and threatening the breeding colonies of Yellow-billed Stork) but as long as river bank deforestation and poor agriculture practices continue upstream, the sediment will continue to build up. As their trenches neither have any geotextile lining nor a low slope, the next flood is likely to seriously erode the new banks and take even more sediment down, compounding the problem for the farming communities along the eastern branch.
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