Stop Wildlife Poisoning

It is not true that Bunyala only boasts of its ugly bird poisoning incidences. I must admit many at times, clips of mother nature’s beauty flash past my gaze. Sadly, quite many of these miss being captured and stored in my camera’s memory for exposition to my dear readers. Kindly excuse me because I am normally engaged in capturing the poisoning incidences while trying to conserve my camera’s battery charge. In fact sometimes I am normally without charge which means I cannot do much photographing and have to wait till my assistant takes the battery to be charged at the nearest shopping center, 2 miles away, after we close for the day.

This does not mean I dont have something out of poisoning for you to see. In any case it is acknowledging the beauty that encourages me to struggle on to try bring some change in this area. The beauty is also some kind of consolation, just before or after witnessing traumatizing bird deaths from poisoning.Check out the photos below:

An early morning photo. Usually we leave camp at 0530hrs and head west, so I took this photo looking back in our camp’s direction which is a little offset to the left side of the photo and therefore not visible. You cannot drive or ride here because the place had been prepared for the expansion of the rice scheme and therefore has some embarkments demarcating the would be rice plots appearing horizontal just above the foot of the photograph. The bushes (euphorbia and some shrubs) just behind the embarkments are unique in the sense that they constitute the microhabitat of the African White-tailed Nightjar, a nocturnal insect-eating bird whose distribution is limited to a few localities in western Kenya and I just stumbled on this loocality when this survey began in February 2009.

This is about 0645hrs, just about the time we enter the active rice-growing part of bunyala Rice Scheme. At this particular time it is cultivated and we would normally head further west where rice has already been harvested and where poachers would be busy laying bait at about this time. By the time we get to the baiting area, it will just be in time for the poachers to back off while in-flying birds settle to eat the poisoned baits.

A Kestrel in graceful flight over the grounds where poisoning takes place.

now soaring checking out for quarry

In strong light. Another kestrel hovering prior to descent for a kill! a locust kill!

“Who could be in the skies?”. A Kestrel feeling challenged by an overflying Black-chested Snake Eagle.

The mismatch! An even more intimate pose by the immature African Open-billed Stork and Hadada Ibis written about in we are losing breeding birds.

Bunyala is a magnificent expansive flat plain. The panorama lying behind me in this photo is just a portion of it.

I just had to be biased to put so many photos of birds!

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