Hi readers. While it may be interesting to watch a flock of doves perform their twisty manouvres in the skies, it is disturbing when out of the breath-taking feat, a couple of objects that seem to have been part of the flock, all of a sudden come tumbling to the ground! These were actually furadan-poisoned doves. Four came dropping down succesively within our scope of vision. Then the doves fly down not so far from us, so we rush to see what is happening.
They seem to be foraging but all of a sudden get startled and the flock takes to the air again. If you are like me, carrying a camera and just having witnessed 23 storks put down by poachers using furadan you might not have wished less but capture a number of fantastic photos of these beautiful creatures. So I am left depressed that the doves or pigeons were too quick to depart.
The reality then dawns on me when I see one pigeon on the ground struggling to be on its feet, or is it wings. The pigeon’s collapse and convulsions is what had prompted the rest of the flock to take off afterall!Hit by reality I edge closer to the poor, dying bird. Worse are the horrors when later, my efforts to rescuscitate the bird fail! Here I recount these ill-fated events that happened yesterday.
The flock of pigeons and a pair of doves that had just flown down moments after we witnessed 4 pigeons drop off the skies!
A close up of the same doves. Interesting that the African Mourning Dove pair are comfortable in this flock of speckled pigeons.
The photo that disappointed me. The pigeons and the dove pair had just flown off prematurely!Little did I know that I had actually captured the startling event. Check the remaining disoriented pigeon left on the ground at the bottom left of the photo.
The disoriented intoxicated Speckled Pigeon.
Same pigeon, front view.
We lost him!Here I am preparing to open him up back at camp, justt for curiosity how much of the rice with furadan he had consumed and how it looked like.Later when I am winding up with this phase of this survey, I will get samples of poisoned birds digestive tracts for lab analysis.
We encountered these while bearing the carcass of the pigeon back to camp . Not a mismatch this time. Survivors, I would call them. The bird on the left is a Ruff. Quite showy in appearance compared to the one I was identifying in the post what I am doing in bunyala. The pinkish legs and it actually had a rufous tinge on the nape suggests it is attaining breeding plumage and should be one of the late departures back to Europe for breeding now that spring has set in.
The duck to the right is the White-faced Tree Duck, otherwise the White-faced Whistling Duck. In years gone, these would congregate in 20’s or more in numbers. The largest flock I have seen are 6 individuals! These were poisoned in large numbers by poachers using furadan and it is alleged they turned t the Storks after they realized their poaching of the ducks was as fruitful as expected because the ducks had almost become obsolete in the area.This subject had a mate and therefore not at all mismateched to the Ruff.
Today is my sixth day in Bunyala. Yesterday 23 African Open-billed Storks were killed which in my observation marks the demise of a whole flock. In the earlier 4 days,a total of 30 storks had been killed through furadan baiting. Over time, I have noticed that the storks seem to flock rather intimately. When I started this phase of the survey last friday on 24/04/2009, the flock that had been consistent in the poisoning field had 56 individuals. If any, only 3 members of this flock remain and may join other flocks if they too are not already poisoned. Today we were out in the field early about 0600hrs and by 1400hrs when we took a break for lunch we had not spotted any flock of storks! The poachers say that a new flock is easy to poison because they are ignorant of the poisoning. If another flock comes in, we expect another nasty poisoning scenario and that may not be so long from now.
It is high time Pesticide Control Products Board (PCPB) and Agrochemicals Association of Kenya (AAK or CropLife ,Kenya) hurried to see to it that this pesticide is ridded of and JUANCO hastened the buy back for FMC.
Surely Bunyala is running dangerously low of its once very rich bird biodiversity!
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Mar 4th Tom T USD 11.50
One Comment
while likely often times depressing and frustrating, your work is invaluable and i thank you for recording this horrible practice so that the rest of the world might continue to do something about the horrendous chemicals we spread around this world.