Lakes Koka, Ziway, Langano & Abiatta

Tuesday 25th

Now it really was time to hit the road, and we sped west, back towards Nazaret and the Rift Valley proper. After a coffee stop in Nazaret, we turned off at Mojo junction, and before long had a stop at Lake Koka, unfortunately right by a rather busy main road! Nonetheless, we saw a good few birds here, including two Goliath Herons, Spur-winged Goose, Southern Pochard, Kittlitz's Plover, Ruff, a single Black Crowned Crane and some distant Lesser Flamingoes and White Pelicans.

Pressing on, we had a late lunch at Ziway (African Citril, Dusky Flycatcher, Village Indigobird and others in the garden!), and then went down to the fishermen's dock, where a fabulous spectacle of birds awaited us! We had Marabous, Sacred Ibises and Hamerkops at point blank range, plus herons and egrets, lots of White Pelicans, African Darter, African Black Crake, Marsh Harrier, Black-headed Wagtail, Black Crowned Crane, Carmine Bee-eater and Malachite and Pied Kingfishers - and Greenshank, Common Snipe and Sedge Warbler to keep us honest!

Rather overwhelmed, we hit the road one more time, and within half an hour, via Striped Kingfisher, Abyssinian Ground Hornbill, Steppe Eagle and Pallid Harrier, we finally reached our lodge, the Bekele Molla Langano Hotel - slightly shabby rooms, but a very welcome warm shower after two days of camping! The last new bird of the day was Northern Black Flycatcher - leaving Simon on 999 birds for 2007! What would be no.1000?

Wednesday 26th

Except he then found he had miscounted, and the 1000th had been Abyssinian Ground Hornbill the day before!

We got up nice and early as usual, and did some birding around the lakeshore gardens before breakfast - lots of new birds, including Mocking Cliff Chat, Little and Blue Rock Thrushes, White-browed Robin-chat, Violet-backed Starling, Rattling Cisticola, Red-fronted Barbet, Black-billed Wood-hoopoe, Greater Honeyguide, Rufous Chatterer and Buff-bellied Warbler. We also added some sunbathing Rock Hyraxes to the list! Yilma and Andreas had had to go and sleep elsewhere (and got very cold and slept awfully), so we treated them to breakfast with us, and felt sorry for them!

Over an excellent breakfast in the sunshine, we enjoyed hordes of Superb Starlings, along with von der Decken's Hornbills, a flyover Montagu's Harrier and a distant Hemprich's Hornbill. An hour's wander afterwards up onto the cliff face of the western side of the rift valley produced the excellent Abyssinian Black Wheatear, African Grey Flycatcher and Nubian Woodpecker.

At 1000, it was time to check out, and we drove the very short distance to Lake Abiatta National Park. The roads were in a very bad state here - all deep sand and ruts, and Andreas did well to keep us from getting stuck! But we did see some good species, notably Grey-headed Woodpecker, White-winged Black Tit, more Black-billed Wood-hoopoes and Shining Sunbird. A mass emergence of insects down by the lakeshore provided excellent feeding conditions for a vast swarm of hirundines (mostly Sand Martins) and perhaps 500+ Yellow Wagtails, of various races. On the mammal front, we saw two Grant's Gazelles, a Bohor Reedbuck and Slender Mongoose. The highlight, of course, was the spectacle of many thousands of flamingos, most of the Lessers, on the lake shoreline. Sadly, Abiatta is a pale shadow of what it once was - drought and over-abstraction have caused the lake levels to fall seriously, and the future of this site is in some doubt.

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