Leaving our nice lodging for one night, Ngare Sero Mountain Lodge, we are focused now on arriving as soon as possible to the meeting point with our birding guide for the morning. We vacillated a lot on whether to get a guide or not but getting access and then visiting Engikaret Plains sounded quite complicated so in the end we booked a guide. We meet him at a supermarket on the other side of Arusha almost half way to Engikaret so first we have to cross through busy Arusha.
We encounter the same phenomenon we saw the previous day, busy streets, broken down cars, police with speed guns and of course the only in Tanzania red light that does not mean stop just go forward. We arrive at the meeting point half hour later than agreed due to traffic but we informed the guide via Whatsapp and after paying for this and the next guided tour we are on our way.
From the pick up point we basically exit Arusha and the busy city and we now alternate between empty stretches of highway and small villages. The road is in good condition but the speed limit is only 80km/h, good for our behemoth with huge breaking distance.
And then after we pass through one more of the many villages along the way we spot a sign for Engikaret Lark Plains on the side of the road and the guide confirms that we should take the side road from here.
And so we made it to Engikaret Lark Plains, an attraction only for serious birders really. In fact it is so out of the way that we couldn’t find info on how to pay for entering the protected area and decided to hire a guide. The major reason to be here, for birders, is the very range restricted endemic Beesley’s Lark, there are only 100+ left in the wild. And we are hoping to be between the lucky ones that see them in these seemingly desolated plains.
However these are named Lark Plains for a good reason. There are at least four species of larks that can be seen here, the most common one being in our experience the Fawn-colored Lark that we see multiple times during the day.
However we see also a few species of wheatear and a bonus group of Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouses, they are beautiful really and difficult to see against the reddish ground.
Here we also see our first Thomson’s Gazelle, a species of antelope we haven’t seen before, nice!
And then we park and it is time to walk the plains to look for the Beesley Lark. We are not sure what our chances are but with a guide we hope they are better than our own. At least we see a Crowned Lapwing on this stretch, a lifer for us now but one that we will see consistently during the trip.
The area has a stark beauty. As it sits in the shadow of Mt Meru it gets little rain which leads to its climate being wildly different from Arusha, it is more hot and dry. There are also nice views of Mt Meru from here and we enjoy the walk.
But still we want the Beesley’s Lark and there are no sightings as we wander around looking for it. And the we notice two Maasai warriors in the distance and the guide mentions that they are the Beesley Lark guardians and that we should walk in that direction as they are waiting for us. Well, that is more promising so there we go.
And there, near another Fawn-colored Lark we notice something on the ground and looking more closely there they are. A group of three (!) Beesley Lark that explore the area for worms or whatever they eat. And one of them comes quite close as we stay still, magical. The guide talks to the guardians for a while and then it is time to return towards the car.
We go slowly towards the car looking for other interesting birds like the Taita Fiscal, a common bird here but quite elegant looking.
The guardians go ahead of us allowing us some beautiful photos of Maasai warriors with Mt Meru in the background.
Back at the car the guides mentions that we should try one more stop for a different set of birds and we are game of course. So we drive through the plains watching for any fun birds like the well named, Gorgeous Sunbird and the interesting Fisher Sparrow-Lark, a really common bird as we will find out the next day.
The last parking spot is different from the previous ones. It is near what looks, and we find out later is, like a riparian area with trees and bushes, not the blander lark plains we wandered previously.
And the guide was right, of course. The birds here are quite different from the plains. We start with a beautiful small Chinspot Batis just watching us from the tree and continue with many other fun birds.
The African Bare-eyed Thrush is one of the highlights, a beautiful orange bird just walking on the ground.
Another highlight is the Nubian Woodpecker, it fact we see a pair of them looking through the trees for anything interesting to eat.
Near the creek we find one more attraction, for us, an impressive White-bellied Go-Away-Bird. It looks like a parrot to us but really it is in a family with Turacos that we hope to see later in the trip. And one more bonus, we see a Cape Hare running away when we finally make it to the car. And then it is time to return to Arusha to drop off the guide and then continue driving to Serengeti where we will stay for the night.
