Tanzania Day 14 - UKAGURU MOUNTAINS

Our destination this morning was the impressively forested Ukaguru Mountains, where we had four specific targets. On the way up we stopped when a Southern Fiscal was spotted beside the road – or, more importantly, it proved to be the Marwitzi race and a really good candidate to be split as Uhehe Fiscal. 

The very distinctive Marwitzi race of Southern Fiscal

So we managed to get some record shots of it and whilst we were here a pair of Angola Swallows were seen perched on wires and an Augur Buzzard also appeared. Not a bad start!

Augur Buzzard

Angola Swallows

Our first main target up in the forest was Yellow-throated Mountain Greenbul, which duly obliged and showed its distinctive yellow throat. 

Yellow-throated Mountain Greenbul

Shortly after we saw the first of many Moreau’s Sunbirds feeding in nearby bushes. Walking along a narrow trail into the forest a pair of Rubeho Warblers gave point-blank views and in a burst of activity we also had Bar-throated and Chapin’s Apalis as well – the latter with a white throat and different to the more orange throats of the birds in the Uluguru Mountains…. 

Bar-throated Apalis

Chapin's Apalis

Our last target was Rubeho Akalat and this took more effort but eventually everyone had decent views as it circled us as we sat on the forest floor. It always stayed low to the ground in the dense understorey but with a bit of patience everyone managed pretty decent views. Along the same trail, an Olive-sided Ground-Chat also performed very well along the trail, but unfortunately only Abdul saw an Oriole Finch. 

Olive-sided Ground-Chat

With all of our targets seen well before 10am, we birded along the road a while, seeing an Evergreen Forest Warbler quite well for a change, saw a Livingstone’s Turaco, heard a Barred Long-tailed Cuckoo and enjoyed further very good views of a pair of Rubeho Warblers. 

Rubeho Warbler

And that was us done. So we then headed to Morogoro, a drive of several hours, where we spent the night in a decent hotel.