Counting ducks...

Every January, all around the world hundreds (thousands?) of mostly volunteers set about an annual count of the wetland birds. January, because the people who started the counts were mostly in Europe and North America and January is the time when most of the ducks and geese in these areas are not spread out breeding across huge expanses of empty tundra, but collected together on handy lkes and reservious not so far away. Worldwide, because the aim to to try and count all the wetland birds and estimate the total populations, assess trends and identify areas where concentrations of national or international importance ocur (defined as different percentages of the global or flyway populations). I've done these January counts many times before, in many different places. In my experience they usually involve freezing arctic conditions, a bitter wind blowing in your face as you try and count and identify distant blobs bobbing up and down unstably on the choppy waters. I suspect there are plenty of people in UK right now experiencing this particular pleasure. I've also done them in Lebanon, where it was equally cold but one time I had the joy of taking Mama off to try and find a lake that existed on a map. After a morning of driving around asking questions (and having tea and coffee from strangers) we concluded that it really had been drained (yes, the whole lake!), and there was nothing to see. This was before we knew of Google Earth, of course...

So it was very nice indeed to set off to meet the crack Tz North team of duck counters for the first session of 2010 at Lake Duluti. The four of us met, only somewhat later than planned and piled into the landrover to drive the last bit together. We then negotiated our free pass and off we went. No cold breezes and instead of barren reservoirs a beautiful forest surround, full of lovely bird noises. And being free of the  children and there rather earlier than normally, I even got to see these - and it was great to have one of the other guys with me who really knows his stuff. And count we did. Lots of cormorants, lots of different herons (and a fair few crakes too) but ducks? No. Not one...  One Red-knobbed Coot, and one little Grebe, but no ducks at all. This, it seems, is really the fault of those Northern centric people who decide January is the time to count things - here, January is often the time when all those additional seasonal wetlands are full and bursting with life, so all the birds are disperssed everywhere. Still, it was good fun - fish eagles were fishing, I learnt a few new calls of the forest birds, and I confirmed that I can hold my own among the Tanzanian bird guides (which was rather reassuring, since whenever I tell people what I do they automatically assume I'm a complete expert, whereas I still need the fieldguide sometimes...). And also identified a couple of the mystery calls I've heard from the garden before now too - Tambourine Dove and Emerald Cuckoo.

The most surreal part of the experience was the background noise from the sacred caves above the lake where some decidedly animist worship was taking place with lots of chanting, singing, wailing and even sacrificing of cows. The bellows of dying cows carry far across the still morning waters... All very interesting...

In other news, we keep waiting. My days are occasionally interrupted with rather cryptic texts from my lawyer reporting progress or setbacks of one kind or another. But mostly I just wait. At the moment it seems as though there is still a need for my friend in the immigration department to find some way to save some face. But there's also other things going on that I don't think the lawyer knows about yet - his last text was to say he was going to ask for a full disclosure of whatever is happening, or a final end to things today. But we've had approximately nine final ends so far, and nothing concrete yet... So we just keep waiting.