Kinangop caves

A cloud of birds, willowy in the wind, lifts from a farmer’s field high on the Kinangop plateau. It’s a flock of the long-tailed widow birds in breeding plummage and those without tails, not yet ready for breeding.

“This farmer is a member of the Friends of Kinangop Plateau,” says Dominic Kimani, the young conservationist and one of the founders of the group. He started bird-watching in primary school and is today a respected young member of the community.

Dominic, with his fellow members, gives instructions on how we are going to help in the day’s exercise, which is to count the Sharpe’s Longclaw on the field to help in data collection. We spread in a line at 5 metre-intervals and our instructions are to ‘flash’ which means stop and point to any bird we spot. There are quite a few on the list.

Suddenly, the star of the show appears. The Sharpe’s Longclaw from out of the tussock grass. It’s a Kenyan endemic and to be more specific, its stronghold is the Kinangop plateau with a few in the Molo and Mau Narok grasslands.

The tiny nondescript bird hops around and after a period of being unable to see it despite everyone going, ‘can you see it?’ I finally do see it just a few metres from where I am standing.

The Kinangop plateau is 77,000 hectares. “12 years ago, there were about 10,000 Sharpe’s Longclaws found mostly here and a few in Molo and Mau Narok. In the last few years, we haven’t counted more than 1000,” says Dominic.

The main reason being that the farmers are changing the land use pattern from dairy production to cultivation due to the collapse of the dairy industry in the 1990s although now things are looking up in the industry.

The Sharpe’s Longclaw nests in clumps of tussock, which are a group of different grasses highly unpalatable to the grazing cow.

Soon it’s time for a lunch break and we drive to the 48-hectare Sharpe’s Longclaw Nature Reserve bought by the Netherlands government through Nature Kenya.

Members of Friends of Kinangop Plateau are allowed to bring in their cows for grazing for Sh100 per cow per month when there’s not enough pasture elsewhere.

Done with lunch, we walk to the river’s edge to look for another endemic of the area, the Jackson’s widow bird, which lives by the river’s edge. All the rivers running down the Aberdares, which looms in the skyline are dry because of the current dry spell and too much water extraction from the rivers.

The farmer’s field by the river looks in a sorry state. The oat field has had a poor harvest and the wind is sweeping the topsoil into the air, taking away more nutrients. “The land here is not the best for cultivation,” comments James Wainaina, a tour guide and also a co-founder of Friends of Kinangop Plateau.

We don’t see the Jackson’s widow bird – perhaps because the river is dry but we do see a flock of the Yellow Bishop bird with its bright yellow breast. “Look this is its nest,” points Dominic.

On my own, I’d have simply passed the fence line, not noticing the grass nests of the brightly coloured bird. I’m glad to be in the company of the local conservationists. The fence is suddenly animated with the birds’ inconspicuous nests.

The view of the escarpment from the high plateau by the river’s edge is a beautiful panorama with the massif of Eburru or the smoke mountain as the Maasai call it, Lake Naivasha glistening on the valley’s floor and Mount Longonot looming over it.

We walk to the rim of the plateau and down a few boulders and into the hidden caves. One has a beautiful roof deck of stone, a perfect place where our ancestors must have occupied them thousands of years ago. We creep in as far as we can and turn around to see the stunning grand vistas of the Great Rift Valley.
rupi.mangat@yahoo.com