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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kitefarrago" data-source="post: 3167713" data-attributes="member: 91670">Storks, herons, ducksI'll intersperse reports on various mammals with some on birds in a roughly taxonomic order. I did try to keep a daily list, but doing so by myself almost certainly means that some of the more common birds will be slightly under-reported.There's a place usually referred to as `the marsh' which is the best place for finding birds that tend to be found near water. White-faced Whistling Ducks and Spur-winged Geese were seen there on all our visits (we went four times altogether). Egyptian Geese are ubiquitous and still seem somewhat out of place, at least to me.The marsh still had distinctly marshy bits with heavily vegetated ponds when we visited the first time, but just five days later it had distinctly dried up all round, and the number of birds was significantly reduced. Five days after that again we had had some significant over rainfall over a couple of nights, and it was much marshier than when I first arrived. Some species were only seen on our last visit. If you're staying in the Mara long enough, and you have some rain, it may be well worth to revisit the marsh. There's also a lovely woodland nearby (unfortunately close to one of the camps, so much of it is off-limits) where we saw some interesting passerines.We saw all four storks one might expect to see at this time of year. Yellow-billed was almost daily, as was Marabou (as one might expect), although typically indifferent habitat. Yellow-billed near water of some kind, Marabou anywhere where there was carrion, and since the migration was in the Mara at the time there was plenty to go round. Woolly-necked Stork was seen on two occasions, and Saddle-billed on all four visits to the marsh.The two expected ibis species, Hadada and African Sacred, were seen almost every day. We had 10 species of Heron, but nothing too exciting. One sighting of Black-crowned Night heron on one visit to the Marsh, Striated Heron on three occasions near water, Squacco Heron only once from the camp (and I missed a trick there since I didn't take enough notice of the bird to check whether it might have been the Madagascar species which is possible at that time of year). Rufous-bellied we had almost daily, but somewhat to my surprise we had (Western) Cattle Egret only once. Among the other egrets, Great and Intermediate were reasonably common. Grey and Black-headed were almost daily, and we found a Goliath Heron on three occasions. Another common bird was Hamerkop.All in all, nothing there that you'd go to the Mara for. More interesting birds to come in future posts.Andrea1. Yellow-billed Stork2. Saddle-billed Stork3. Woolly-necked Stork4. Rufous-bellied Heron5. Black-necked Heron</blockquote>

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