Wednesday 4 June 2025. First full day in Naivasha

Group C. Selena, Lacey & Amadahy

It’s 5:00 am, Naomi wakes up Lacey and whispers (in terrifying manner), “Lacey, I think there’s something outside of our tent.”

The ruckus was in fact hippos emerging from the lake. Lacey and Naomi would continue the day in fear, until learning that is what the lurking figure was. It didn’t really relieve them.

The Egyptian geese and hadada ibis added to the chorus of wake up alarms. Once awake, you could find yourself making eye contact with two grazing cape buffalo. Who had mysteriously left from nearby Hellsgate National Park. While setting up breakfast, we had our first vervet monkey encounter of two males and three small females ready to raid unaware tents.
During breakfast, everyone got acquainted with Kevin, Joseph, John (now the first. Last year John the second as the then driver John was John the first), and Chenzen, the amazing Bunduz staff working under Mukhtar’s leadership. Everyone then got ready for the big day ahead.

Much later in the distance, the leaping colobus monkeys made themselves known in the statuesque fever trees, leaping from branches with their white mantles used as parachutes, quite the display. Following that monkey business, Yiling got off to a great birding start as she saw flamingos flying in the distance to Lake Nakuru.

When 10am hit the camp, the practice bird-a-thon commenced. Prof. Stephen gave us a short but sweet lecture on how we see birds as a great lens into ecology – providing insights on life history and habitats. We briefly went over important aspects of bird ID, coloration, altitude, range, bill morphism, diet etc. We then had an hour and a half to see and identify as many birds as we possibly could and compare our findings with the group.

At 12:15 we reconvened, the results were:
Team A (Yiling, Naomi, Ella): 33 species,
Team B (Serena, Miranda, Akilah): 9 species,
Team C (Lacey, Selena, Amadahy): 30 species,
Team D (Shamini, Emily, Hannah): 9 species,
Team E (Amanda, Kirstie, Dani): 8 + 4 unsure,
Team F (Suzy, Jana, Holden): 5 + 4 unsure species. The gauntlet was thrown down between Team A and Team C, the rematch will occur later, either at here at Naivasha or at Kakamega, where the stakes are higher and the birds are crazier.

We had a delicious lunch to recover from our endeavors searching for birds – only to be set off once more by the visit of a lilac-breasted roller (the national bird of Kenya).
Come 3pm, it was time to get studious with Amadahy starting the primary literature review presentations, as she wiped the sweat off her brow she began her presentation on Museums and Cradles of Diversity in Angiosperms of Tropical Africa giving us insight into the rich evolutionary diversity surrounding us. Second was brave Dani, speaking on Geographic Barriers and Pleistocene Climate Change Shaped Patterns of Genetic Variation in the Eastern Afro-Montane Biodiversity Hotspots. While it was a technical paper, she did a great job giving us insights into phylogeographic patterns across the Great Rift system.
Up next on our busy agenda, after tightening our hiking boots we were handed new fancy Garmin GPS units in preparation for the intense geocaching activity to take place tomorrow.
Many got lost on that trail that we blazed, no worries theres nothing dangerous out there … except cape buffalo, hippos, boomslangs, offended warthogs, puff adders, oh and black mambas. Not to worry this is a safe campground!

Following geocaching, Shamini started us up again with The Ecological and Genomic Basis of Explosive Adaptive Radiation, a talk about how we can see the evidence and factors of adaptive radiation all around us … and especially cichlids. Finally, Naomi gave a review of a paper ‘Termite Mound Cover and Abundance Response to Herbivore-Mediated Biotic Changes in Kenyan Savanna’ which was an amazing insight into the ecological engineers that are termites and how their lives are shaped by ungulates (meso and mega herbivores). Speaking of ungulates, the hippos emerged from the lake to hear all about primary literature … I guess you could say it was “peer” reviewed. They seemed equally surprised to see the two daggaboy buffaloes.

After an exciting day, we were happy to relax in the mess tent and swap stories over dinner. To finish off the night, Yiling strikes again with an awesome find: bushbaby in the dark night climbing the fever trees. Much of the evidence being two orange pinpricks shining back at us and our headlamps.

If you made it this far, congratulations and stay tuned for the next blog post and the cutthroat geocache competition to find out who wins.