Ye Mata Mata

I didn't learn quite as much Amharic as I was hoping to in Ethiopia- mostly the necessary phrases to order food, find the bathroom, and tell people I'm actually just photographing birds, not being super creepy. One of the best phrases I learned, however, was "ye mata mata" (የ ማታ ማታ), a slang phrase meaning something along the lines of "at last" (I think it literally translates to "late night"). It's a useful phrase in a country where lots of things take longer than expected- Addis Ababa traffic and internet speeds come to mind. It also seems to be the way I end up seeing lots of the best birds in Ethiopia- at long last, after lots of searching and effort. 

The last week of July was also my last week in Ethiopia before heading to Asia and then back to the US. I finished my internship the week before that, which was coincidentally the week the survey I'd planned to supervise beginning in May finally went into the field- ye mata mata. With my contract over, I had a week to spend in Ethiopia without work to distract me. As it turns out, even a few months of regular birding in Ethopia isn't close to enough to see everything the country has to offer wildlife-wise (Mesfin my driver friend says he's spent 10 years birding in Ethiopia and still has places he wants to go). However, there was one major area I had yet to see: the triangle between the towns of Yabello, Mega and Negele in southeastern Ethiopia, where some of Ethiopia's rarest and hardest-to-find endemic birds can be seen. With a full week free to travel, I finally had time to visit the area- ye mata mata. 

To my surprise, Mesfin told me that the best way to get to the Yabello-Mega-Negele triangle was through the Bale Mountains, where I'd been the previous weekend. That was also one of the most surreal and beautiful places I'd been anywhere in the world, so of course I was happy for one more day driving through the area. The downside was that it meant another long, long drive south from Addis down to the town of Goba. The drive up into the Bale massif from the Rift Valley was typically scenic however, with some good birds seen from the car, including Malachite Sunbirds, Common Waxbills, Thick-billed Ravens, and an extremely pale Tawny Eagle.

Extremely light Tawny Eagle

The next day was a drive from Goba south to the town of Negele, by way of the Bale Mountains. We left the run-down Wabe Shabelle hotel at 5:30 AM (later than our usual departure times, sadly), getting to the lip of the Bale massif and back onto the Sanetti Plateau just after sunrise. We had good unusually close looks at a Rouget's Rail and a pair of Chestnut-breasted Francolins on the way up, but the best sighting was in the first alpine tarn we passed by, where there was an amazing Wattled Crane grazing on the tundra vegetation, one of my favorite African birds and a much better view than I'd had on my previous visit. 

Rouget's Rail

Chestnut-breasted Francolin

Wattled Crane!

It took us an hour and a half to get across the Sanetti Plateau, a relatively short drive filled with the usual amazing views and wildlife. At one pool we saw another pair of Ruddy Shelducks, and at the next one a family of Blue-winged Geese, including fuzzy goslings, and the usual screaming Spot-breasted Lapwings. In the middle of an open plain I spotted a family of Ethiopian Wolves playing and rolling around in the grass- four individuals of a total worldwide population of only 500 or so. 

Ruddy Shelduck

Blue-winged Goose family

Spot-breasted Lapwing

Ethiopian Wolves

Sanetti Plateau landscape, with Mount Tullu Dimtu in the background

The southern edge of the Bale massif

At the southern end of the Sanetti Plateau, the road plunged down into the Harenna Forest, the largest expanse of montane forest in Ethiopia. I was looking forward to spending more time here, as there were some forest animals I had yet to see in the country, especially the rare and elusive Abyssinian Crimsonwing and the Bale Monkey. After an initial steep descent, the road flattened out a little south of the village of Rira and we stopped a few times to look for birds. It was a good reminder of how difficult birding in the forest is- I saw almost no birds on my first few stops, but heard lots of them, including Silvery-cheeked Hornbill, Ethiopian Oriole, Abyssinian Catbird, African Hill Babbler, and Klaas's Cuckoo. 

Ethiopian Oriole

The Harenna Forest road

We stopped by a bridge over a beautiful rushing mountain river that was known as a good place to look for Abyssinian Crimsonwings. I didn't see the crimsonwings at first, but I did see a Grey Cuckooshrike, a lifer for me, a Red-chested Cuckoo, and a few African Hill Babblers I was able to photograph for the first time. After lots of searching, however, I finally saw a flash of red darting from beneath a bush- Abyssinian Crimsonwing! They're extraordinarily skulking birds for being so brilliantly colored, and I never got a good luck, but it was nice to see one after looking hard so many times- ye mata mata.

Grey Cuckooshrike

Red-chested Cuckoo

African Hill Babbler

My professional-grade shot of an Abyssinian Crimsonwing

Green-veined Emperor (Charaxes candiope)

The forest stream

As we continued southwards towards Negele, the landscape grew dryer until we transitioned from forest into savanna and woodlands- we'd passed through at least 7 different climate zones in half a day, part of the reason why the Goba to Negele drive is probably one of the most spectacular drives one can do anywhere in Africa. South of the town of Dola Mena, the true scrubland began and we made some stops for birds. I saw a Spotted Palm Thrush and a Striped Ground Squirrel along the road, a Purple Roller on a telephone line, and later a flock of Shelley's Starlings and Golden-breasted Starlings, the latter arguably one of the most attractive birds in Ethiopia. Further south we saw a beautiful Red-and-yellow Barbet perched on top of a termite mound (its favorite food) and a Von der Decken's Hornbill in an acacia tree.

Spotted Palm Thrush

Striped Ground Squirrel

Shelley's Starling

Purple Roller

Northern Red-billed Hornbill- hard to get used to hornbills being like trash birds in Africa

Golden-breasted Starling

Red-and-yellow Barbet on a termite mound

Von der Decken's Hornbill

As we went further south, the terrain grew drier and rockier, and I started looking out for one specific bird: the fabled Ruspoli's Turaco. I'm not usually a fan of using the names of old dead colonizers for species names, especially in Africa, but the story behind this bird is interesting enough I'm willing to give it a pass: it was first collected by the explorer Eugenio Ruspoli, part of the Italian royal family) in 1893, but he later died after being strangled by an elephant (seriously) and so the location it was collected was unknown, and its origins remained unknown to western science until the latter 20th century, when it was "rediscovered" in southeastern Ethiopia. It's not actually uncommon within its range, but its range only encompasses a tiny area of scrubland between Borana and Negele, meaning it's still one of the rarest and most sought-after Ethiopian endemic birds. 

Just after we entered the area that was marked on my map as the beginning of turaco territory, I spotted a large green bird perched on the top of the tree. The car screeched to a halt, and I crept closer and confirmed that it was, in fact, a Ruspoli's Turaco! It was much shyer than its cousin the White-cheeked Turaco, but I still got great views of it, certainly one of my favorite birds of this year. We passed through a small town a bit further on where Mesfin said the turaco is often seen roosting on telephone lines or near people's houses- not the usual expected place for a rare endemic, but par for the course in a country where wild birds aren't persecuted. 

Ruspoli's Turaco!

South of the town I spotted another pair of turacos in a tree, and stopped to take some pictures. As I did so, a few men pulled up on a motorcycle and greeted Mesfin by name. They didn't seem threatening, but Mesfin hurriedly told me to get in the car. We sped off, and the motorcycle pursued us for a few kilometers before giving up. Apparently the locals have caught on to the turaco's fame among birders, and have a habit of demanding "guiding fees" from anyone who stops there for too long, and getting violent when people refuse. The ethics of birding and birding tourism are complicated, and I do think that birders (most of them white) do tend to benefit from black and brown communities they visit without giving much back. If the town were charging an environmental fee, or even a fee to benefit local education or development I'd be happy to pay it, but this felt more like stopping on a public road and being extorted by strangers for beer money, so I was okay beating a hasty retreat. 

From there is was another four hours of driving before the town of Negele, our base for the next few days. At one point we passed over the wide, reed-lined Genale River, which was the main stop for Ruspoli's Turaco before the road from Goba to Negele was completed. According to Mesfin, seeing it required an hours-long hike along the muddy river getting bitten by mosquitos before reaching a patch of woodland where the turacos could be found- the joys of modern infrastructure! We stopped once for a Günther's Dikdik that crossed the road in front of us, but we were mostly looking forward to being out of the car. 

Günther's Dikdik

Negele is a good-sized town in southeastern Oromia region, just a little bit west of the border with the Somali region. It's nearby an important military base on Ethiopia's eastern frontier, and is at the edge of the territory occupied by the Oromo, Sidama, Borana and Somali peoples, making it something of a melting pot. It was also part of the former Sidamo province before Ethiopia was reorganized into ethnic region-states under the 1995 constitution. That rankled with the Sidama people, who wanted their own ethno-region, and boiled over into protests this summer, though they were somewhat quelled when the Prime Minister agreed to give them a referendum on regional independence (I'm of the personal opinion that it's dangerous to have any kind of boundaries drawn based on ethnicity, but that's many of the reasons I don't talk about politics much in Ethiopia). Unfortunately that meant that it wasn't entirely safe to be out on the streets after sunset, and even more unfortunately meant that all internet was shut off in the entire region, something I realized only when I arrived in Negele and found out that I was once again completely isolated from the outside world. 

Besides the Ruspoli's Turaco, there are a number of other extremely rare and range-restricted endemic birds to be found in the Negele area, and the next day we set out to find the rarest of them all: the Liben Lark. Known only from a tiny area of plains near Negele and an equally tiny area in northern Ethiopia near the border with Somalia, it's one of the most endangered birds in the world, with a total population of no more than 250 birds- and probably much, much less than that. It's main stronghold is an area of plains in the Liben area less than 35 square kilometers that receives no official protection.

We left for the Liben plain early in the morning, driving on the dirt road across miles and miles of farmland east of Negele. There were a few birds around by the road, including a beautiful Yellow-necked Spurfowl and a few White-crowned Starlings. Our destination was a small collection of farmhouses in front of a barren, featureless expanse stretching nearly unbroken to the horizon- not seemingly the best possible place for incredibly rare wildlife, but habitat preferences are weird. Since the possible lark habitat is spread out and the larks are very sparse and difficult to see, birders are aided by the local Liben Lark whisperer, who's become so into his hobby that he renamed himself Liben. Liben met us nearby the house, and we started walking along the plain.

Yellow-necked Spurfowl

White-crowned Starling

Traipsing along the Liben plain in search of larks was not the most pleasant birding experience I had in Ethiopia. It was a cold and cloudy morning, with frigid wind making walking and looking through binoculars difficult, and the habitat was mostly bleak and depressing. The ground was nearly devoid of tall grass, which the larks depend on to nest. There were corrals around to supposedly keep out grazing animals and give the larks safe habitat, but the fences were mostly broken, and the only one that had tall grass in it also had a cow in the middle doing its best to eat all the grass. There are apparently some conservation NGOs that have worked to protect the larks and their habitat, but I'm not sure how active they actually are or how much they've done to make sure the local community gets some of the tourism benefits, since the locals seem to be doing very little for the larks at the moment.

As the state of the habitat might suggest, we saw no Liben Larks that morning, despite spending 6 hours walking more than 14 kilometers in wide circles across the plain. There were a few Somali Short-toed Larks, a good near-endemic bird, to be seen, as well as many Plain-backed Pipits, Temminck's Coursers, and screaming Crowned Lapwings, but none of our target larks to be seen. Liben worked hard to try and find the larks, and we were joined by an exceedingly annoying local boy I named Skippy who mostly just walked around yelling things while pretending to help find larks, but it was all for naught- no larks to be seen. 

Temminck's Courser

Plain-backed Pipit on cow poop

Crowned Lapwing

Stunning heliotrope moth (Utetheisa sp.)

Some kind of desert morning glory

The bleak Liben plain

I paid Liben for his valiant (albeit unsuccessful) efforts, and we left the area feeling disheartened, in part because of the degraded habitat and in part because I hadn't seen the lark, which I may not get another chance to see considering its population trend. We continued eastwards toward the border with the Somali region, in search of another rare and localized endemic, the Salvadori's Seedeater. Restricted to a remote area of scrubland shared between Somalia and eastern Ethiopia, it's another hard-to-find bird, although it has one reliable and relatively accessible site in a dry riverbed just past a military encampment. 

We spent an hour traipsing through the dry acacia scrub in search of seedeaters, and while we saw lots of good birds, including Red-headed Weaver, Red-faced Crombec, White-winged Black Tit, Rosy-patched Bushshrike, and my lifers Pygmy Batis and Purple Grenadier, there were no seedeaters to be found, though an immature Yellow-spotted Petronia briefly got my hopes up. Mesfin claimed to have seen one, which I saw the tail end of as it disappeared into a tree, but I never saw any distinguishing features so I certainly wasn't going to add it to my life list. All the while, a group of local men was sitting around watching us bird and chatting loudly. Mesfin tipped them 100 birr when they left for the "protection", which he said was mostly so they don't break the windows of the next birder vehicle to park there. 

Yellow-spotted Petronia

Von der Decken's Hornbill

Red-headed Weaver

Tiny Grass Blue (Zizula hylax)

Some kind of zinnia

As we were getting back into the car disappointed at dipping on two rare endemics in one day, Mesfin got a call from Liben- he had found the lark! Apparently he had continued searching after we left, so we rushed back toward the plain. Liben the local Liben Lark guy met us at the usual spot and led me deep into the grassland, much further in than we had gone before, to where Skippy the annoying local kid was marking the lark location. It took some looking, but sure enough there was a Liben Lark scuttling through the grassland, moving more like a rat than a proper lark- ye mata mata. It was more attractive than I'd expected, with a beautiful tortoiseshell pattern on its back, and the unique behavior plus sheer rarity puts it very high in my personal ranking of birds I've seen in 2019.

Liben Lark- you can see how well-camouflaged it is

Seeing the lark lightened my mood significantly, and I was in much better spirits as I paid Liben some more and we headed back to Negele. I even tipped Skippy, even though he'd mostly just spent the day following us around and making fart noises. Still, it was a bittersweet feeling, as the difficulty of finding the lark and seeing the state of the habitat bodes ill for their long-term survival. Mesfin told me that they're getting progressively hard to find- only five years ago they could be found right next to the road, but every year since then birders have to go a little further into the plain to see them. Local reports of their numbers are in the order of 3-10 birds still surviving, and not many more than that in the species' other location near Somalia, meaning that there are probably fewer than 50 individuals remaining. It's possible that there's another population waiting to be discovered deep in the remote scrub, but in the absence of that their long-term survival seems unlikely.

The next day was our last in Negele, and there was one more rare endemic to find: the Jubba Weaver. Restricted to the Jubba River and its tributaries, the main location to find it is through a trek along the Dawa River south of Negele. However, there is a new road being built north towards a dam along the Genale River, funded by China to promote economic imperialism development, meaning that a more reliable site can be found for the weaver, along with some other good birds.

It was a 90-minute drive to the river crossing, and we arrived at 7 in the morning, while it was still cool. Mesfin warned me that it was the worst time of year to look for them, as the corn and wheat usually grown in fields along the river had recently been harvested. Sure enough, after two hours of walking, there were no weavers to be seen, and it seemed like we were lined up for another embarrassing miss. There were lots of other birds, however, including a rare and localized Black-bellied Sunbird, some spectacular Bristle-crowned Starlings, and a Wahlberg's Eagle. Most spectacular were the flocks of dozens upon dozens of hornbills festooning the trees and fallow fields, by far the most hornbills I've seen in any one place. They were mostly Northern Red-billed Hornbills, but there were many Eastern Yellow-billed Hornbills, Von der Decken's Hornbills, and African Grey Hornbills to round out the selection.

Bristle-crowned Starlings 

Eastern Yellow-billed Hornbill

The river landscape with lots of termite mounds

A beautiful flowering tree

Acraea pseudegina

We were about ready to give up, but Mesfin suggested we try the longer reeds near the edge of the river. It was a treacherous path to get there, mostly because Mesfin was nearly attacked by an angry bull, but sure enough we drew closer there were a few Juba Weavers in the greenery! I was able to get close enough to get some decent pictures of the beautiful males and less-spectacular females, another very good bird, and one that was especially fun to see at the last minute- ye mata mata. 

Male Juba Weaver

Female Juba Weaver

On the way back, we stopped by a washed out gully on the side of the road to do some more birding. There wasn't much new to see there, but I did see my lifer Northern Brownbul (one of the least exciting-looking birds of the trip), Yellow-breasted Apalis, and a beautiful male Eastern Violet-backed Sunbird.

Eastern Violet-backed Sunbird

Northern Brownbul

Red-fronted Tinkerbird

Natal Babul Blue (Azanus natalensis)

Vervet Monkey

Since the morning had been a success, I asked Mesfin to take us back to the Salvadori's Seedeater site for one last try at that bird. It was a long drive to get there, and by the time arrived it was hot and dusty. We spent 30 minutes walking around in the scrub before the site finally delivered- a flyover from a male Salvadori's Seedeater, followed by 5 minutes of singing from a faraway hidden perch. Not the best view, but good enough for me to officially say I'd seen the bird- ye mata mata. A bonus was a pair of Hartlaub's Bustards, one of the most difficult bustards in Ethiopia, and my lifers Acacia Tit and Eastern Chanting Goshawk, plus a relatively bold Slate-colored Boubou. 

Eastern Chanting Goshawk

Slate-colored Boubou

African Caper (Belenois creona)

Some kind of ironweed

Crossandra sp.

We returned to Negele for a late lunch and a quiet afternoon. It had been a successful visit to the area, with no major dips despite some near misses, and I'd seen some of the rarest Ethiopian endemics. The next day was a very, very long drive, so we slept early in preparation for another installment of our last-chance Ethiopia birding trip.