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LAKE MANZE CAMP GAME DIARY March 2009
Lake Manze Newsletter - end of the season March 2009
The 2008-9 season at Lake Manze Camp has closed, the camp has shut down and we open again on 1st June 2009. We thank all the wonderful guests who have visited Manze during the last 10 months. We are grateful for your support and we look forward to welcoming you here again.
As we prepared to close down for the rainy season, our last guest left.
. We must also say goodbye to some of the other guests we have had in the Selous for the past few months. That most dazzling of all bee-eaters, the northern carmine bee-eater, will be leaving soon for its breeding grounds in Ethiopia and Somalia. We also say goodbye to the many Red-Chested Cuckoos, who have called incessantly “fwi-fwi-few” (it will rain) even though they have been frequently wrong!
Goodbye too to the European Roller – a not-quite-so-colourful rival to the wonderful Lilac-breasted Roller. Their rolling display flights during courtship give the family its name and thrill everyone who witnesses the display. Twice a year these birds migrate up to 10,000 kilometres from their breeding grounds in Europe and Asia to sub-Saharan Africa. In early April hundreds of thousands of rollers travel north in a narrow corridor along the coast from Tanzania to Somalia. We can only wonder at the stamina and navigational skills of these birds, and we wish them all a safe journey in the face of all the hazards that lie ahead.
There is, however, one bird we can be sure will be around to witness the start of our next season in June. That most majestic of eagles, the African Fish Eagle, will still be sitting on the top of a tree, surveying the lake in search of its next catch. And we can all be thrilled by its call, head thrown back, carrying far and wide across the lake and leaving us in no doubt about which part of the world we are in.
See you next season!
The Lake Manze Team
