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After a business visit to Tanga on Tanzania’s north coast, I was able to add 2 days at the end of the trip to do some birding around Dar es Salaam. I made contact with a local bird guide, Andrew Majembe, but unfortunately he was not available and passed me on to two of his friends, Salvatore and Filbert. On Friday morning, 29 March, disaster struck Dar es Salaam when a multi-storey building in the same block where my hotel stood, collapsed, killing at least 34 people. During my entire stay there was the constant noise of heavy machinery and ambulances, trying to get to trapped survivors. It also made it getting into and out of the area problematic and traffic was an absolute mess. But when the two guides came to pick me up very early on Saturday morning, at least the crowds of people have dissipated somewhat and we were able to get out of the area quickly. We started birding north of the harbour on the beach road but as the tide was in, there were no sea- or shore birds around. The only interesting things we saw were Yellow-throated longclaw and African pipit. We got on the harbour ferry and made our way to Kibugumo where we walked around some woodland patches in between cultivated land. Sombre greenbul, Emerald-spotted wood dove, White-browed coucal, Klaas’s cuckoo, Water thick-knee and Black-collared barbet were all calling in the morning heat and it was not long before I added my first lifer for the day: Zanzibar red bishop. Little bee-eaters were quite common and after we also heard Tropical boubou, Green-backed camaroptera and Black-crowned tchagra, we had fantastic views of Collared palm-thrush. As we strolled across a soccer field I noticed something sitting on a telephone wire that didn’t quite look like the omnipresent House crows. We strolled a little closer until I could definitely see that it was some kind of goshawk. Treading softly to not scare it, we crept even closer and then finally we were able to distinguish clearly the yellow facial markings – it was my second lifer for the trip, an Eastern chanting goshawk. It was an hour and a half's drive from here to Dondwe forest where we parked and had a bite to eat before starting a walk. We had to use one of the local village boys as a guide but the chosen path soon disappeared into heavy tangles and we had to turn around. Choosing a different path we skirted the edge of what turned out to be more slash-and-burn cultivation than actual forest. Even so, birds heard or seen included Gorgeous and Orange-breasted bush-shrikes, my first Broad-tailed paradise whydah and Grey tit-flycatcher. It was a long drive back to Dar es Salaam and the idea of making a quick pass at the woodcarver's market in Mwengi was a bad one as the traffic was horrendous. It took us over 3 hours to get back to Dar, quickly buy a mask at the market and return to my hotel. With only 46 birds ID'd for the morning the birding was not particularly great but considering that we were mostly still within Dar es Salaam and I did add 3 lifers, it was OK. Hopefully next I'd be able to head out a bit further into some proper forest.
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