Tanzania October - November 2012 - Zanzibar

Zanzibar, the name for the three major offshore Islands is often misused for its most visited island: Unguja. This post will discuss the birding on this island during the six days we have stayed here. After Ethiopia we flew from Addis Ababa via Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar - Stonetown. Most of our time we stayed in this rather expensive and touristic city, the capital of the island. However some interesting species were noted like Dimorphic Egret (common along the shoreline), Striated Heron, Sooty Gull (the most common seabird here), Greater Crested Tern and Long-tailed Cormorant. Besides these some more common land birds were observed. These were surprisingly scarce to come by an I think the reason for this are the ever present House Crows who have the nasty habit of destroying the nests of native birds. Another introduced species which is very abundant is the House Sparrow which may be outcompeting the local species. Local species seen in Stonetown included: Scarlet-chested Sunbird, Broad-billed Roller, African Palm and Little Swift and Bronze Mannikin. A nice mammalian surprice were two Indo-pacific Bottlenosed Dolphins swinging past the beach in the early morning.

Besides Stonetown we visited Pongwe on the eastern Shore of the island. This tiny village is located next to a very quiet stretch of lovely beach and easily accessible by Dalla-dalla. The beach hotels are fairly expensive. We paid 50 dollar per night for a beautiful room at the Queen Sheba Hotel after some hard bargaining. The birding along the shore is very nice as we saw a very obliging juvenile Crab Plover, several Dimorphic Egrets, many Terek Sandpipers, Greater and Lesser Sandplovers next to other shorebirds. We also saw three Sandwich Terns (a scarce migrant here) together with several Common and Saunders Terns.

Juvenile Crab Plover (Dromas ardeola)

Juvenile Crab Plover (Dromas ardeola)

Dimorphic Egret (Egretta dimorpha)

Greater Sand Plover (Charadrius leschenaultii)

Lesser Sand Plover (Charadrius mongolus)

Greenshank (Tringa nebularia)

Terek Sandpiper (Xenus cinereus)

Species within the coral scrub lining the beach included Bar-throated Apalis, the aptly named Zanzibar Sombre Greenbul, Purple-banded Sunbird, Collared Sunbird, Black-bellied Starling, Crowned Hornbill, Lesser Striped Swallow, Green-backed Apalis, Grassland Pipit and Dark-backed Weaver. Near some coral caves (which are defenitely worth visiting) we also found the rare Zanzibar Red Colobus, but our mammalian top encouter had to be the Small-eared Galagos at the Santa Maria Coral Park which even ate banana's out of our hands!

Small-eared Galago (Otolemur garnettii)

Another site worth visiting might be the Jozani Forest National Park where sightings of the Zanzibar Red Colobus are virtually guaranteed. It is also the only place in the world to see the rare Ader's Duiker, but this one is very hard to see. Due to lack of time we did not visit this site, but a trip report on this site is available on www.birdingtanzania.blogspot.com.