Lake Langano is located on a 4,5 hour mini-bus drive from Addis Ababa and offers some very fine birding. There are several hotels and ecolodges on the western and southern shores that offer good accomodation and fine birding within the hotel grounds. All are quite expensive so we camped at the Wabe Shabelle Hotel on the western shore to save money. If you arrive by public transport at Lake Langano and you want to stay at any of the western shore hotels, just ask the driver to drop you of at the dirt road leading from the Addis-Shashemene highway to the hotel of your choice. From there it is approximately a 3 km walk but you can also hire a horse cart. The southern shore ecologdes are very expensive and difficult to reach without public transport, but the birding seems to be very good...
The birding in and around the hotel grounds of the Wabe Shabelle hotel can be very productive and we managed to see a lot common Acacia scrub species like Namaqua Dove, White-Bellied Go-away-bird, Superb Starling, Northern White-crowned Shrike, White-browed Sparrow-weaver, Crested Francolin, Little Bee-eater and many more.
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| White-bellied Go-away-bird (Corythaixoides leucogaster) |
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| Beautiful Sunbird (Cinnyris pulchellus) |
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| Red-cheeked Cordon-blue (Uraeginthus bengalus) |
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| Speckled Mousebird (Colius striatus) |
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| Little Bee-eater (Merops pusillus) |
The lake itself offers not to many waterbirds but Gull-billed, Whiskered and White-winged Terns winter here an can be seen together with the resident Grey-headed Gulls and African Fish Eagles. It is also possible to swim in the lake since it is one of the few Bilharzia, Crocodile and Hippo free lakes of Ethiopia. The water is quite brownish but nice.
The special drawcard of the Wabe Shabelle Hotel are the owls, because the hotel staff keeps track of the roosting sites of several owl species like Greyish and Verraux' Eagle Owl and Northern White-faced Owl. However the only owl we have been shown was Greyish Eagle Owl.
I want to make a small note here: the staff should be paid, but a fair, not an execessive amount of money should be given, for a high price like 20 euro (400 Birr) is an amount of money which is out of proportion in a country were people pay 10 Birr for a warm meal for two people. 20 euro does not seem much, but in Ethiopia it is. Also paying large sums of money does not always benefit the birds as the throwing of stones at owls to pester them out of their hiding places is common practice in Ethiopia, just to make sure they recieve the ridiculous price. Keep this in mind! We paid 50 Birr for the Greyish Eagle Owl, which we saw twice and another 50 for some Four-banded Sandgrouse.
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| Four-banded Sandgrouse (Pterocles quadricinctus) |
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| Greyish Eagle-owl (Bubo cinerascens) |
The Sandgrouse you could possibly find by yourself. Look in the grasslands behind the graves on the southern side of the gravel road halfway between the hotel and the tar road. Besides the Owls some other scarce species can be seen here like the near-endemic Rueppels Weaver, Red-throated Wryneck, Lappet-faced Vulture, Lesser Spotted Eagle, Black-winged Lovebird and Eastern Olivaceous Warbler which where all seen well.
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| African Harrier-hawk (Polyboroides typus) |
On the other side of the tar road lies the Shaala - Abiata National Park which offers some different bird species, however we didn't visit this area. If you want to go from Lake Langano to Shashemene or Addis just hitch a ride at the tar road. You'll probably get a ride quite quickly for you are a faranji (most probably).
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