Lake Naivasha

Lake Naivasha…home to water buffalo, zebra, giraffe, waterbuck, wildebeest, dik dik, impala, gazelle, more than 1,200 hippos, and hundreds of species of birds including crowned cranes, the Goliath heron and over 150 African fish eagles…heaven? I would say so.

The last few weeks here have been very interesting, fish eagles seem to be everywhere, no complaining on my part. My home is a metal caravan with the main room and a sleeping room. If I stretch out my arms, they touch each wall. My kitchen is just a short walk to a building much, much bigger than the caravan with a wood burning stove (Note to self: must work on starting fire). My very own bathrooms are across a field that is for the hippos to graze on at night. It’s worth it…at night I am surrounded by waterbuck and hippos. You can’t miss the hippos, they come to mow the lawn and it is very loud, the way they rip the grass up. I tried to get photos, but you don’t want to get too close to a hippo, they are HUGE and a little intimidating at night :)

The family that is so kind to let me stay in the caravan is Sarah and Mike. Sarah is an animal buff, she has id’d and told me all about each animal and bird I’ve seen here, its awesome. She also rescues all sorts of animals, right now she has all raptors, they help injured animals and she specializes in owls. The barn owls she keeps have released many young into the wild. Right now there are a pair of eagle owls that have two young that are almost ready to fledge (fly the coop, be free). The female was deprived of adequate nutrition when she was young, so her beak grows in crooked and its very, very long. I brought a dremmel and we’ve been working on making it look better, at least now the bottom looks great and the top will once we shorten it more.

Sarah and Mike have been very kind, introducing me to everyone they know and even taking me up in their plane…ok, so it wasn’t specifically for me, it was for a white stork we took to another town to release… I carried it on the plane, he was great and didn’t poop on me once!