Time to relax

Both our stomachs decided to squeeze a small rebellion in between our plans and we relax a whole day at a calm, simple spot without much of infrastructure but with friendly staff. At night, zebras and elephants rustle in the hedges around Wild Palm campsite and bush babies jump from tree to tree. We start to value our surroundings even more in the morning because we can simply stay seated for watching birds throughout the whole day. A hamerkop couple is in the process of building a huge nest in the tree behind our car. Franziska spots a bright-blue kingfisher uttering a distinctive loud call and identifies it as woodland kingfisher with our field guide. In the same moment I use my mobile birding app to record a sound snippet for identification of this specimen, yielding the very same result. Awesome 😄! After powernapping in the hammock we leave for a short drive and try to buy our permit for the next day's excursion into Tarangire national park. Without success. We would have liked to start off very early without any delays. But their stupid system does not allow to predate any tickets. Who implemented that? We return to camp with fresh veggies from the market and end our day with an ordinary camping dinner. Some birds start to go crazy around one of the bushes at dusk and after a while of investigation we indeed find a very tiny spotted owl sitting between branches and trying to tell us: "Hey, can you please turn off those annoying birds behind me?!". It's a pearl-spotted owlet, Tanzania's smallest owl! What a contrast to yesterday's giant Verreaux's eagle-owl, Tanzania's biggest owl!Read more