A Break in the Usual Pattern: Photographing Birds in Ethiopia

Gurdjieff talks about breaking one’s routine and so it was that after many years of visiting India, I decided that it would be good to try somewhere else.

Since birds are a pull for me, an excuse to travel into the countryside, Ethiopia with its rich diversity of birdlife was an obvious choice. Apart from the starvation millions of people continue to face there, Ethiopia is also well known for its wealth of paleontological findings such as the famous Lucy, the skeleton of a 3.5 million year old early humanoid female, who we saw at the National Museum in Ethiopia shortly after our arrival.

The whole trip was planned beforehand, a bit like a military operation. In fact, for three years I was in contact via email with a bird guide from Birdlife International. With him and a student called Bruktawit, we were able to see a few hundred species; in fact, I managed to photograph over 200 species while there. Numbers were not the name of the game though since we also wanted to see birds endemic to Ethiopia of which there are about 15 or so (ornithologists are still not exactly sure and disagree over details!).

From Addis Ababa, we ventured out, making our way north to begin with and stayed a couple of nights in a lodge overlooking a gorge. Here, we could see the famous Gelada Baboons on rocks below while bearded vultures and other large birds glided past above. Brightly coloured sunbirds squeaked with delight as they sipped the nectar from nearby flowers. Later, our journey took us down into the Rift Valley and up into the Bale Mountains to see the endemic wolf that can be found there.

text by Samarpan – January 2010