Note
The daily reports were written by Joy Fish with many beautiful photos by Johan Schlebusch, Joy Fish
(Johan’s wife), Pat Coles, Helga Hill, Simon and Stella Fogarty, Otto and Sandy Schmidt.
The travelogue will be broken down into stages for easier downloading. Enjoy the trip!

Introduction.

Ethiopia has approximately 850 bird species, 39 of which are endemics or near-endemics (18 are shared with neighbouring Eritrea) and is therefore an ideal destination for a birding adventure. 12 members of the Cape Bird Club signed up for a 3 week trip in April / May 2011. The April start enabled us to see some of the migrants heading north, and we were very pleased with our trip total of 435 bird species.

Before I give details of what we did and saw each day, let me describe the people supporting the group. 
Firstly, we were led by Vernon Head, chairperson of the Cape Bird Club

Vernon Head.

Vernon had been to Ethiopia with Ian Sinclair two years before and hence he knew most of the birds and much of the countryside. Those who know Vernon will know that his knowledge of birds is only matched by his infectious enthusiasm for birding! We felt very privileged to have such a wise, patient, tenacious and inspiring leader.
Vernon was assisted by Gerry Nicholls from the USA, a long term friend of Ian Sinclair’s who had also been with Vernon and Ian in Ethiopia in 2009.

Gerry Nicholls.

Gerry fell in love with the country and its people and has been back several times in the last 2 years*. He carried out a multitude of helpful tasks on the trip, including wake up calls when necessary (how rare is a cheerful person at 4am?), nursing us back to health when sick, befriending all other touring birders to extract from them the latest “intelligence”, scouting around for good spots to see birds, eat lunch, etc.
* see www.ethiopiasdaughters.com  

The tour was booked with Ethop Travel, a local travel agency owned by Ato Amare Mengistu. We met Amare on a couple of occasions, but his man ‘on the ground’ was Ato Soloman Desta a quiet, well educated Ethiopian man who looks and acts a bit like Ghandi. Solomon travelled with us - he managed the drivers and paid all the hotel accounts. Between them, Gerry and Solomon buffered the group from the business side of the trip, leaving us free to concentrate on birding, eating and sleeping!

Ato Amare Mengistu.

Ato Soloman Desta.

Then there was a young man, Abebe who travelled with Solomon, a trainee in the tourism business. His main job was to keep the gangs of children that invariably gathered around us from disturbing the birds! This he did gently by explaining our activities and entertaining the children. Finally, we travelled in 5 Toyota land cruisers, and so we had 5 experienced drivers a grand total of 21 people.

Abebe. 

The drivers.

We covered quite long distances on some days, on some good roads and some bad, in sunshine and pouring rain. We had a couple of punctures, and tyre changes were done at a speed that would complete with grand prix pit stops.

For the most part we drove to places, then got out to walk in order to bird as a group, but some birding was inevitably also from the vehicles and this is why the planning committee ensured that each birder in the group had a window seat.

Off with the flat and on with the good one.

The route is marked in yellow.
Each day has a section of the map to indicate where they were travelling.

Note - the successive day trips will be added as the pages are updated.    updated 21/09/2011.