It’s Albatrossity Monday! Tomorrow, p.a. takes us on a day trip to New York City. Then we head to San José with arrieve for the rest of the week. Sounds like a great week to me!
Albatrossity
Lake Manyara National Park is situated between our first destination in Tanzania (Tarangire National Park) and our second major destination, the Ngorongoro Crater, which is situated within a large conservation area. So it was a natural stop to include this national park on our road trip to get to Ngorongoro. This was a day of intermittent rain, so it probably was a good day to spend mostly in the vehicles. But we did have some sunny interludes, and some great birds!
There are 20 or 30 plover species in east Africa, and they are found in wet areas as well as dry. Many of these are in the Vanellinae subfamily, aka the lapwings (the collective name for a flock of lapwings is a “deceit”) . The origin of this term is old English lappewinke, which literally means “leaper-winker”, and is thought to be derived from the irregular twinkling pattern of the wings of the Northern Lapwing (the only lapwing found in northern Europe) in flight. We saw several species of lapwings on this day, and this one was among the most common. It is the Blacksmith Lapwing (Vanellus armatus, aka Blacksmith Plover), named for its “tink-tink-tink” alarm call, which does indeed sound like a hammer hitting a metallic object. Click here for larger image.
On The Road – Albatrossity – Lake Manyara National ParkPost + Comments (13)