Catching a fish eagle on Lake Baringo

First, some numbers. I’m talking about hard relevant figures. The area within 500 metres of Samatian Island on Lake Baringo has – this isn’t exhaustive, though – 93 common birds. This makes this place that’s about an hour north of the Equator, to be a Mecca for birding buffs.

Richard Lechingoi, a waiter and guide at Samatian Island, knows his birds. He can, with naked eyes, spot, for instance, a malachite kingfisher camouflaged in a thicket. Giving me helpful instructions like, “next to that grey crocodile that’s lounging atop a grey rock...”, as I pan the whole shoreline with my binoculars glued to my blinkers, missing my quarry by an island.

Lechingoi powers the boat. We’re heading to “the place,” he says, a sly smile twitching his lips. He adds, “A quarter of an hour northeast of Roberts Camp.” 

Heck, I’m thinking it’s going to be just another humdrum ride, where the only music I’ll hear will be the purring boat engine. I’m thinking that I’m going to savour nothing but the cloudscape. And the horizon. And the ghostly massifs that, all around, silhouette the lake.

Who’s the mummy now?

Along the way, Lechingoi keeps me prepped with all manner of info concerning birds. Telling me, for instance, how male weaver birds build nests and complete with elaborate cylindrical hallways. But there’s a catch. A catch that has everything to do with girl power. After the male weaver bird has sweated, solo, doing back-breaking construction work, the female comes over to inspect what will be their matrimonial home. If baby girl’s not impressed, the poor guy has to trash what he has built and start afresh. 

We coast past a Red-knobbed coot that’s bobbing atop the waves. It’s making slow progress. Looking lonely and lost. I almost feel sorry for it, blurting that it needs a lift to get to its destination. I’m mistaken, Lechingoi opines, because the coot is in its element. The last thing it needs is human interference, sugar-coated as help.

Lair that makes birders go, “mmh”

My Good Samaritan vibes are cut short when Lechingoi directs the boat to a vast area in the lake with stumps of blackened acacia trees jutting from the lake. Mmh. “The place” is teeming with egrets, cormorants and herons. Lechingoi told me a while back that the stumps indicate how far the water has come inland, occasioned by the recent high rainfall. For the birds, floods are a godsend. They guarantee them some semblance of safety.   

A squacco heron flies over the water, spreading its white majestic wings, before landing some distance away on a solitary stalk of reed that’s sticking out of the water’s surface. Like a defiant last strand of hair on Kojak’s pate. An African darter soars above us. It’s looking for landing space on the acacia, stretching its wings. Just a little bit. Lechingoi explains that, due to this wing-stretch, amateur birders sometimes have a tough time differentiating it with a cormorant.

Maternity ward

Lechingoi kills the boat’s engine. We float silently between stumps of acacia and reeds, passing by a purple heron perched on an acacia. Head to one side, wiry neck twisted to the shape of a misspelt letter “S.”  Within touching distance, there’s a mass of “mobile reeds” – Lechingoi’s words – that change direction with the blowing wind. A yellow-billed stork hangs on to the stalk of one such reed, hitchhiking a ride powered by Mother Nature. 

Soon we’re onto an acacia stump that, with multiple branches, seems to be the maternity ward in this part of the lake. All around, there’s the distinct noise of chirruping chicks, and flapping little wings, and a patient mother feeding her chicks. The chicks are madly jostling for her attention. A great egret’s eggs, white and fragile, lies gingerly inside a nest, nestled onto the crook of a branch. On another branch, some chicks, barely a couple of days old, struggle to get their presence felt in this strange new world. Their necks are in constant pendulum motion, as they wait for their mother to return and feed them. They’re safe here. Marooned. Save for the howling winds that might plunge them into the lake and turn them into fast food for the crocs.

As far as my eyes can see, there are scores of herons and egrets. Standing. Perching. Landing. Nursing young ones. Taking off and soaring. Giving this panorama a tinge of abstract expressionism. This eco-freaking tableau, this breathing Edenic montage, is a priceless work of art that could have come only from one address: the hallowed studio of the Supreme Painter.  

Shy guy

Moments after boating off ‘maternity ward’, we sight a striking island in the distance. Lechingoi tells me that, because of its shape, especially when it’s viewed from our POV, it’s called Teddy Bear Island. 

Lechingoi kills the boat’s engine. He stands up and uses his binoculars to scan the length and breadth of Teddy Bear Island. He whispers to me that he has brought other bird buffs on this very spot, and they have caught a fish eagle fishing for lunch or a random snack.

He scans for what seems like an eternity. Taking his sweet time. I come to understand that it takes patience to catch a fish eagle in the act of doing what is natural to it.

Lechingoi spots a fish eagle. The bad boy is lounging atop a tree that’s sprouting between two humongous volcanic boulders, high up on Teddy Bear. He hands me the binoculars and makes sure that I nail the bird.

“Now what?” I ask.

“We wait,” Lechingoi replies.

And so we do just that. We wait. The fish eagle isn’t game. Shy guy. There’s no option but to move on. Lechingoi powers the boat.

As our boat cuts through the water, in the distance, a black egret flies above the lake. It glides in a straight parallel line, for nonstop miles on end. You’d think it’s following a trail that only its eyes can see. It beats its wings furiously above the water. Still maintaining that perfectly straight and parallel line. Then it holds its wings out. Still maintaining equilibrium. Mile after parallel mile, enthralling me with this acrobatic display ... until the speck that is its body becomes one with the horizon.

Finally, a bow

At Ol Okokwe Island, a massive piece of vantage real estate that zigzags along the water’s edge, an African fish eagle finally makes our day and gives us a performance that’s worth the wait.

Lechingoi, patient like a sniper, scans Ol Okokwe. This time around, he does not have to wait for long and, binoculars still in his eyes, he points me in the direction of the fish eagle.

The vociferous one flies from atop a tree where it is perched. It takes what seems to be a different direction from its intended target, does a semi-circle in the air, changing its trajectory. Swooping with accuracy, dexterity and mean intent, its claws open like pincers and, snap, close on a fish, just as it completes its semi-circular flight, gathering speed with its meal tightly clamped.

As if this is just another darn noon in the office, the fish eagle gracefully glides to its aerie, leaving us dying for an encore.

In a nutshell, here’s the formula on how to catch a fish eagle on lens: patience squared, plus tons of luck, multiplied by professional guidance.  

Useful info 

There’s an airstrip at Baringo, near Roberts Camp. Chartered or private planes can deliver guests here. By road from Nairobi, the road trip is approximately six hours. That is, from Nairobi to Nakuru, to Marigat, and then on to Roberts Camp for the 20-minute boat ride to Samatian Island.