Mount Kenya National Park is one of the best of the few mountainous African habitats available to the...

Mount Kenya National Park is one of the best of the few mountainous African habitats available to the little-known Jackson’s Francolin. It has a loud call, but is rarely seen by birders or described by ornithologists, probably because its high-altitude habitat is photographed from afar much more than actually visited. 

Mount Kenya National Park has no wildebeest or cheetahs and only a few wayward Secretarybirds, but it would be an ideal setting for an animated Disney movie with a cast of intrepid bird and mammal characters from elephants and eagles to monkeys and mole-rats. 

Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro is Africa’s highest mountain, but the diverse ecological habitats of Mount Kenya at each altitude zone support a rich variety of birds, fish and mammals, including the Jackson’s Francolin.

(Photo: Nature’s Wonderland Safaris)

Nature’s Wonderland Safaris, a Kenya-based guiding service, offers a guided Mount Kenya climbing trip on the Naro Moru Route, a bird-rich, spectacularly scenic adventure. The five-day trek is as challenging as it is unforgettable.

http://www.natureswonderlandsafaris.com/mt-kenya-climbing/index.html

From 2,200 to 3,700 meters (7,200-12,100 ft), the pheasant-like francolins forage in the underbrush of montane forest, bamboo and juniper forest and moorland, heath and scrub to well above treeline. It eats bulbous roots, grass, berries and insects. The handsome bird with a red bill and legs walks around mole-rat mounds up to 6 meters in diameter that are widely distributed in the park.

The francolin begins feeding before sunrise in dry weather, according to The Handbook of the Birds of the World. They pass elephants drawn to Mount Kenya to gorge on dense growths of Giant Groundsel, a type of high-altitude sunflower. 

The francolins share the highest parts of Mount Kenya that still have vegetation with the Rock Hyrax, a 4-kilogram (9 lb) mammal that likes to bask in the warm morning sun, ever alert not to become the breakfast of Leopards, Verreaux's Eagles or other predators. 

Lions are very sparse where temperatures can dip below freezing every night. Here, the king of the carnivores is the African Wild Dog. They hunt hoofed mammals such as Zebra.

On the lower plains near the park, ethnic groups living within sight of Mount Kenya typically build their houses with front doors facing the sacred mountain. 

From an ecologist’s perspective, the 17,021-foot (5,188 m) mountain is an island. It's Kenya’s wildlife version of Noah's Ark in an area where many animals are losing to development, deforestation, agriculture and poachers’ snares that are found right up to the park’s fences. Many Black-fronted Duikers, African Buffalo and other animals at the park can’t go back. 

An electric fence keeps the elephants in the park from leaving it to raid crops now growing in their ancestral feeding grounds. Mount Kenya’s fertile volcanic soil and plentiful water are a blessing to the country’s booming agricultural sector.

Of course, it’s easier for birds to come and go, and many come here. Some of the birds seen on the mountain include the Hamerkop, Open-billed Stork, White Stork, Green Ibis, African Black Duck, Maccoa Duck, Rüppell's Vulture, Lammergeier, three harriers (Eurasian Marsh, Pallid and Montagu’s), three eagles (Tawny, Steppe and Verreaux’s), three buzzards (Augur, Common and Mountain), Black Kite, Lesser Kestrel, Black-winged Plover, African Snipe, Greenshank, Green Sandpiper, Speckled Pigeon, Cape Grass Owl, Cape Eagle-owl, Montane Nightjar, three swifts (Mottled, Alpine and Scarce), Cinnamon Bracken-warbler, Slender-billed Starling, Yellow-crowned Canary, Streaky Seedeater, White-naped Raven and many others.

A primate species that is the ghost of Mount Kenya is the Sykes’ Monkey. Biologists surveying the mountain in the mid-1900s found two mummified monkeys below the Darwin Glacier. There is no easy explanation for why a monkey would climb above treeline to the retreating glacier. A mummified Colobus Monkey also was found - at 15,420 feet (4,700 m). They live at lower elevations, but not above treeline. 

The East African Mole Rat is a different matter. They are supremely adapted to flourish in underground burrows on Mount Kenya up to about 3,000 meters (9,800 ft).

Truman P. Young, a Fordham University (U.S.) biologist, and Matthew R. Evans, a zoologist from the University of Cambridge (U.K.) published a detailed summary in 1993 of their observations from 1977 to 1990 of the alpine vertebrates of Mount Kenya along with previously published observations and studies of others. 

I believe that the more we watch, photograph, study and enjoy the Jackson’s Francolin, the better for the species, all birds, all wildlife and humans.

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