I woke with the sun as usual and opening the curtains of my room was greeted by an almost surreal sight. Kembu is high up, very high up at more than 2200m. The climate is more temperate than tropical at this altitude and the farmland is green and divided into neatly fenced fields. Looking out across the fields, with black and white dairy cattle grazing just beyond the fence and green trees in the hedgerows, I could almost believe I was back at home.

Only the flock of crowned cranes give the game away, they should be ducks or perhaps geese. Looking closer, some of the trees look a little odd to a northerner as well. About a hundred or so years ago, many people came from Britain and settled here in the highlands of the Rift Valley and set up to farm just the way they did back at home, raising cattle, producing milk and growing wheat and barley.

The Nightingales still farm at Kembu just the same now as they did then. The farm is very much like an English one, a little less mechanised perhaps, but the crops and livestock are remarkably similar.

We spent our first day just catching our breath and resting from the long drive. We met our hosts and a couple of excursions were suggested. We were keen to go down into the National Park for one day and we all also wanted to head further north to see Lake Baringo. Fred had organised a specialist bird guide to meet with us there and show us some rare and interesting species. Our target of 300 was a little behind, we’d need about eighty in the last five days of the trip to reach our goal. Hopefully, as we were now in a different environment, we would not have too much trouble seeing some new species.

Our trip north to Lake Baringo was the only one that we had a fixed date for, everything else could be fitted in around this, but we had an appointment to keep with Moses our bird guide.

The drive north is around 130km and we set off before first light to try and make it to the lake around eight o’clock. James new the way and had been told that the road might be a bit tricky, flooding of the rivers and streams often caused landslides and wash-outs along the otherwise good surface. The further north you drive towards the lake the narrower the rift valley becomes and the steeper the sides.

Moving fast in the pre-dawn gloom, James didn’t notice the next speed bump and we hit it quite hard and fast. Kenyan speed bumps are pretty epic things, maybe 40cm high and a couple of metres long with rumble bumps on either side. We all bounced around and were unhurt.

I wish I could say the same for my camera. I had it out of the bag and on the seat next to me – I was hoping to catch the sun rising over the rim of the rift as we approached the equator. The camera managed to bounce itself off the seat and land on the floor of the van. With the very heavy 50-500mm zoom on it, something had to give. I found out later that the mounting ring on the lens had actually bent out of true.

The outcome? The big lens would no longer autofocus reliably and for the rest of the day I would have to manage with either manual focus or using a much shorter lens. I struggled on as best I could. Focus indication was still working, but I was much slower working without autofocus and my less than perfect eyesight.

Moses was where he said he would be and the birding started straight away. We wandered along the base of the cliffs, birds being called thick and fast.

He was really very good at his job. Key species had been staked out before we arrived and we moved from bird to bird with the minimum of wasted effort, something to be appreciated as the day advanced and the heat climbed towards forty degrees. The date was the 25th of September and the sun really was directly overhead to within a fraction of a degree.

Birded out, we stopped at the main lodge for lunch and spotted a few more birds in the grounds, including a really nice scops owl hidden in a tree in the car park. After another birding session, we headed back to base while the daylight lasted, stopping briefly on the equator so stand by the sign and take each other’s photographs. This was my first visit to the equator on the ground, but I’m not one to be tempted by cheap souvenirs and anyway, the hand painted globes didn’t have a spot for the Isle of Man on them.

Lake Nakuru is one of the smaller rift valley lakes and around 60 sq. km. in area. It is surrounded on all sides by the National Park which borders right onto the town of Nakuru and is fenced on most sides.

It is really very much a tourist park. It is the closest I’ve come to what people in the west would think of as a Safari Park – an open zoo with wild animals in a big enclosure. That doesn’t mean it’s a disappointment for the visitor, just a park that can be seen in half a day or so, something which suits most visitors as they are passing by on the way either to or from the Masai Mara.

Actually, I really quite liked it. The shallow waters are filled with birds and the surrounding savanna and woodland are likewise filled with all manner of mammals.

Great white pelicans gliding in to land are just about the easiest possibly bird-in-flight target, especially when they are close. Sadly, the white rhinos were asleep, but there were zebra, waterbuck and Rothschild giraffes to be seen. The bird count climbed slowly, mostly because we were just getting better views of species we had already seen on the trip.

As we approached the end of our tour around the lake, we spotted a couple of lions. They were quite a distance away from the road, but a worthy addition to our sightings in this nice little park.