Lake Baringo . It is a small African lake located in central Kenya , in the Rift Valley province . After Lake Turkana , the northernmost of the Kenyan lakes of the Great Rift Valley group of lakes .
Summary
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- 1 Features
- 2 History
- 3 Fauna
- 4 Sources
characteristics
With an area of about 130 km² and an elevation of about 970 m. The lake is fed by several rivers, such as the Molo, Perkerra and Ol Arabel , and it has no apparent outfall; the waters are supposed to seep through the lake sediments into the failed volcanic rock . It is one of two freshwater lakes in the Rift Valley in Kenya , the other being Lake Naivasha .
History
In the vicinity of the lake there are several important archaeological and paleontological sites, in some of which hominoid and hominid fossils have accumulated, being present in sedimentary sequences from the Miocene to the Pleistocene in the Tugen Hills. The first European to see the lake is probably Joseph Thomson in 1883 . The expedition of Count Sámuel Teleki and Ludwig von Höhnel visited him in 1887 . In 1893 the geologist John Walter Gregory made an expedition to Baringo.
Fauna
Bird of the lake.
The birds are the kings and queens of Baringo. The more than 400 registered species turn the stay by the lake into a competition to spot the maximum possible number of different birds, whose record, which seems to be also a world record, stands at 342 species in 24 hours. The experience is most rewarding during the rainy season, when many birds return to Baringo. If you are not an expert ornithologist, you will still enjoy it with a good field guide in your backpack and responding to the songs you hear.
The lake was declared a Ramsar site on October to January of 2002 (No. ref. 1159), with a protected area of 31,469 ha, being the fourth Ramsar declared in Kenya .
