This last instalment is about 12 months overdue, so my apologies to you all.  I got busy last year with other things (Hospice treasurer, a lot of travel, and the house in Rhu) and, as I need a lot of uncluttered time to do the writing and the thinking behind it, I got out of the habit and with it lost the motivation.  Our recent trip to Cape Town and the Garden Route has restored my interest in storytelling though and as we saw another wealth of birds and other animals, and as I’ve just uploaded the photos I took and as the weather is absolutely appalling right now in Rhu, it’s time to get back to it.

On our last game drive, and after we saw the pair of Southern Ground Hornbills I wrote about in Kenya 4a, Simon took us to a glade which turned out to be quite bird rich.  Two birds got our attention in particular, the Woodland Kingfisher and the Paradise Flycatcher.

Woodland Kingfisher

I wrote about two other Kingfishers in Kenya – Part 4a, the Grey-headed and Malachite.  But this one was just sitting in a tree with no water nearby, so very much not the habitat with which we Europeans associate kingfishers.   And while it’s not the best of photos, you can see just see the brilliant bright blue wing panel, a colour that it also has on its back and tail.  And note the large almost out of proportion beak, upper mandible red, lower mandible black.

It’s fairly common within a band across Africa south of the Sahara to Pretoria (not as far south as Cape Town).  It eats insects and small reptiles but doesn’t need water to house its diet.  Wikipedia notes that “It hunts from an exposed perch, often on a dead branch of a tree, or perches quietly in semi-shade while seeking food”, the latter being exactly what the one we saw was doing.

African Paradise Flycatcher

In the glade, we had the absolute pleasure of seeing first the female and then the male.  Both were unbelievably beautiful, the male more so as is normal in the bird world.  They are similar in colouring but the male has a much long tail.  My photos of the female aren’t the best, but I think you can get the idea by combining the two (I love the punk crest and even she has quite an impressive tail) but the male was not as obliging, so thanks to the Waterberg Bioquest website for their photo which shows the very long tail and the strong blue eye ring to great effect.

These extraordinary birds are widespread, favouring well-wooded river or stream valleys and copses, but may also be found in suburban gardens – what a treat that would be to find a pair in your garden!

Vultures

From the beautiful to the positively ugly.  Natural selection has favoured the development of bald heads so as to make burying their heads in the blood and guts of carrion less of a hygiene issue, but as a consequence made them quite grotesque looking, at least to my mind.  Still, they are an essential part of the biosphere and indeed are a great indicator of a healthy natural life-cycle environment.

I mentioned this next part in Kenya 3c.  The return part of our long day trip to the Serengeti took us through lands where the Masi had encroached with their cattle and where, during the night before, lions had attacked the herd and killed at least six, but more likely eight or ten cows.  Not a great outcome for the Masi nor for the conservation-minded Masi Mara park rangers who didn’t need lions attacking very easy prey but nevertheless the wrong kind of animal. 

When we drove through the area, some of the lions were still feasting but others were fast asleep, having gorged themselves on the raw steak and tastier offal, leaving the carcasses to be finished off by hyenas, jackals and, of course, vultures – lots of them.

And there definitely was a pecking order (pardon the pun).  The vultures came last – if mammals were at the carcass, some of the braver vultures might try their luck as well, darting in for a beak-full before making a quick retreat, but for the most part, the vultures were standing in huddles a safe distance away waiting their turn, while the sky was full of late arrivals flying in to join the banquet.

In total, we saw 5 different species in this melee (and a sixth, a Palm-nut Vulture, on the coast south of Mombasa).  Below is the huge Lappet-faced Vulture with its massive beak and wings spread and by comparison the much smaller Hooded Vulture on the left.

Not mixing with the others was this Egyptian Vulture.  I last saw one of these flying across the autobahn back to its roost at the Salzburg Zoo in 2018.

The final species was the Griffon Vulture, and I remember Simon being quite excited as it was a rare vagrant.  I don’t have a photo, sadly, doubly so as I read subsequently that there is some dispute in birding circles as to whether these birds are actually the more common immature Rüppel’s Vultures.  Who knows but I’ll happily take my lead from Simon.

Widows and Bishops

Once again, in the UK or Europe we have nothing like these types of birds.   Bishops are in the same genus as Widowbirds, most of which like the Red-collared Widowbirds below have really long tails.  Both like the open grasslands and from their beaks, you can see they are seed-eaters.

Whereas we saw the former on its own, the latter is polygamous and sure enough we saw him with his harem of about five females. We saw these birds a few times when we passed a scrubland area with bushes and high grasses.

Storks

The word “stork” seems to be used liberally in the birding world t describe the birds belonging to several genera and families.  The white stork migrates from Africa to  Europe where it can be seen sitting on top of chimneys or specially built roof nesting platforms, as we found in little town of Rust on the shores of Neusiedler See in Austria.  Except we didn’t see it on this safari.  However, we did see several other types of stork.  

This rather attractive Yellow-billed Stork above was in a reflective mood standing in a shallow waterhole towards the end of day, but was quite different from the ugly Marabou Stork (looks almost vulture-like with its bald head), different again from the stylish Saddle-billed Stork with its amazingly striking beak, and very different from the strange-looking aptly named African Openbill, also categorised as a stork, as shown in the three photos below (the Saddle-backed Stork is from an earlier safari in Kruger as unfortunately we didn’t see an adult in Kenya).

This Marabou Stork was so vulture-like that it was standing just apart from some of the vultures near one of the carcasses.

The first time we saw an Openbill, Simon saw it first and explained what the shape of the bill to us, but it sounded so incongruous that we thought we didn’t hear him right. The bird then flew up and stood on a branch at the top of the tree and you could see the blue sky through the gap in its bill.

Lilac-breasted Roller

There’s a European Roller that I’ve never seen – a summer breeding visitor in Spain and Eastern Europe before sensibly migrating back to Southern Africa for the rest of the year.  And very pretty it looks in the book, a feature common to Rollers in general (they’re related to Bee-eaters which says it all).

We saw Lilac-breasted Rollers a lot in the Masai Mara and they were always a delight.  Apart from being stunning to look at, they made viewing easy by perching near the tracks and being obligingly photogenic.  One happily demonstrated its hunting capability by catching a large grasshopper and swallowing it in front of us.

And that completes the Kenya bird story and indeed the Kenya story itself.  I haven’t mentioned a whole raft of other birds, too many to mention, and nearly all with no direct comparison to birds in Europe. The colours, the variety, the sheer numbers, and the ease of seeing them in totally natural surroundings in Africa makes this hobby such a different, special and rich experience.

We saw 118 species in 4 days on safari in the Masai Mara and 11 more at the beach hotel near Mombasa (mainly shore birds like the little sanderlings that run to and fro at the water’s edge), and I still have a few unidentified bird photos.  There is no doubt both Sabine and I have got the African birding bug that I know my friend Gordon has as well (he’s chasing his 500th species).  We added a lot of new species on our next trip to Southern Africa (Cape Town and the Garden Route) at the start of 2025 and while I want to say I’ll do another post or two about that trip, given that this one is a year late, I’d better not make promises I won’t keep …… but hopefully watch this space 🙂