Historical: Cordonbleus, Waxbills, and more(Kenya pt 2)

I woke up bright and early our first morning in Kenya to the gorgeous song of an African Pied Wagtail just outside my window! I of course had to check to see what it was and enjoyed its “wagging” around the sidewalk. I also noted a wheatear on the back wall which I IDed as Pied Wheatear, our first lifer of the day! Nic and I quickly got dressed, grabbed my binos and our cameras and headed out for some birding.

*I’m fairly confident on the ID of the wheatear, but when I posted a better shot of presumably the same individual from a few days later on iNaturalist two fairly reputable sources claimed it was Abyssian Wheatear. I’ll have to sort this out…

We immediately had lots of birds: nicely posing Laughing Dove, Superb starlings, loads of swallows, which at first glance looked to be all Barn Swallows, were on the wires.

Unfortunately after the laughing dove shot I somehow bumped the white balance (WB) setting on my camera and it made all the rest of my shots an awful blue! 😞 I’ll have to see if I can somehow edit them to fix that. Because of that many of these shots are from Nic, but if so they are marked as his.

We had loads of lifers in the hour and a half we birded: Red-eyed Dove, Ring-necked Dove, and Laughing Dove were the common dove species we picked up.

African Sacred Ibis and Black Goshawk both gave us short views as they flew over. Chinspot Batis was one of the lifers I was looking forward to, but it didn’t allow for more than very blurry shots. African Thrush, Wire-tailed Swallow, Common Waxbill, Red-cheeked Cordonbleu, and Streaky Seed-eater were some more of the many lifers.

Can you find the African Paradise Flycatcher?

There he is!

Some of the swallows on the wire:

Nice views of two Eurasian Hoopoes was fun, though they weren’t lifers.

Through the rest of the day we had a nice number of raptors and other birds as we mainly just stayed at the house. Booted Eagle, Steppe Eagle, African Harrier Hawk, Black-winged Kite, Augur Buzzard, Black Goshawk, and Black Kite were the raptors of the day all within a few hundred yards of my aunt and uncles house!

African Harrier Hawk was definitely the highlight of the afternoon! Such a bizzare looking bird!

We went out on a short walk in the late afternoon and didn’t have anything interesting until we saw a pair of Spotted Eagle-owls near the edge of the forest! Owls are one of my favorite bird families and getting them when so unexpected was super cool! They were being harassed by a pair of Fork-tailed Drongos (lifer) and an African Thrush was “scolding” them.

All in all a great first full day, with 23 lifers taking me to exactly 400!!

eBird checklists for the day: https://ebird.org/checklist/S61105542 (morning walk), https://ebird.org/checklist/S61106430 (late morning from the house), https://ebird.org/checklist/S61107813 (afternoon short walk to get closer to the Harrier Hawk), https://ebird.org/checklist/S61108781 (mid afternoon from the house), https://ebird.org/checklist/S61113584 (late afternoon walk including the owls)

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