My Bird of the Day

February/March. 2025 Kenya. In a land synonymous with ever-present clawed and sharp-toothed danger, it comes as something of a surprise to see flocks of looks-like-a-chicken category birds wandering around quite openly, I’m thinking of Vulturine Guineafowl and Helmeted Guineafowl.  You don’t see them in ones and twos, instead they’re always in large, tightly gathered family groups, on a search for seeds, leaves, bulbs, and insects at ground level.  They obviously know what they’re doing having been around since time began, Helmeted Guineafowl in much of sub-Saharan  Africa and Vulturine Guineafowl mostly in east Africa including arid parts of north and east Kenya.  And that’s where I enjoyed them both.

They belong in the Galliformes order of birds which puts them somewhere distantly related to quail and pheasants, and even chickens at a stretch. And size-wise they’re about the heft of a small turkey.  They’d probably make a decent meal, Elspeth Huxley in The Flame Trees of Thika, her autobiographical account of growing up in early-twentieth century Kenya, describes hunting them for the pot.

It is hard to resist being both charmed and amused by the sight of guineafowl. They show little or no fear of vehicles and seemed to only resignedly scatter on our approach.

The Helmeted Guineafowl, so called on account of its prehistoric, fleshy crest, is rather like a large black ball on legs. Its plumage is marked all over with ‘tear along the dotted line’ white spots and its face has a dinosaur-era look about it.

It was the Vulturine Guineafowl that made my days.  That crisp, smart, pin-stripe plumage contrasting with the vulturine bare-skin head makes a most unlikely combination. But maybe not so unlikely, because there’s probably a city banker or two somewhere who looks and dresses just like that, bare, jowly head and all. Even down to the remnant tuft behind the ears.

For all their apparent vulnerability they survive as a species. But I asked our guide who or what preys on guineafowl and he replied Bat-eared Foxes. Well of course.  We saw a few of them withdrawn into the shade by day but no doubt ready to stalk and take a bird or two from a flock. They are attractive little canids whose prime habitat is short grass plains, areas with bare ground and semi-arid scrubland – an exact match for guineafowl.

February/March. 2025 Kenya. I’m setting aside the “My Bird of the Day’ principle for a moment and stretching the timelines a bit to highlight a bird family that I can sometimes hardly believe, the Rollers. They are gaudy, tropical, blue birds with large heads, broad shoulders, and stout bills, and with a sit-and-wait-for-large-insects-to-show-up approach to feeding. We saw many on our recent trip to Kenya, they were widespread, though not everywhere and seemed to prefer open savanna habitats, with plenty of trees and shrubs and other convenient perches.  An odd name maybe but Rollers are named for their acrobatic and tumbling display flights, presumably when defining breeding territory or in courtship. I’ve always been mesmerized by their striking colours, usually an overall cerulean blue (subject to my artist friends’ agreement) with darker patches of intense pure blue and chestnut or rufous brown.

Worldwide there are thirteen Roller species, we saw three in Kenya: European Roller, Lilac-breasted Roller and Purple Roller.

The commonest was this above, the European Roller. It winters in sub-Saharan Africa but returns to Southern Europe and Central Eurasia to breed. My first encounter with it was while poring over bird books as a child, I was certain then that I’d never see one for real.  But when I finally did, in Kyrgyzstan in 2018, it made me tingle all over. What a bird.

The Lilac-breasted Roller (above) was plentiful but less common on our trip but that may just have been a matter of us not being in the right places. It is a purely African bird and somewhat migratory within the southern and eastern half of the continent.

This Rufous-crowned or Purple Roller was new to me and I would have missed it if our guide hadn’t assured us that it was a roller. It fits the general size and impression but missed out on the colour treatment. But it was still a roller and I was happy to make its acquaintance.

To round out any suggestion of a collection, I’ll add that I also saw and photographed these, a Broad-billed Roller, and an Indian Roller some years ago in Uganda and Oman respectively.

March 4 2025. Amboseli National Park, Kenya.  Amboseli National Park is a flat sometimes featureless plain, dry as dust in most directions (at this time of year) but becoming a soggy grassland and eventually a complex of shallow lakes as you travel west.  It is watched over by Mount Kilimanjaro and is very rich in wildlife, vertebrate and invertebrate.  We were there to sample it for barely 48 hours and were led around its most interesting corners by a well-qualified and skilled tour guide. When we left, our heads were full of memories: sightings of dryland and wetland birds and startling mammals in sometimes surprising numbers.

This is a birding site, and I’ll come to My Bird of the Day in a moment but I can’t leave the richness and abundance of what we experienced without sharing some of our encounters with mammals.

Mammals:  Masai giraffe, Grant’s Zebra, Wildebeest, Grant’s and Thomson’s Gazelles were all around but Elephants stole the day. For 50 years Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE) has conducted an extensive research program covering many areas of elephant biology including: social organization, behaviour, demography, ecological dynamics, communication, and human-elephant interactions. ATE’s presence has helped ensure the survival of them as well as the Amboseli ecosystem. And yes, we saw many, 250 elephants in one sweep of the binoculars for example.

A Hippopotamus draped with a mat of vegetation emerged from the waters behind a Tawny Eagle we had been watching.

 

 

February 21. 2025 Enerau Conservancy, Narok County, Kenya. You might reasonably call me an escapee from the snows of Canada, but I prefer to view myself as a participant in a project to advance the cause of conservation.  I’m in Kenya’s Maasai Mara and pretty busy helping to restore former farmland to the sort of grassland habitat needed by mammals such as Zebra, Cheetah, Lion and Elephant.  We are making progress; Zebras have already taken the hint and Impalas are getting close. The next most likely early returns are Warthogs, Giraffes and Wildebeests.  Birding is a small part of our work, we’re just gathering baseline information on bird species’ presence, it helps to flag and highlight changes.

We do quite a bit of driving around, observing and counting, and every now and then we pause to enjoy the birds. Yesterday, waiting for our transport to arrive, I spotted movement in the grass and with the photo above was able to identify it as a White-browed Scrub Robin. I guess it’s a lifer for me (most African birds are) but no one else seems particularly impressed. Its almost exhaustively descriptive name caused some discussion, but what I liked about it was the busy way it foraged in the grass and kept cocking and flaring its tail.

Bird of the Day though was this Superb Starling. We of the Northern Hemisphere are so used to starlings as rather drab background birds, that to think of this as a starling seems improbable. But then common names can be rather meaningless when it comes to knowing who’s who. This splendid fellow is not a (European) Starling in the Sturna vulgaris sense but an only distantly related Lamprotornis superbus, something rather different.

Burlington, ON. February 11 2025.   We are, I think, quicker to greet the return of something lost than notice its earlier fading. This is particularly so for those of us who live where winter holds fast, and signs of spring are precious.  This is mid-February, the ground is hard and snow covered and another winter storm is approaching.

Today I noted two signs of spring: One, and the most convincing, was a male Northern Cardinal singing. The range of Northern Cardinals has expanded northward for the last century or so, they were not to be found around here before 1930.  Of all the Canadian provinces, only Ontario can safely be considered as within the cardinal’s  range, but there are increasing sightings of them in Quebec and the Maritime Provinces. It is thought that the primary factors for the species expansion are: warmer climate, lesser snow depth, human encroachment into forested areas, and the proliferation of back yard bird feeders.

But what about to that singing male. All it takes is a discernable increase in daylight length, a day of sunshine and somewhere a male cardinal will stake his claim to an expanse of urban back yards as his territory. All he needs now is a susceptible female, and she was almost certainly nearby and listening.  His song is perhaps best described as a loud assembly of clear pure-toned notes, to me it’s peter peter peter – tew tew tew. He was my Bird of the Day for bringing a hint of the spring to come.

My next sign of spring could well have been more in my imagination that real. It was noticing the growing flush of red-orange in the stems of roadside Red Osier Dogwoods, you know, the ones with long, whippy twigs common along highway ditches and marsh margins. In the height of summer those stems are a deeper burgundy-red though usually overwhelmed by rank vegetation and roadside litter.  They (and many willow species) seem to glow in the sun as winter gives way, it makes it as a herald of spring.

The Northern Cardinal was quite good enough.