February 7 2020. Enonkishu Conservancy, Kenya. I have returned to south-west Kenya to help collect research data on native mammals and birds. Friends and family have wondered about the much reported locust swarms, “Are they eating me out of tent and home?” Well I saw a grasshopper yesterday and that’s about it for me for the orthoptera family of insects. No, there are no locust plagues here, only rain, lots of it. This is supposed to be the dry season, yet every day ends on a soaking note: grasslands flooded, crops destroyed, trucks (and us) stuck axle deep in clay, but life goes on. I’m told that the famed grasslands of the Maasai Mara recorded 750mm / 30 inches of rain in the last 3 months of 2019; it sometimes feels as though we’ve had as much this week.
But I got out birding yesterday with Alan, a visiting South African ornithologist. We drove miles through subsistence farming communities, his goal was to establish the presence of as many species as possible, all part of a project determining their distribution in East Africa.
One of my hopes for this year’s visit to Kenya is to see a couple of starling species well. My Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa lists over 30 starlings, they are in the same family as the urban urchins of Eurasia and North America and one thing they seem to have in common is that they are generally rather featureless dark brown to black birds; until you look closely. Until you look at a Superb Starling, which, in the right light, truly lives up to its name. The one above is making a meal of termites.
It’s cousin the Greater Blue-eared Starling, below, is almost as spectacular but again the light has to be working for, rather than against, you.
Thank you for sharing Peter.
Those Starlings are amazing!