19th September 2002

Dear all,

I have just returned from a trip in the west of the country. The 
highlight for me was on 13th September, finding a pure 100% Red-
bellied Paradise Flycatcher in Kakamega, my first pure bird in the 
country for well over 10 years, and I really had thought it gone 
forever. I tried to substantiate the record with a photograph, but 
the bird was 150 feet away in canopy in a lot of shade, however I did 
manage the attached. From this you can see it is an adult male, clean 
cut very glossy blue head and crest, entirely rich orange underparts 
becoming a little paler towards the vent. The central-tail feathers 
protruded a couple of centimetres beyond the others, and then bent 
gracefully forward underneath the bird.

It was along the short, steep descent to the Yala River in the Yala 
Reserve, and whilst I did not see a second bird the chances of a 
Ugandan individual wandering in at this stage is so very unlikely, 
that it is probable that a small population still exists away from 
the incursions of people, cattle, exotic plantings and Common 
Paradise Flycatchers. The Yala Reserve is an incredible stand of 
original forest, so entirely different from any part of Kakamega 
regularly visited by birders. I spent five days in this forest and 
although not birding, saw species difficult to locate elsewhere in 
the forest. Black-billed Turacos are very healthy and noisy, Red-
chested Owlets are easy to locate, it is the only spot I know there 
where the two trogons are side by side, plenty of noisy Broadbills, 
Toro Olive Greenbuls are amazingly numerous along the forest trails… 
listen for "shree……shree….. shree-shree-shree-shree-shree (descending 
and rattling towards the end), this is often preceded by two 
higher "seeyuee" calls. The "shrees" are a constant contact noise and 
can be heard throughout this area, don't ever be misled into thinking 
that Toro Olive is a rare bird, because of the difficulty of seeing 
it elsewhere. Pale-breasted is present with the other three 
Illadopses, I suspect that this species requires much denser 
undergrowth than the others, and this is leading to its disappearance 
along the main road, where I only know it now from the track in 
Rondo. The only bird that I did not encounter was Yellow-bellied 
Wattle-eye, it could be that it was not calling, but that would have 
been strange as both Jameson's and Chestnuts were very obvious. 

Investigation of this area would really reward, not only are all the 
usual species in much higher densities, but if something as 
relatively obvious as a male Red-bellied Paradise Flycatcher can 
elude us here, perhaps there are the possibilities of Shining-blue 
Kingfishers (the river really looks ideal for them), Sabine's 
Spintail of maybe even Yellow-naped Weaver, which would be a nice 
recovered species.