Hi All!

Today Saturday 6th May, I spent the morning on the Magadi Road with 
Nigel Hunter and Leo Niskanen.  The main object of the excursion was 
to try and locate the Ngong (Pringle's) Puffbacks, but they were to 
prove elusive. Nevertheless there were some interesting 
observations. The first bird of interest was a Short-tailed Lark at 
Kisamese (and another on the Icross Road).  

As probable southern migrants, the first Capped Wheatear was here 
and Madagascar Bee-eaters could be heard flying over although they 
were not seen.

We made numerous stops looking for Puffbacks, strangely finding a 
Black-backed below Kisamese in the same place as Nigel and Leo had 
seen one before, and in the range of Pringle's. All places we 
stopped had Bare-eyed Thrushes, Tiny Cisticolas and Southern 
Grosbeak Canarys, they were all very noisy.  About ten kilometres 
down the Icross road we parked and walked to the dense scrub-covered 
hillside, here we could hear Zanzibar Sombre Greenbuls, and managed 
to track down a pair. Only the second time I have recorded the 
species on the Magadi Road, having heard one distantly when on top 
of a hill above the Ol Kejo River last year. On the return to the 
main road there was a Long-tailed Fiscal by the road, another first 
for the area. Interestingly in Tanzania they have been spreading 
westwards, and maybe we are about to see the same range extension in 
Kenya.

There were numbers of Swifts along the road skimming low over the 
scrub, mixed Little, White-rumped, African Black and Nyanza. 

At the turning to the left just after the "Magadi 60 kms" sign we 
had a Pringle's Puffback call, then fly out of the top of a tree to 
completely disappear, later on, the same thing happened again, which 
was most frustrating. In this area we had a late Olivaceous Warbler, 
our only palaearctic migrant apart from the occasional Barn Swallow, 
and at the junction a Red-headed Weaver, yet another first for the 
Magadi Road, although I have seen them out in the Rift at Emerit 
(along the road from Ol Tepesi). 

There are still a huge number and great variety of birds along this 
road, Black Cuckoos were at six of our stops, and African at four 
places. There were more butterflies than last week, but pretty much 
the same species. We did have two Jackson's Sapphires Iolaus 
jacksoni feeding on the first of the Mistletoe (Loranthus) flowers.

 

Sunday 7th May, I went next door into IUCN to see if there were any 
interesting butterflies about. I was not expecting to report any 
interesting observations in the bird line.

Walking across a water meadow I flushed a bird from the ground that 
I immediately recognised as a Nairobi Pipit, it flew into a tree and 
starting preening, and I took a few photographs of it. The bird flew 
to the other side of the clearing and joined a second bird, they 
then involved themselves in nuptial chases, and the male flew up 
into a tree and started singing (from a Grevillea robusta!). There 
is little doubt that the pair are intending on settling down to 
breed here. The habitat is quite identical to the places where the 
birds nest in Kisembe Forest in Nairobi National Park. There was a 
male Crowned Eagle displaying over the forest, which is nice to see 
again, and a Long-crested Eagle was also about. Although Grey Apalis 
are not found literally on the other side of the road in the forest 
of Nairobi National Park, they were very noisy in IUCN. There was a 
butterfly migration on today, with large numbers of Zebra Whites 
heading eastwards. Amongst these were a few surprises, and I 
recorded over forty species including four new species for IUCN and 
a number that had not been present since the marvellous year of 2001.