Dear All,

I woke up to a foreign sound from the garden this morning. At first I thought that I was imagining what I thought I had heard, the next thought was to put it down to Ruppell’s Robin-Chat, but finally I realised that it was a genuine Black Cuckoo.
Nationally this is of course not a particularly interesting record, but I have only ever seen one in the Nairobi region, and that was in Nairobi National Park many years ago. That was the only record for NNP, and up to then there had only been two Nairobi records (both Ololua) since 1972.
Whilst a seasonally common breeder down the Magadi Road, familiar Naivasha, Nakuru and elsewhere, it is inexplicably rare in Nairobi.
This is not the only case of bizarre absence, I lived in the Mara for nine years, and of course have visied it much since then, however I have only ever had one noisy bird in Kichwa Tembo in all of that time.
Some birds really do have such strange distributions,

Best to all

Brian