After such a busy year that has kept me away from my usual haunts for
nine months, it was so very nice to get back to Nairobi National Park
after such a long period of "patch" abstinence. On Saturday 9th
October, I met Patrick and Johann Lhoir at the Main Entrance at
6.30am. There were quite a number of vehicles entering the Park even
this early. Unlike previous dawns, this one started very gloomy, but
not particularly cold, however after 11.00am the clouds broke up and
it developed into an unusually hot day.

We set off on the side road to Ivory Burning Site, finding a perched
Common Buzzard along the roadside. There were no sign of any
palearctic migrants at the site, but well over one-hundred
Violet-backed Starlings were swarming over the grass, and feeding in
trees and bushes. The number is itself extraordinary, but the feature
of this flock was that there was not one single adult male present,
all birds in female or immature plumage. I have never heard of this
sexual separation in this species before, but the example was so
dramatic almost certainly the absence of males being no accident. Has
anyone come across this "Brambling" syndrome before?