Hi All,

Find attached an image of a Crested Honey Buzzard (CHB), photographed by Rhys Marsh while on his honeymoon in Meru NP, Kenya, back in Sept 2014.

In the course of picture researching for a book last year, I made contact with Rhys who has some great shots of Purple-breasted Sunbird from Rwanda on his Flickr pages. On Friday, Rhys made contact again to advise me that he had since returned to the region and uploaded more images on the site for me to peruse. Sure enough, Rhys has more great images and I enjoyed some time working through them. When I found this image of an odd raptor, which was labelled as European Honey Buzzard (EHB), I thought it looked more like CHB and decided to investigate further. The bird in the image appears more bulky than EHB and shows the diagnostic 6 emarginated [fingered] primaries, lacks the characteristic dark carpal patches that EHB almost always show, as well as a unique pattern of barring on the underwing and tail. A few of Kenya's top birders and other raptor experts, including Bill Clark and Itai Shanni, have now confirmed that the bird is indeed a CHB. Itai has suggested the bird is female as the male shows a much bolder tail pattern.

The first African record of this, otherwise Asiatic, species was made in Egypt in 1996, followed by another in Gabon (found and photographed by Bill Clark) in 2004 and a third in Sudan (also photographed) in 2011. If accepted by the EARC, Rhys' bird will represent the first record for Kenya and East Africa and only the second for sub-Saharan Africa.

This was Rhys' first Honey Buzzard of any kind and has told me that he was very reluctant to label it as EHB as it didn't look quite right but CHB is not featured in any of the regional field guides he was carrying at the time. Fortunately for Rhys, he also saw and photographed a good EHB in the Masai Mara a few days later. He should be commended on taking great images of a bird he did not immediately recognise at the time and for sharing with the online community.

Rhys and I will soon be preparing a report to submit to the EARC.