On Sunday, 23rd June 2019, Fleur Ng'weno, Jennifer Oduori and myself (Ben Allen) spent the day in Nairobi National Park.  I have been invited to formally comment on two sightings in particular that are considered significant.

Firstly, late in the afternoon, we visited Kingfisher Swamp,  and Fleur was hearing a bird call that she did not recognise.  We turned around and were heading back down the entrance track when we all clearly saw a snipe sitting on the top and outermost branches of a small acacia tree. It was calling repeatedly with monotonous short kip, kip, kip sounds that were relatively loud and far carrying.  As it called its beak was opening and closing and its tail quivered.  This was the the same call the Fleur had heard earlier.

We spent some time looking at our bird books to try and identify which snipe it was and we also listened to the bird recordings available to us on the Birds of East Africa app but could not agree on any definite id. We had first seen the bird about 16.15 hrs and it finally flew off at about 16.30 hrs so we had a bit of time to study it and listen to it.  The timings are taken from the "Properties" information of my first and last photograph so I am reasonably confident that they are correct.

Subsequent email discussion initially suggested a common snipe (Gallinago gallinago) that had not returned to its breeding grounds but with further discussion again it was agreed that the bird we photographed was an African snipe (Gallinago nigripennis).  I understand that this is the first record of an African Snipe in Nairobi National Park and the approximate spot I believe it was sighted is 1.380656 S, 36.778856 E

The other interesting sighting was of a male steel-blue whydah (Vidua hypocherina) that we saw on the road that runs between Junction 30 and Junction 22 about half way. These junction numbers correspond to the park signage and the road runs along the bottom of the low range of hills where the forested area borders the grasslands, below the the Impala Look-out point.

All three of us saw the bird clearly and it was flitting between the trees, across the road and was generally very active. Unfortunately, it was getting late and we could not spend more time with it or get a photo of it but I have no doubt as to the id - there are no other birds that it could be confused with easily and I was with two experienced birders in Fleur and Jennifer.

Ben Allen