Thanks, Brian. Hope the time in Madagascar was good! Really interesting 
about the woodpecker...! Always something new to discover out there...

Definitely much more to be teased out of Grey-headed movements and 
occurrence. Not enough birders are aware of the different races so we 
mostly miss that information. Having said that, with more and more 
people photographing birds, we should be able to start to pick up 
patterns from analysis of those images. Another reason for encouraging 
birders to upload to the Virtual Museum / iNaturalist which is a 
permanent record for future reference.

Colin

On 24/10/2019 12:26, Brian Finch wrote:
> Fantastic Colin,
> I have been away in Mad for just over the last six weeks, but the
> (Golden-tailed Woodpecker just arrived in our Acacia... ten weeks now
> and it's still a race not officially recorded in Kenya (suahelica),
> interest in the distributions of the Grey-headed and Mangrove
> Kingfishers hasn't waned. No sign of our semicaerulea anymore although
> still around when I left. This confirmation of migrant only status to
> Mangrove K in Kenya should be of interest to our southern friends as
> well as Kenyan birders, and many thanks to David Clarence for
> extrapolating the data from Kenya Bird Mapping,
> Best for now
> Brian
>
> On 10/24/19, Colin Jackson <colin.jackson@arocha.org> wrote:
>> Dear Don / Brian,
>>
>> It's a wee while since this conversation but I had promised I would
>> share the plot of Mangrove Kingfisher phenology from records submitted
>> to the African Bird Atlas Project (i.e. for us the Kenya Bird Map).
>> These were extracted and plotted by David Clarance who has produced some
>> excellent resources for anyone with a little bit of R knowledge to be
>> able to download the data for any species / area and look at them.
>>
>> The first plot is of all records of Mangrove Kingfisher for the coast
>> with a Loess smoothing function applied. The second shows the whole data
>> set (red) against north coast records (green) and south coast (blue).
>>
>> There is no doubt at all that the Mangrove Kingfisher is strongly
>> migratory in Kenya - and to answer your question about territories,
>> Brian, yes, they definitely do hold territory on the non-breeding
>> grounds on the coast. We have had a bird that was always at our compost
>> heap and while s/he has disappeared this year, I have another bird which
>> has been calling regularly from the same spot elsewhere on the Watamu
>> peninsula.
>>
>> I would echo your sentiments about the validity of the apparently
>> relatively many records in Dec-Feb - for sure there will be a few (and
>> it would be very interesting to consider if these are indeed Somali
>> birds wandering down to us), but it is clear that this is an
>> Afrotropical migrant to the coast.
>>
>> Colin
>>
>>
>>
>> On 05/09/2019 23:37, Brian Finch wrote:
>>> Hi Colin,
>>> I'm in Mad. at present and for next five weeks but wifi tonight!
>>> I wanted to thank you for all your very interesting latest input. The
>>> dates on that bird retrapped 13 times, do they suggest a double
>>> passage? It could help us learn a lot. In fact all the retrap details
>>> contribute to the bigger picture. Do any individuals stake out a
>>> non-breeding territory along the Watamu coast or are all on the move
>>> to get elsewhere?
>>> It would be very nice to see a map of dated distributions from atlas
>>> data, I am pretty confident that it will confirm what we are learning
>>> about it being a migrant late March-early Dec but records outside of
>>> this period are the exception whilst any breeding records are
>>> exceptional!
>>> Best for now
>>> Brian
>>>
>> --
>> -----------------------
>> Colin Jackson
>> A Rocha Kenya
>> e: colin.jackson@arocha.org
>> t: +254 (0)722 842366
>>
>>
-- 
-----------------------
Colin Jackson
A Rocha Kenya
e: colin.jackson@arocha.org
t: +254 (0)722 842366