Birds in the garden of Kenya Connect

While we are volunteering in rural Kenyan schools we return to the headquarters of Kenya Connect each day for lunch. It’s meat stew with ugali again. I love it. Ugali is the staple carbohydrate in Kenya. It’s made by boiling white maize flour, what I would call cornmeal, in water until it thickens into a dense, dough-like consistency. It’s stodgy and delicious when mixed with something tasty like this meat stew.

I’m chatting to my colleague Brian. He’s one of the staff whose work I admire the most. He’s brilliant with the families. It’s no surprise he is wearing a Teacher Recognition Award t-shirt. He loves photography and has asked to see my camera and lens. Naturally I’ve brought it in to show him.

As we chat I can see numerous bird species I’ve never seen before out of the window in the garden of Kenya Connect. There’s time before the next volunteer assignment to get out with the camera and see them properly. I can see a chequered black and white bird with a red head below. I’m desperate to see it close-up and get a photograph of it.

As I emerge out into the garden it is nowhere to be seen.

This Laughing Dove, Spilopelia senegalensis, is still there.

There’s a beautiful black and white bird in a tree with a distinctive white patch on its head over its eye.

It’s a White-Browed Sparrow-Weaver, Plocepasser mahali. I check the books and it says it is “predominantly brown”. I stand corrected.

A small flock of brown birds with long tails fly past.

They are Speckled Mousebirds, Colius striatus. I saw one on my first day in Kenya in the car park of the hotel:

My first day in Kenya

There are small brown finch-like birds with red heads. They also seem to have white speckles on their breasts.

It’s a Red-Billed Firefinch, Lagonosticta senegala. I like the information that “Its soft queet-queet call is a familiar African sound”.

I walk with my fellow volunteer Mike, a fabulously experienced birder, across a field and we see large crested birds. They are White-Bellied Go-Away Birds, Crinifer leucogaster. I love them. I want to get brilliant photographs of them but we have no chance. They remain at a distance, aware and suspicious.

I notice Mike has left his hat behind in the midday sun and then realise I have too. He’s very kind and goes back to the office to get them both. They say “Only Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun”, or at least Noël Coward did in his satirical song. Personally, I think “Mad Dogs and Birders” would be a better title.

I’m looking forward to showing Brian my photographs.

More adventures in Kenya