An African adventure part 3 - "…doomed for a certain term to walk the night …."

After our morning boat ride around lake Baringo I left Carolyn enjoying painting the lake landscape and went birding again with Titus. He was very keen to show me some of the spectacular nocturnal birds that Kenya has to offer and had done an early morning recky to locate the roosting birds.

The first bird he took me to see was a roosting pearl spotted owlet. This little chap had conveniently decided to spend the daylight hours in a fairly open tree hence affording some very good views. This is a relatively small comparatively common diurnal owl that breeds across sub-Saharan Africa.

Pearl spotted owlet

We moved on a little distance to the next of the night folk, a white-faced scops owl. Titus told me that this owl was the reason he became a bird guide. As a young lad of 8 years or so he was out one day with 5 of his mates when they met a chap looking at birds. It turned out that he was a bird guide and was looking for a roosting white-faced scops owl to show a client later that day. He showed the young lads a picture of the said owl and told them that if they could find it for him he would give them 500 shillings. At around 5 pounds sterling this was a small fortune to the lads so they set about trying to find the owl. After many hours they located it and took the bird guide to where it was roosting. The experience of earning so much money for finding the bird made them very interested in learning more, so much so that Titus and 2 of his mates later became bird guides! Unlike the pearl spotted owlet, the white-faced scops owl was in a very dense tree and so only offered somewhat obscured views. The white-faced scops owl is fully nocturnal and mostly insectivorous

The well hidden white-faced scops owl

For our next owl we traveled a short distance to some local cliffs where a greyish eagle owl was passing the daylight hours. This was an altogether much bigger owl coming in at some 18” long. Titus explained that until recently it had been regarded as a northern form of the spotted eagle owl but has recently been elevated to a species in its own right.

Greyish Eagle Owl

Our final eagle wonder was an African scops owl that was roosting while keeping one eye open for any intruders disturbing its slumber.This owl is strictly nocturnal and during the day they roost close to the trunk of a tree and extend their ear tuffs making them extremely well camouflaged.

African Scops Owl

It seemed to me to be the rule that, while we might have one or two representatives of a particular genus of birds, Kenya has many. The next nocturnal beauty that we went to see was a slender-tailed nightjar. While we have just one migratory nightjar that is with us in the late spring and summer, the Eurasian nightjar, Kenya boasts fifteen! The European nightjar also spends the winter in Africa and I started to ponder what advantage the long spring migration to Europe would give it over its residential brethren. For some birds the reasons for migration are very obvious. Many waders, for example, migrate to the artic tundra to bred where they have 24-hour access to food for their offspring . Nightjars, however, are mainly crepuscular, i.e. they are most active just after sunset and before dawn so what advantage do they gain from their energy sapping migration compared to their stay at home African brothers and sisters? Answers on a post card please!

I was very glad that Titus knew exactly where the nightjars were roosting as they are incredible well camouflaged on the ground and will not flush until they are pretty much trodden on.

Slenders-tailed Nightjar

The final nocturnal birds we went to see were two species of wader. Like our own stone curlew, they give their dark habits away by their extraordinary large eyes.