Tag: Kenya bird list

Bird of the Week

Spotted Eagle-Owl (Bubo africanus)

Spotted Eagle-Owl (Bubo africanus)

Photo@Michael Sammut

Spotted Eagle-Owl is medium to large owl with prominent ear tufts. Upper-parts dusky brown with pale spots, under-parts whitish and finely barred. Facial disk whitish to pale ochre. A more rufous morph exists in more arid areas.It very similar to Greyish Eagle-Owl, only that has bright-yellow eyes, and in Kenya is mostly found in the southern part of the equator. It prefers Savannah, rocky outcrops, scrub, open and semi-open woodland, semi-deserts.

Birding hotspot where this species can be recorded include;Amboseli, Tsavo West and East National Park, Meru, Kitui, Maasai Mara and the greater area of Lake Victoria.

Bird of the Week

Egyptian Vulture (Neophron percnopterus)

Image
Photo@Michael Sammut

The Egyptian Vulture is the smallest of all the African Vultures.This vulture flies with more wingbeats than most vultures, but takes off much more gracefully, as it is built lighter and smaller.  Once gliding, the bird holds its wings flat, shifting them very little.  The bird posesses great endurance, and is able to fly up to 70 kilometers in search of food.Egyptian vultures are specialists in egg-eating.  They are among the only known birds in the world to use stones as tools.  They will repeatedly strike at an abandoned ostrich egg with stones, then use their beak to enlarge the hole and penetrate membrane.  This behavior is not instinctive, but learned from other vultures, as the species is very intelligent.

This species of vulture is a very adaptable, inhabiting various habitat types, and slowly estblishing territories closer and closer to humans. That is the reason they are mostly affected my human poisoning of vulture using Furudan, a lethal insecticide.  In Kenya they are found in mostly in Wider Tsavo East and West National Park,where this photo was taken.Other than that there records of the species from Maasai Mara, Lake Nakuru, Amboseli, Samburu and Meru National Parks.