Williamson's Sapsucker

Up until recently I'd never heard of a Williamson's sapsucker. My son Sam, who is into woodpeckers, showed me a photo of one he'd taken on Mount Waterman in the San Gabriel Mountains, not far from the Buckhorn Campground. It is a beautiful bird, sleek black with yellow on its breast and a red patch on its throat and it cultivates pine trees to produce sap. It apparently makes the rounds each day to its cultivated trees, which consist of holes that it has engineered with its beak which produce a nice flow of sap. Once I learned where the grouping of trees was I have been to it several times, sitting in my car, with the driver's side window down, watching for it to appear. I've seen it twice now, the second time it was there when I arrived and I watched it long enough to snap 179 photos before I got tired of it and quit. It had hardly moved the entire time. 

The first time I parked and waited for several hours for it to arrive, which it eventually did. It landed in full sight, then apparently noticed me there and played shy, hiding in a crook of a tree just giving me partial glimpses - enough to see the yellow and the red on it. Ultimately if flew to another tree with a prominent set of holes and went to work tapping into its life-giving sap. I have become quite a fan of this beautiful bird. 

Huge holes, apparently deep and wide, perhaps with wells of sap inside. 

Lots of small holes and sap running down the side of the tree. 

Most woodpeckers, male and female, look alike. In this case the male and female look completely different. See the illustrations from Birds of the World below. Because of this, the male and female were considered two different species until an ornithologist discovered a nest in Colorado in 1873 and found both of these apparent two species raising a brood of youngsters. 

Female

Male

Range map from Birds of the World. Orange is breeding, light blue wintering and purple is year-round. 

Hammond's Flycatcher

I was recently in the San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles, near Buckhorn Campground, and photographed my first Hammond's flycatcher. It is an aerial forager, capturing most of its insect diet on the wing. Breeding birds prefer old growth forests of more than 25 acres and a minimum age of 80 to 90 years. 

The upperparts are grayish-olive; the sides of the breast and upper breast are dark gray; it has a whitish eye-ring, often thicker behind the eye; wing bars are narrow and whitish in adults; the upper mandible is blackish, the lower mandible is one-half to two-thirds dark and yellowish at the base; the legs are blackish. 

Hammond's flycatcher illustration from Birds of the World.

It winters in the highlands of Mexico and Central America in cool forested regions. In the range map, below, orange is breeding, yellow is migration and blue is non-breeding or wintering. 

Range map from Birds of the World. 

Pygmy Nutchatch

The pygmy nuthatch is found in pines (especially ponderosa pine), douglas-fir and other conifers feeding on seeds and insects. This is the first one I've seen. I knew it was a nuthatch, but did not realize it was a pygmy nuthatch until my son posted a photo of one in the same area. It was all over this pine cone. 

The pygmy nuthatch has a gray cap, a dark eye-line marks the cap, blue-gray upper parts, and dull to bright buff to buffy white underparts. I am assuming I saw ssp. leuconucha, one of six subspecies, which is found along the southwestern California coast. I saw this near Horse Camp in the San Gabriel Mountains which are not on the coast, they are north and east of Los Angeles, but are relatively close to the coast. 

Illustration of pygmy nuthatch from Birds of the World. 

Range from Birds of the World. 

Hadada Ibis

We saw some hadada ibis in the Mabamba Swamp northwest of Entebbe, Uganda. I'd previously seen some in northern Kenya in 2014. One in particular looked like it had taken a mud bath and was having a bad feather day. It looked pretty disheveled. 

An illustration from Birds of the World.

Range map from Birds of the World. 

Black and White Shrike-Flycatcher

Near Nkima Forest Lodge northwest of Entebbe, Uganda, I observed a male and female black and white shrike-flycatcher. They have long crown feathers and a short tail. The male has black upperparts, throat and upper breast; the rest of the underparts are white and it has a yellow iris. 

Illustration from Birds of the World.

The female has a dark brown head; chestnut upperparts and wings; whitish underparts with washed cinnamon. 

My photos of the female are much better than of the male. 

Illustration of a female from Birds of the World. 

Range map from Birds of the World. 

There are three subspecies and I saw the nominate subspecies musicus. 

African Thrush

I saw this African thrush on the hill between Nkima Forest Lodge and the Mabamba Swamp northwest of Entebbe, Uganda in July 2025. 

The flanks are pale buff-orange, the vent and the belly are white, the breast is grayish brown, the bill is yellow-orange, and it has dark olive-gray upperparts. There are nine subspecies and it looks like I saw ssp. centralis which is found from eastern Congo and southern CAR east to southern Ethiopia, western Kenya and northwestern Tanzania. 

Range from Birds of the World.

Kidepo Lark

The Kidepo Lark is a new species of lark established just recently as a result of molecular phylogenetic studies by a team of ornithologists published in 2023 and 2024.  It was previously considered a subspecies of the red-winged lark based on a specimen collected in southern South Sudan at Ero on the boundary of Didinga Hills with the plain of the Kidepo River. There are two subspecies, Corypha kidepoensis kathangorensis, found in southwestern Ethiopia and adjacent South Sudan and C. k. Kidepoensis, the nominate subspecies, found in northeastern Uganda and adjacent southeastern South Sudan.  

I was in Kidepo Valley NP in northeastern Uganda in July 2025. The following are photos I took of the Kidepo Lark while I was there. It is fun to have found such a localized endemic species so recently established. I found out about the new species while submitting it to iNaturalist for identification after I got home. 

The Kidepo lark has a prominent buffy supercilium; the crown and upperparts are brownish chestnut and fairly heavily dark streaked; rufous flight feathers form a rufous panel on the folded wing, although secondaries are browner with paler buff edges; the tail feathers are brown with buff outer edges; the underparts are variable, rufous to buff, the breast has black central streaking grading into dark rufous-brown streaking that coalesces to form a dark pectoral patch on the side of the breast (the patch is often inconspicuous when the plumage is worn); it has brown eyes; a bill with dark grayish horn above, paler and more pink below; the legs pale pink to grayish white, sometimes brownish pink. The sexes are alike. Ssp. kathangorensis is similar, but darker. 

This range map is from Birds of the World. The range on the map appears broader than the description. For the range description to match the map, ssp. kathangorensis would have to be all of the blue shading at the top and part of the blue shading on the bottom (the northeastern upper branch and perhaps down into Kenya.