Eastern Paradise Whydah

My granddaughter and I were with our guides, William and ranger Zachary, in Kidepo Valley NP in northeastern Uganda, near the border of South Sudan. We were traveling on a rutted and muddy dirt road in the Narus Valley toward the Kidepo Valley, when Zachary pointed excitedly to a very long-tailed bird standing in the top of a tree behind us and proclaimed it to be an eastern paradise whydah. After I got a few photos, it flew, tail dangling below it in the sky, closer to us, but still behind us on the side of the road. I was excitedly taking photos and urging William to back up so I could get closer, as a huge cargo truck heading for South Sudan appeared behind us, with many South Sudanese riding on top. William did not want it to get in front of us, as they'd been hard to pass earlier, so he sped ahead, much to my frustration. I'd just seen one of the most unique birds I'd ever seen and it was disappearing behind us as I helplessly watched on.

This blurry photo is the whydah taking flight. As it flew further, the tail dropped and hung below it at a near 90 degree angle. 

The name really stuck with me because I'd heard it before, researching the life of my third great grandfather who was an English ship captain in the slave trade in the 1790s. I've read a fair amount of slave trade literature and there was a Kingdom of Whydah in what is now Benin, where the current city of Ouidah, same name, different spelling, now exists, which was involved in the slave trade. 

Two days later, still in Kidepo Valley NP, we had some time in the afternoon at our cottage near the Savannah Lodge. I was sitting outside in a chair, with my camera, on a small elevated patio, when an eastern paradise whydah landed on the ground right below me and started foraging for seeds. I was so excited I could not believe my eyes. The same kind of bird that had disappeared prematurely two days before had suddenly reappeared before my eyes and was begging to be photographed. So I obliged. 

Next to these exotic, brilliant birds, were some pretty non-descript birds that I photographed, thinking it was another species. Later on, as I looked the eastern paradise whydah up on Merlin, I discovered that I was looking at a female of the same species. That blew me away. I'd have never guessed it. 

That, by the way, is close to what the male looks like when it is not in breeding plumage. To acknowledge that I was happy to be here and see a male in breeding plumage is a vast understatement. 

William, our guide, stopped by the cottage and asked if I wanted to walk the grounds with him looking for birds. Of course I did. So not too far distant from our cottage I saw another eastern paradise whydah fly from a tree down to the ground in front of us, while another stood in a large tree nearby. 

This is a lot of photos, I know, but I'll probably never see another one and I want to record it so that I can relive this wonderful experience again and again. This is called Christmas in July, wrapped in a big, very long, bulging ribbon. 

An illustration of a breeding male from Birds of the World. 

An illustration of a female from Birds of the World. 

A range map from Birds of the World. Its distribution includes southeastern South Sudan and northeastern Uganda, without going into greater detail about other parts of its range.  

The breeding male has black head, upperparts, undertail coverts, tail and bill; blackish legs; golden yellow nape; maroon chestnut upper breast; a paler chestnut lower breast; and a pale buff belly. The female has a whitish central crown stripe bordered by a blackish streak; a pale supercilium; a blackish crescent mark from behind the eye around the ear coverts; bill is dark gray with the lower mandible a lighter color.