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.