Hooded Vulture

The hooded vulture is the smallest vulture in Africa and is found in central Africa, from east to west, and south to Angola. 

Hooded vulture at a beach in Cape Coast, Ghana.

It is not found in the wetter areas of its range. It has a small head and a very thin, black-tipped bill. Its face and the front of its neck are pink, but turn bright red when it is excited. It has mostly brown plumage, but white feathers on the crown and back of its neck (the "hood") and around its crop (upper chest). 

It can't compete with larger vultures at carcasses and stays later than other vultures at a kill and uses its long bill to reach into cavities that the larger vultures are unable to reach. We saw hooded vultures in several places in Ghana. They congregated in the palm trees at the Coconut Grove Beach Resort outside Elmina as soundless but continuous sentinels. 

Hooded vultures in palm trees outside Elmina, Ghana. They look like sunburned old men with bad toupees. 

We also found them at "baptism beach" in Cape Coast which is used as a slaughterhouse.  

Pied Crow

The pied crow is a black and white crow that occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar, excluding the equatorial rainforest regions.

Pied crow in Cape Coast, Ghana

I love them because they resemble the magpies of my youth, but are much larger. Structurally, it is more like a small raven than a crow. It is mostly black, including the head, bill, legs, wings and tail, but has a white ring on the back of its neck and mostly white belly.

This photo gives some detail of the front of the pied crow that contains most of the white on the belly.

I saw them a number of times in East Africa, but was only able to photograph them in Cape Coast, Ghana, when we visited "baptism beach," the place where the first LDS church baptisms occurred in Ghana in 1978. What was then a pristine, beautiful beach, is now used as a place to slaughter animals and it is covered with scattered bottles and garbage, probably the reason the pied crows were there. Wikipedia notes that they are frequently seen scavenging around slaughterhouses which was the fact in our case. We watched a man cleaning five or six slaughtered goats on the beach and also saw several hooded vultures in the vicinity. 

African Pied Wagtail

The African pied wagtail is found in most of Sub-Saharan Africa, except some large swaths of Namibia, Botswana and South Africa and is found up through parts of Sudan and Egypt. 

African pied wagtail.

"Pied" means having two or more different colors, but as I am running into the word in the context of birds, it relates to birds that are black and white. As the name implies, the pied wagtail is black and white. It is mostly white underneath, has a white triangular chin, a white streak from the bill to the back of the head, intersecting part of the eye, a white stripe on the back of its neck and it has some white in its feathers. 

Wagtails are small birds with long tails that they "wag" almost constantly. We found this bird in Karatina, Kenya, when we stopped for a bathroom and souvenir shop break. I did not notice at the time, but this bird has a club foot, but seemed to be getting along just fine. 

Hamerkop

The hamerkop, also known as the hammerkop and hammerhead, is a very unusual bird I saw on the bank of the Ewaso Nyiro River in Sabo National Reserve, northern Kenya.

The hamerkop's pointed crest on the back of its head is fluffed out in this photo.

It is fluffed out even more in this photo. 

It has such unique characteristics that it is in its own genus and family. The shape of the head, with a long bill on one end, and a pointed crest on the other end, together create the impression of a hammer and give the bird its name. 

I'm using this picture of a hamerkop from Wikipedia to give a better representation of the bird as my own pictures are fuzzy. 

It is found in Sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar and on the southwest coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It has brown plumage with purple iridescence on the back. 

It has partially webbed feet. It has a number of unusual behaviors, that I won't go into, that are unique to it. The hamerkop's scientific name, scopus umbretta, was used by Scopus, a database of abstracts and citations for scholarly journal articles. It was apparently named after the hamerkop because of its unusual navigation skills. 

This hamerkop mixes in with African sacred ibises.

Buff-Crested Bustard

The buff-crested bustard is found in East Africa, from Sudan and Somalia down through Kenya to Tanzania. They lack a hind toe and thus cannot perch, so they are limited to walking on the ground and cannot roost in trees. The male, which I photographed, has a brown unmottled head with a black stripe down the front of the neck and a black chest and belly. Females, which we did not see, are more plain. They have a mottled head, lack the black neck stripe and lack the black chest and belly. It has a buff protrusion of feathers off the back of the head and neck which gives it it's name. 

Buff-crested bustard in Shaba NR, Kenya.

We saw only one, in Shaba National Reserve in northern Kenya. It was the first of several different species of bustards we saw on the trip. Before this trip, I've confused the name "bustard" with "buzzard," and have thought of them as carrion eating relatives of the vulture. They are actually omnivorous, eating lots of plants and insects as well as small animals such as lizards, snakes and rodents. 

This bustard blends in very well with its surroundings.

When we first saw this bird I made a comment that it was "a cute little bustard" which then set of an interesting and humorous discussion with our Kenyan driver about the difference between the words "bustard" and "bastard," a term he'd not heard before and really confused him. Our driver brought this confusion of terms up several more times during the remainder of out trip. 

The bustard is a solitary bird and blends in very well with the surrounding terrain. 

Hildebrandt's Starling

As I was going through my pictures after our trip to Africa, I noticed some differences in my pictures of what I thought were superb starlings. Some had pale yellow eyes and some had orange eyes. Some had a white stripe on the chest and others didn't. It turns out we were seeing two different species of starling. The superb starling has the pale yellow eyes and white chest stripe. Hildebrand't starling has the orange eyes and no white stripe.  

Superb starling with pale yellow eye and white stripe on chest.

Hildebrandt's starling with orange eye and no white chest stripe.

On closer inspection, the Hildebrandt's starling colors seem a little less differentiated. The black and the blue on the throat blend together more and the orange on the underside does not seem quite as bright and it goes from light to darker down near the legs, although much of that could be the light we were viewing them in. 

Hildebrand't starling in Ngorongoro Crater.

Hildebrandt's starling is not distributed as widely as the superb starling, it is only found in Kenya and Tanzania, and it is less common. It is named after Johannes Hildebrant, a German, the first European collector of the specimen. I photographed this Hildebrandt's starling in the Lerai Forest in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. 

Superb Starling

As we were walking down a path toward our room at the Sarova Shaba Lodge, located in Shaba Natonal Reserve in northern Kenya, one of the other members of our tour who had already checked in commented about the colorful birds we would see in the trees on our way.  We slowed down, started looking around, and saw some brilliantly colored birds in the trees and walking on the grass. 

The name, superb starling, gives you a hint about what the person who named them thought of them. The black bill and face, with pale yellow eyes, is ordinary enough. But then, from the front, you see a purple neck, a royal blue breast, then a white stripe followed by orange down the rest of the underside. 

Superb starling in Sarova NR, Kenya.

From the back, metallic looking iridescent blue, purple and green flow from the top of the head down the back and into the wings and tail feathers, like one of Andrew's modern art paintings. The orange underside and a white patch near the tail also flash out from beneath. 

Backside of superb starling.

I was surprised to learn these were starlings. Where I'm from starlings are trash birds. But these, well, they're superb. The superb starling is found in East Africa in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as Ethiopia, Somalia, and Uganda and is quite common.   

This superb starling was found in Serengeti NP. The legs and feet look much like our ordinary robin.