Welcome to the Marine Mammal and wildlife Research and Community Development Expedition blog where you can keep up to date with all the happenings and information from Kenya

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

An update on Marine's Bird Surveys

The past 6 weeks we have been doing some bird surveys on the island and have generally been a bit more attentive as to the different bird species we see around the island! Mangroves can be an important habitat for nesting and feeding of migratory birds, and this coastal area is home to several species of marine bird species – however we have also been finding an abundance of forest and thicket dwelling birds making their homes here too.

One of the species added to our bird list - picture taken from Helm Birds of East Africa Field Guide
We are happy to tell you that we have spotted 6 bird species that we haven’t yet recorded on the island and added these to our species list! These include the Brown Noddy, an offshore feeding sea tern, the Green Wood Hoopoe which is iridescent, forest inhabiting and endemic to Africa and the White Browed Coucal a relative to the cuckoo found in thickets and grasslands often near water. We have also had confirmed sightings of the Malachite Kingfisher, the Plain backed Sunbird, and the Brown headed Parrot. We will continue the bird surveys over the next few weeks and hopefully we will find some more interesting birds we did not realise were present on the island.

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