Bird nerd

Would you like to know what I saw yesterday? Maybe you really don’t want to but I will tell you anyway. I saw a Ret'z Helmet Shrike. If you don’t know what that is. It’s the bird in the picture below.

Retz's Helmet-shrike (Prionops retzii)

So, anyway, that’s what I saw yesterday. You wonder why I bore you with such information, don’t you? The thing is, as we were walking towards Transect 5 with this week’s Forest Ninjas, Georgia, Milly, Joseph and Kassim, we happened to see a black bird with a red beak and distinct red eyes. And what happened next is that I stopped and I was actually interested to get a closer view. And the weirder thing is that I actually tried figuring out what bird it was. And to make it all worse, I really just had to know what bird it was. So out came the bird book. And there we figured it out, all excited like little teenage girls front row at a boy band concert. A Ret'z Helmet Shrike. Beautiful bird.

Laura searching for birds on the coastline

Grey-headed kingfisher

But I'm not here to talk about the bird really. I'm here to talk about myself. Selfish, I know. But oh well. You see, before I came out to Shimoni, I had no idea that birds had names. I mean I knew there were eagles, and doves and sparrows and swallows, but that was as far as my bird intelligence went. So here I am, checked into Forest duty and six weeks later I am a fully fledged birdie! I can't even tell you what happened to me! All I know is that now I get excited when I see birds I can identify. Its like I'm slowly becoming a junkie! I don’t get it but all I know is that I'm loving it.

Forest volunteers taking a break from bird wacthing

So yes, it has been an awesome week on Forest and sadly my last as well. I still have a long way to go in this Birdie Junkie thing, but I am pretty sure I will get there. I have a feeling once I go back home, I will create my own Casual Observation form to record all the birds I see flying aimlessly everywhere.

Water bird monitoring survey

Sarah Kagotho is from Nairobi, Kenya and volunteering with us under the GVI National Scholarship Programme for 12 weeks.

Bird nerd