Kakamega Forest

Any serious birder should visit the Kakamega Forest in Kenya. I was able to be there portions of three days, March 18-20, with Keith Ham and his sons Jesse and Jonathan. We hired local guides for different trips into the forest, John and Job, who helped us spot and identify many more birds than we could of on our own. The forest has 410 bird species. About 200 of these are forest-dependent and found nowhere else in Kenya. In addition to the birds we saw three of the four different types of monkeys (Colobus, Red-tailed, and Blue, missing the Slow-moving which is only seen at night). There are 401 different butterflies in the forest as well as 9 squirrels (we saw the Red-legged). We also came across a Green-striped bush viper on the trail which we carefully avoided.

Our accomodations were wonderful and inexpensive.  We stayed at the Rondo Retreat Centre.  While there I purchased a wonderful publication for $4.00 entitled A Checklist of the Birds of Kakamega Forest by Bernd de Bruijin and Itai Shanni (Nairobi:  Bird Committee of Nature Kenya and the Department of Ornithology of the National Museums of Kenya, 2006).

For the serious birder, see the list below for the 64 bird species we saw and the 5 we heard but did not see.

Birds Seen (64)

African citril
African dusky flycatcher
African paradise flycatcher
African pied wagtail
African pygmy kingfisher
African thrush
Ashy flycatcher
Banded prinia
Bar-tailed trogon
Barn swallow
Black saw-wing
Black-and-white casqued hornbill
Black-and-white manikin
Black-billed weaver
Black-faced rufous warbler
Black-backed puffback
Black-throated wattle-eye
Blue-headed bee-eater
Blue-spotted wood-dove
Bronze sunbird
Brown illadopsis
Brown-capped weaver
Cabinis’s greenbul
Cardinal woodpecker
Collared sunbird
Common bulbul
Crested guineafowl
Dark-backed weaver
Diedrick cuckoo
Double-toothed barbet
Equatorial akalat
Great blue turaco
Great sparrowhawk
Green-headed sunbird
Grey-chested illadopsis
Grey-headed sparrow
Grey-throated barbet
Hadada ibis
Jameson’s wattle-eye
Joyful greenbul
Lüdher’s bush-shrike
Mackinnon’s fiscal
Northern black flycatcher
Petit’s cuckoo-shrike
Red-chested cuckoo
Red-headed bluebill
Rock martin
Shelly’s greenbul
Snowy-headed robin-chat
Square-tailed drongo
Stuhlmann’s starling
Tawny-flanked prinia
Turner’s eremomela
Uganda woodland warbler
Vieillot’s black weaver
Violet-backed starling
Wahlberg’s honeybird
Western black-headed oriole
White-chinned prinia
White-eyed slaty flycatcher
White-headed saw-wing
Yellow-whiskered greenbul
Yellow white-eye
Yellow-spotted barbet

Birds heard, but not seen (5)

Black-collared apalis
Blue-shouldered robin-chat
Emerald cuckoo
Yellow-billed barbet
Yellow-rumped tinkerbird