african fish eagle | johnageddes

I am not the most patient individual so sneaking around in the bushes and the trying to snag a photo of an African bird is a healthy activity for me. I have to stand still and wait for the moment. Good discipline training for someone who likes to keep moving. It can sometimes be a challenge to get the bird to sit still long enough for me to get the shot and often I am torn between gawking up into the trees or stepping gingerly through the grass to avoid snakes or monitor lizards.

Here are those of the birds I have seen in the past week.

Southern Red Bishop

Yellow-backed weaver

African Fish Eagle

A pied kingfisher figures out how he will eat the fish he just caught. Eventually the fish went down the hatch.

Bronze sunbird

Bronze Mannikin

White-browned Coucal

And this bird is driving me crazy. It has a lovely musical whistle and inhabits a tree outside my door. When I hear it whistling I head out with my camera only to find the bird hopping quickly from branch to branch behind the leaves, never giving me more than a second to get it. On my bucket list is to get a good photo of a Black Headed Gonolek! This is the best I could manage this week.

Black-headed Gonolek

The room that I am staying in now is about 50 metres from the shore of Lake Victoria. I sleep with my screened door open and under a mosquito net. This morning I woke up about 7:30 to the deep croupy bark that I recognized as coming from a hippo. I bounded out of bed and down to the shore in time to catch two big hippos swimming past about 20 metres off shore. It reminded me of seeing dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico … only a little heftier. They would submerge and then come up with a snort for a breath of air as they cruised along the lakeshore.

There is also a pair of African Fish Eagles that have a nest in a high tree behind the local clinic and they have entertained me annually with soaring flights over the shore about sunset.
This year they have not failed me. One seems to have taken to sitting on the bow of a local boat to scan the waters and surrounding area. Last night one of them was perched by the dock, seeming to enjoy the sunset. I tried to get a photo of him but found the light from the sun too bright. But with a little repositioning, his shadow in the setting sun made the photo I was looking for.