Discover the Birds of Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village

Click the poster image above or this link Birds of Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village to see photographs of more than 100 species of birds that live or visit Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village. The poster, with birds drawn by an Agahozo-Shalom student, is featured at several locations at Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda.

Earth on the Wing

Meyer's (brown) parrots (Poicephalus meyeri) on the left with a male
African orange-bellied parrot (Poicephalus rufiventris) on the right,
Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

Yellow-billed storks (Mycteria ibis) on the wing,
Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

White-crested helmet-shrike (Prionops plumatus), near Kibungo, Rwanda

Denham's bustards (Neotis denhami),
Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda

African paradise flycatcher (Terpsiphone viridis),
Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

My final photograph in Africa. Although I am no longer in Rwanda,
you can read about my continuing experience with birds,
ecology, and sustainability at Earth on the Wing.

The crane they call Umusambi

Grey-crowned cranes (Balearica regulorum) live in Africa. In Rwanda,
this is the bird they call umusambi.

Grey-crowned cranes range from Uganda (where they are the national bird)
and Kenya down along the eastern half of sub-Saharan Africa nearly
to the tip of South Africa. 

Art and science collide!

Binoculars. Colored pencils. Early mornings. Rough drafts. In a world full of birds, art and science combine to make bird knowledge accessible.

Red-eyed dove - Streptopelia semitorquata - Inumah

Agahozo-Shalom is rich in birds, and now its students can learn about them with a new poster illustrating more than 30 of the most common species.

The poster features drawings and the names of the birds in English, Latin (scientific), 
and Kinyarwanda. One of Rwanda's top bird guides (who is a native Kinyarwanda 
speaker) helped us to find the local names. A student artist completed 26 
of the species while Michele (the art teacher) completed 7 species. The poster is 
shown here in lower resolution because it is not yet ready for distribution.

Meet the artist: Rossi, a 9th grade student at ASYV, drew most the birds.
He was president of the student art club and spent his free time on
Saturdays and Sundays illustrating our feathered friends.

Take a virtual bird tour of Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village!

Interested in nature? Great! New to birdwatching? No problem! Join us for a virtual tour of the birds of Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village.

Black-headed herons (Ardea melanocephala) visit ASYV- so should you!

The sun rises at about 5:45am here, and we could start our bird walk this early if you like. Birds tend to be most active in the morning (about 6am-10am), but the real draw of the early start is that the sun lights up the sky as it appears from behind the hills.

Worth the early wake-up... sunrise at ASYV

The ones you miss (Ballad of the Birding Blues)

Get ready for some heartache... as much as birds can cause.

First, think about basketball. You have to take shots to score. It is the only way to get points. Inevitably, you are going to miss some of those shots too.

If you want to see a wide variety of birds, you have to go out looking. To see new birds, you may have to travel and spend money/energy/time to find them. Sometimes you get the birds. Sometimes you don't.

Green-breasted pitta, painting at Kibale National Park headquarters.
Never saw it in the flesh (in the feather!)

Beauty Pageant

Some birds just show it off. A group of seedeaters called Estrildids are small but especially attractive. Even the duller species have their flair. Let's take a look.

Male green-winged pytilia (Pytilia melba) at Agahozo-Shalom Youth
Village, Rwanda

Be sure to vote for your favorite estrildid in the comments section.

Boy, you're lookin' fine! Sexual dimorphism in birds

Ostriches (Struthio camelus) are sexually dimorphic. The male (right)
has a pinkish neck and legs, and black and white feathers. The female
(left) is mostly brown. 

When males and females of the same species have different physical forms, it is called sexual dimorphism. These differences can be in body parts, color patterns, and size.  If you are trying to identify a species, recognition that the sexes may appear different is key. I once met a woman who swore she had two species of cardinals in her yard, but after a bird walk she discovered the Northern Cardinal males are bright red whereas the females are greyish red. Same species, but different looking. 

Why?

The Kinyarwanda-English Bird Dictionary

Kids that followed us on a birdwatching hike imitate our use of binoculars.
South of Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, Rwanda.

Bird = inyoni. Whenever someone eyes us suspiciously or gawks at us as we are out staring at a bird, all we have to say is “inyoni.” Hahaha, uproar and laughter! Inyoni, imagine that!

Kinyarwanda: Sarufuna, English: hamerkop (Scopus umbretta) at Lake
Kivu, Rwanda

Many of the bird names in Kinyarwanda are not specific to the species of bird, but represent a group of similar birds. For example, although there are seven types of turacos in Rwanda, some as strikingly different as Ross’s Turaco and the Great Blue Turaco, the name is the same for them all (inganji). 

Chatting with Robins

White-browed Robin-chat (Cossypha heuglini). Vegetation by Lake Kivu,
Rwanda. This is also a common bird at Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village.
Muscicapidae (Old World Flycatchers)

One of the tricky aspects of bird lingo is that some common names do not carry over from location to location. In addition, some birds have names because of similar looking birds, but are not even classified in the same family. For example, one might assume that the American Robin (Turdus migratorius) and the European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) are closely related. Not so! They are actually classified in different families, with the American Robin in Turdidae (which contains Thrushes and other similar birds) and the European Robin in Muscicapidae (Old World Flycatchers). 

East Africa contains examples from both families, and they are delights!

Little Game Hunters: Eagles, Hawks, and Falcons

Bateleur eagle (Terathopius ecaudatus) at rest in Murchison Falls
National Park, Uganda

Everyone can enjoy eagles, hawks, and falcons, otherwise known as birds of prey. Everyone, that is, except the prey. Sorry rodents, snakes, lizards, and smaller birds, this post celebrates your air-borne stalkers.

Advice from little hornbills

Crowned Hornbill, Tockus alboterminatus, in trees near the shore 

of Lake Victoria, at Mabamba Swamp, Uganda

My first exposure to hornbills was likely Disney’s Lion King, where Zazu tries to keep Simba out of trouble. Much to my dismay, Zazu appears to be a fictionalized hornbill species. I can’t find a match*. The only “little hornbills” are the dwarf-hornbills of the Congo rainforest and Western Africa, and even they are not that small. Certainly, none of the hornbills have given me any advice, although I am no king lion.

Sipping the sun

Scarlet-chested Sunbird, Chalcomitra senegalensis (male), at Agahozo-
Shalom Youth Village, Rwanda

Sunbirds are little gems that will catch your eye. Bright reds, greens, blues, and then woah, is that the same bird? Where did its color go? What just happened? Male sunbirds seem to change color as they move around. The males of many sunbird species have iridescent feathers, which reflect light differently depending on how light hits them. 

What did the bishop say to the widow?

"Look at me, look at me!" this bird practically screams with his get-up.
His vocals are a less appealing mix of raspy "churs." Southern Red Bishop
(Euplectes orix) (male) at Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, Rwanda.

Bishops and widowbirds are types of weavers, as mentioned in my most recent post. The males are brightly-colored birds; some male widowbirds have long tail feathers. Females are light brown and look very similar to each other, as was the case with the other weavers.

The Basket Weavers

Male village weavers attend to their nests. 

Did you know that birds generally do not live in nests? Nests are made for laying eggs and rearing young. While some nests are very simple or require little to no preparation (like a hole in a tree), some birds are master builders. Weavers construct their nests by weaving grass, sticks, and other plant materials into ball- or tube-shaped baskets, often with entrances on the side or bottom.

A village weaver's nest that fell from a tree near Agahozo-Shalom
Youth Village. Village weavers do not breed at Agahozo but do visit.
The top of the nest is on the left in the picture, with the hole
toward the bottom of the nest.

Only in Africa- the Turacos

Great Blue Turaco (Corythaeola cristata) at Mabira Forest Reserve
in Uganda

I saw my first turaco one week after arriving in Rwanda. I was hiking toward the back of ASYV property, descending from the top of our hill. Michele had just left for breakfast. And then a crazy looking turkey-like bird landed in a tree. I nearly ran after Michele to bring her back; it would be two full months before she would see a turaco. 

Eating Bees!

Northern Carmine Bee-eater (Merops nubicus). Murchison Falls
National Park, Uganda

Bright blues, reds, yellows, oranges, pinks, and greens whiz by in the air. Half of the spectacle is the bright colors shared by both males and females. The other half of the spectacle is that bee-eaters catch bees in flight!

Kings of the catch

Kingfishers use their long, sharp bills to snag their prey. As the name suggests, they can be experts at plucking fish from the water, but many kingfishers do not eat fish at all. These non-fishing kingfishers are still pros at catching invertebrates and even vertebrates (I have seen a kingfisher eat another bird in Israel!). Let's take a look at some of East Africa's spectacular kingfishers.

The malachite kingfisher (Alcedo cristata) spends its time around marshes
and swamps and catches aquatic critters. Mabamba Swamp, Uganda

Cuckoo for Canaries!

Cuckoos and canaries have very little in common, other than a little alliteration. Both also have common cultural references (he's gone cuckoo, the canary in the coal mine) but I suspect that most people know little about them. Even as a birder, it took me a couple years to see my first cuckoo. Let's take a closer look at these "C" birds.

The brimstone canary (Serinus sulphuratus) is pretty common at ASYV.
It looks very similar to the bird in the picture below, but note that the
above species has a light grey malar stripe that goes to its bill (a
malar stripe is coloration below and behind the bill, above the throat).
It also has an all yellow back and rump.

Canaries eat seeds, and they roam around to find food, often doing so in flocks. It is not behaviors, however, that scientists use to classify most organisms. Structural, cellular, and genetic evidence is looked at to determine where a bird is classified in relation to other birds.

The yellow-fronted canary (Serinus mozambicus) can be distinguished
from the brimstone canary (above) by its black malar stripe that does not
make it all the way to the bill. Its yellow rump contrasts to its brownish
back in flight, and the bills of the two are also noticeably different. 

Canaries are part of a much larger family of birds called "Fringillidae." And although there are no canaries or even Serinus birds in North America, there are similar birds like the house finch, purple finch, and pine siskin, among others.

The Western Citril (Serinus frontalis) is a canary species that visits ASYV.
It, with the African citril and Southern citril, was recently considered
one species. When a body of scientists finds enough evidence, they
may "split" the species into respective species. This split
indicates that Western citrils do not breed with African or Southern
citrils. All three species look slightly different and have different ranges.

What makes a bird a Fringillid then?  According to Don Roberson's Bird Families of the World website, which is a go-to source for exploring bird diversity, birds of the family Fringillidae "have stout conical bills, strong skulls, large jaw muscles, and powerful gizzards. All have modified beaks for holding and shelling seeds. The seed is wedged in a special groove at the side of the palate and crushed by raising the lower jaw onto it."

Not all canaries are yellow. The streaky seedeater, Serinus striolatus, is
found in the highlands of Eastern Africa. "Canary" is an arbitrary
common name that gets its name from the Canary islands.

The differences in birds are one of the things that I love about seeing and studying them. Cuckoos are bigger than canaries, but a more important difference is the structure of their feet. All Passerines (an order of birds in the Domain-Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species classification system) which includes the canaries, warblers, flycatchers, sunbirds, hummingbirds, and more than half the world's bird species, have three toes pointing forward and one facing back. Cuckoos have two toes pointing forward and two facing back (which for this and other reasons, places them in a different order, Cuculiformes). This is perhaps something you don't see so well in the field, but it demonstrates how much is going on with birds if you look close enough.

We spotted this red-chested cuckoo, Cuculus solitarius, on a walk down
Lake Mugesera in March.

Cuckoos mainly eat insects. If you look at their bills, they are thin and sharp compared to the thick conical bills of the canaries. These bills are well-suited to snatching caterpillars, moths, and grasshoppers, among other bugs.

Levaillant's cuckoo (Clamator levaillantii) has visited ASYV several times. 

Many cuckoos are brood parasites (about 40% of species worldwide). If a cuckoo species is parasitic, the adult female lays her egg in the nest of another species. The owners of this nest, if they don't reject the egg by destroying it or abandoning the nest, incubate the eggs and then feed the young bird until it has fledged (basically, a fledges when it is able to leave the nest and is no longer dependent on the parents). Sometimes the young cuckoo, directly after hatching, knocks all other objects out of the nest; these other "objects" are either baby birds or other eggs.

A male dideric cuckoo, Chrysococcyx caprius, is electric green on its back
(although it doesn't show in the picture). This bird was feasting upon flying
insects at the edge of Akagera National Park in Rwanda.

Some cuckoos are host-specific, which means they target specific types of birds. Red-chested cuckoos lay their eggs in nests of scrub-robins and robin chats, Levaillant's cuckoos lay in babbler nests, diderik cuckoos lay in weaver nests, and African emerald cuckoos lay in nests of robins and small thrushes.

The African Emerald Cuckoo (Chrysococcyx cupreus) is bright green like
the above dideric cuckoo, but it also has a bright yellow stomach
and green throat. As colorful as it is, this bird was a tough bird
to spot in the highland forests of Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Despite their negative impacts on their host species, cuckoos make important contributions to the ecosystems. They eat insects (including many caterpillars that decimate leaves) and serve as meals for predators. Interactions between individual species may seem quite cruel, and perhaps they are, but I enjoy overall healthy ecosystems.

The white-browed coucal (Centropus superciliosus) is a different type
 of cuckoo than the previous four. I see this species about every other
day here at ASYV. It is not parasitic like the other cuckoos.
Nearby parent birds sigh relief...

Thanks for reading- I hope you are now cuckoo for canaries!


Works Cited

• Ehrlich, P, et al. "Brood Parasites." Birds of Stanford. Accessed: 18 July 2011. http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Brood_Parasitism.html
• Ehrlich, P, et al. "Passerines and Songbirds." Birds of Stanford. Accessed: 18 July 2011. http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Passerines_and_Songbirds.html
• Fanshawe, J. and Stevenson, T. Birds of East Africa. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002. 
• Roberson, D. "Finches: Fringillidae." Bird families of the World. Accessed 17 July 2011. http://creagrus.home.montereybay.com/fringillids.html
• Roberson, D. "Cuckoos and Allies: Cuculidae." Bird families of the World. Accessed 17 July 2011. http://creagrus.home.montereybay.com/cuckoos.html
• Ryan, P. and Sinclair, I. Birds of Africa south of the Sahara. Struik Nature: Cape Town, 2003.

Welcome to the jungle! Let's explore Nyungwe rainforest

Rainforests present a conundrum for visitors. They harbor as much biodiversity as any habitat on the planet, and yet you are unlikely to see most of their wonders.

The sun rises over the forested mountains... what lives in these
blankets of green? The pictures below show just a fraction of forest life.