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I need help with identifying birds. (1 Viewer)

M

Mandar05

http://www.instagram.com/mandar05
I need help with identifying birds. Kenya/Tanzania

Hello everyone!

My google search for 'bird forum' was about 5 mins ago, and here I am writing my first post! :)

I'm going to say this first.. I'm a total bird newbie and I googled this forum for help as the title says. I love photography and as a hobby I love taking photos, where ever I go, my camera goes!

I've just come back from a trip to Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda) and its honestly been incredible. Totally humbling, total new found appreciation for this planet all all those that call it home. I've always been a fan of nature, birds / animals. I've probably seen every David Attenborough documentary there is :)

So this trip was something I've always wanted to do and i'm glad my wife and I did it! Sure wasn't cheap but theres some things that are just worth sacrificing for.

Anyway I'll get to the point.. we had lovely guides along the way and i took hundreds of photos, and i took in lots of information and wrote notes on my phone where possible. BUT.... after a while all the names of birds the guides were saying were a blur, i could tell if i had already taken a photo of a purple breasted something or a red beak yellow bellied something else. It was hard to keep track and I gave up writing the names down. =)

Please let me know if this isn't the right place for this sort of thing, but I would like to post the unedited photos here, hopefully get some help from you guys to identify the birds, then go onto editing and posting them on instagram, facebook etc.. social media basically.

So please don't judge the photo itself, its raw.. hopefully you'll see a better version on instagram once I've put it through lightroom. The birds are either going to be from Kenya or Tanzania, I didnt photograph any birds in Rwanda. I'll try to say which country the photo was if i can.

My next post will be a bird photo.. thank you!! :)

p.s. I tried to put the photos through google image search to see if I can match other photos and identify that way. But thats not really working out as expected.

Mandar
 
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Hi Mandar and a warm welcome to you from those of us on staff here at BirdForum :t:

Feel free to upload your images to this section of the Forum and I'm fairly certain you'll get some quick responses ;)
 
Welcome to Birdforum, and hope we can help. If you could give the location as best you can for each pic, it will help us narrow down the options. As you found out, there are a bewildering number of similar species in East Africa!

Also, remember to not just assume the first suggestion from someone on here is always the right answer. Everyone gets things wrong sometimes, and sometimes people don't qualify how sure they are of the identification.
 
Hi Mandar and a warm welcome from me too.

If you need any help uploading your pictures, please don't be afraid to ask.
 
Okay i'm just going to post 5 to start with, took some fiddling around with to get the size down under 1mb and the right dimensions, but I have 5 and will go through and get the rest.

Thank you again! My apologies if these birds are glaringly obvious or if i unknowingly post the same bird twice thinking its different. I have little or no experience identifying any of them, and I appreciate the help.

Is it possible to say if they are male or female? Or am I asking for too much? :) When I post photos on social media, I do like to explain a little about whats in the photos.. location, species, sex, maybe some background. So people don't just go oh wow nice bird or animal or landscape... they actually learn something new. I prefer when people put comments on photos that teach me something anyway.. so i do the same.

Going through these photos I can only imagine what a bird enthusiast would feel like on the mara.. like a kid in a candy shop! I was there for the landscapes, experiences and obviously to see the big 5.. but I came back with appreciation of so much more. After seeing so many wildebeest and zebra you really do learn to appreciate the little things. The beautifully coloured birds, the insects, you recognise the calls and spot them easier on trees etc.. If i ever get a chance to go back, im definitely going back for bird photography but first i need to read the various books on birds and study a little. can't believe there are over a thousand species and I probably managed to photograph less than 20!

I will try to post where exactly they were taken but its either going to be the Maasai Mara or the Serengeti. I'll update the info shortly.

The bird on the left I love its beak, reminds me of the aboriginal flag colours! The second one .i love the black zorro like stripe across its face. The 4th.. I feel is a common sight but i could be mistaken, the fifth is a kingfisher? :)
 

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1 Saddle-billed Stork
2 Maybe Grey-backed Fiscal
4 Lilac-breasted Roller
5 Grey-headed Kingfisher

Doing this from memory as I don't have my books in Russia so apologies if a couple are wrong!


A
 
Cor! What lovely pictures you've taken from your trip Mandar. I hope we may see some of your images in the Gallery too.

Isn't that roller just beautiful - I've a real soft spot for that family.
 
andyadcock said:
1 Saddle-billed Stork
2 Maybe Grey-backed Fiscal
4 Lilac-breasted Roller
5 Grey-headed Kingfisher

Doing this from memory as I don't have my books in Russia so apologies if a couple are wrong!


A
Click to expand...

I agree with Andy, and I suspect the lark is one of the races of Flappet - possibly best to await confirmation of that however.
 
Still here!

Hi everyone, I apologise for the month long disappearance. I've just about climbed over a mountain of photo sorting, organising and editing. Thank you so much for those that replied to my previous photos and identified birds. It truly helped and I've since posted a couple of those photos on my instagram with correctly identified birds thank you to you all.

I've been labelling photos I find of birds and am hoping to get back to this forum from time to time with your help to identify the birds.

I'd like to post one photo that I've been editing. I'm pretty sure its a vulture, but can anyone tell me please what kind of vulture? This was taken in the Serengeti National Park.

Also can anyone please tell me why this vulture is sitting on the ground? Do vultures normally sit and watch for food high up or do they often sit on the ground? Could it be that the vulture is watching the migrating wildebeest heard for the week or dying and is looking for opportunities or perhaps 'staking' one of them? Just asking.. because it would make for a pretty cool photo story, but if its rare then I rather not associate something totally whacky to the photo.



Thank you! :)
Mandar
 

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One more

Can somebody please identify this bird? Also, can you please tell me if the nest in the photo belongs to the bird as in would this type of bird build that type of nest?

I'm asking because I was watching this nest earlier and I'm pretty sure I saw a different type of bird fly out of it. A minute later I saw this bird fly in and sit on the branch and very cautiously go into the nest and back out again onto the branch. I would like to correctly caption the photo when I post it and wondering if its either a 'coming home' or 'home invasion'. Again this was taken in the Serengeti National Park.

Thank you! :)
Mandar
 

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Vulture looks like Ruppell's and perhaps some nbr Wattled starling in the background? Without literature and the requisite field experience I'll leave the weaver to others.
 
Thank you

Fantastic, I would have never found that its a 'Grey-capped Social Weaver'. Thank you for such a detailed identification. To you both, much appreciated.
 
Mandar05 said:
Hi everyone, I apologise for the month long disappearance. I've just about climbed over a mountain of photo sorting, organising and editing. Thank you so much for those that replied to my previous photos and identified birds. It truly helped and I've since posted a couple of those photos on my instagram with correctly identified birds thank you to you all.

I've been labelling photos I find of birds and am hoping to get back to this forum from time to time with your help to identify the birds.

I'd like to post one photo that I've been editing. I'm pretty sure its a vulture, but can anyone tell me please what kind of vulture? This was taken in the Serengeti National Park.

Also can anyone please tell me why this vulture is sitting on the ground? Do vultures normally sit and watch for food high up or do they often sit on the ground? Could it be that the vulture is watching the migrating wildebeest heard for the week or dying and is looking for opportunities or perhaps 'staking' one of them? Just asking.. because it would make for a pretty cool photo story, but if its rare then I rather not associate something totally whacky to the photo.



Thank you! :)
Mandar
Click to expand...

Ruppel's Vulture indeed
they are often sitting for a long time on the ground after feeding, some are so heavy after eating as much as they can that they hardly get airborn.
The vulture definitely does not look for food this way
Nice compo btw
 
tconzemi said:
Ruppel's Vulture indeed
they are often sitting for a long time on the ground after feeding, some are so heavy after eating as much as they can that they hardly get airborn.
The vulture definitely does not look for food this way
Nice compo btw
Click to expand...

Thank you! Thats really interesting! I never knew.. I also feel like that after a big meal sometimes :eat:
 
.

Can somebody please help me identify this bird? I guess he/she is on there to catch the flies on the buffalo's face? But this beautifully colourful bird, looks so angry! =)

I've tried to google so many terms to find this bird.. 'maasai mara bird with red and yellow beak and red eyes', 'small bird with red/yellow beak', 'african birds that sit on buffalo and catch flies'... nothing.. i got nowhere with those searches.
 

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