Kenya Birds 02 Swifts (1 Viewer)

We went to Kenya at the end of April - beginning of May.

Mount Kenya - Samburu - Sweetwaters - Baringo - Nairobi NP.

I took a lot of photos, and have some birds that I can't work out, and some that I would like to check. Any help gratefully received. Apologies if some of them are very easy; sometimes after looking at thousands of photos, you stop being able to see.

At Samburu Sopa Lodge, there were two kinds of swift.

Photo 1: One was buff, and nesting in leaf fronds that overhung the roofs of the buildings at the lodge. I wonder if this is African Palm Swift or the similar Scarce Swift? I ask this because there were large numbers, but the books say African Palm is 'more solitary', and also because it did seem to open its tail, while the book says African Palm keeps its tail closed.

Photo 2 (dawn light) and Photo 3: The other was probably Little Swift. A few of them seemed to have a very slight tail notch, but I think not enough to make them Horus Swift.

Photo 4 and Photo 5: We also saw two other swifts at other places in Samburu. I think it probably isn't possible to identify them, but I wondered if they could be White-rumped Swift, and/or African Black Swift (or Nyanza Swift).

I find Swifts 'easier' in the field than on photos.

1 African Palm. The, apparently, long thin tail and thin 'pencil' streaks on the throat rule out Scarce.
2 Little. Horus has a distinctly forked, not notched tail.
3 Probably African as the throat patch is rather large and clearly defined. Its a bit smaller and more diffuse on Nyanza.
4 I'm struggling (even more so) with this one. The heavy looking body and the wing shape with bulging inner primaries don't seem to fit Apus . Mottled?

Chris

Thank you Chris, that's really helpful.

As for the fourth one (Photo 5), I wonder if the bulging inner primaries isn't a photo artifact? The wing nearest the camera seems to show this, but not the wing away from the camera.

Hi Mac,

-1: Palm swift indeed; in areas with lots of palm trees; small flocks are not uncommon (but rarely exceeding a few dozen birds in my experience). And trust me, they do spread their tail regularly (contra Stenvenson and Fanshawe, I know) especially during a rapid change of direction.
-2/3: Little swift indeed
-3: impossible to ID with certainty. It's an Apus and African black seems plausible with the rather long and thin rear. But you just can't be sure with this image.
-4: another Apus, this wing shape isn't quite rare when the bird is flapping as anyone who has tried to photographs swifts knows. UnIDable.

And I personnaly rarely find swifts easy to ID...

Thanks very much, Tib and Chris. Swifts are new for me in Africa, so even two is great It was strange (to me) that Samburu had swifts, but Sweetwaters had only swallows (that we saw).

I'm still not 100% convinced with the genus of 4 but, as Tib said they are rarely easy to I'D.

Chris

chris butterworth said:

I'm still not 100% convinced with the genus of 4 but, as Tib said they are rarely easy to I'D.

Click to expand...

Can't claim I am 100% positive it's an Apus either. But, as I said above, anyone who takes pictures of Swifts will end up with photos where the bird is in strange pose. See the Common swift attached.

The only birds with comparable wing shape are the Spinetails, this one clearly isn't on of those.

And for the record, I also attached a picture of a Palm swift with its tail open. Note it is only slightly splayed, sometimes the 'tail fork' is much more obvious.

Thank you Tib. I've written the last one off completely. And the one before that as a possible African Black.

Hi all,

Swifts are always tough. Agree for 1 (Palm), and 2&3 (Little).

First impression was White-rumped for 4 and Horus for 5. Impossible to prove of course.

Cheers

Valéry

Actually, as my first post suggested I thought 4 might be White-rumped, but Tib and Chris went for (maybe) African. I thought 5 might be African.

But I only have the one shot of each of these; they were while I was waiting for something else, and also they were above trees by a river which made catching them really difficult, while the first two were out in the open (and it was where we were staying, so we had plenty of time).

I'm grateful for the comments anyway, because the fact that people like the three responders to this thread can't identify these from this phototeaches me something about swift identification in itself.

I'll discard both 4 and 5!