Fluffball Namibia Caprivi June (1 Viewer)

Hi,

Any ideas about this ball of fluff?

Thank you very much

Cisticola sp

cheers, alan

lewis20126 said:

Cisticola sp

cheers, alan

Click to expand...

Agree, is Chubb's in range?

Thanks both of you.
The ones in range are Zitting, Desert, Neddicky,Red Faced, Rattling, Chirping, Luapula, Tinkling with Lazy and Croaking being just outside the area to the east, but not by much.
How about Chirping? It was along the Chobe? River at Camp Kwando.

It's especially difficult because we can't see the back at all. But, I think this might be Luapula (aka Black-backed ssp) Cisticola. My next guess would be Chirping, which I have never seen, but this is said to have a longer tail than Luapula, and this tail doesn't look that long.

Zitting and Desert would have more head streaking (and undertail is more stripy, I think).

Neddicky and Red-faced just look wrong from the books (never seen either, and Red-faced may be out of range).

Tinkling has a bright red head, the tail is longer, and the undertail pattern looks different to my eye.

Rattling might be OK but it also has a long tail, so that doesn't look right.

Luapula has a bright red head, but it doesn't necessarily show so red in this position.

Attached (first) is a definite Luapula from Mahangu last January which looks a lot like the OP's bird.

And also (second) a Tinkling from near Mahangu to show the difference.

But it would be nice to have other opinions, because with no view of the back, I'm not really sure.

Thanks MacNara. Very useful explanation. I think it could well be between Chirping and Luapula, based on what you have said.

Well, as I said, I've never seen Chirping, but if you had seen the back of the bird you would be sure, because they appear to be quite different. The books say that the front of Chirping has a beige wash as you can see in these photos.

(In the case of Chirping, I think Sasol has a better picture than Birds of East Africa - the latter is very dark altogether (unless the race there is like this.)

So, having looked around, I'd go for Luapula because with your bird, like the bird from the front which I posted (which is definitely Luapula - we also saw them from the back; at Mahangu there is a Luapula hotspot), the front is white with a hint of grey spreading from the black back.

But without a view of the back, I'm not sure that you can be certain.

We also stayed at Camp Kwando, but we didn't see any Cisticolas there at all.

Thanks MacNara

Having said that we saw Luapula at Mahangu, I was asked in a private message from Joakim (Djerf) to post some photos of them.

I wasn't sure about this, since we didn't get good shots from the back, but anyway here are two representative views. My wife and I had a fairly short trip covering a lot of area, so we didn't have time to wait around to get really good shots.

I have included a map of the spot, in case anyone visits. On the day we took these photos, we had great sunset views of a variety of animals at a waterhole, and were on our way back to the lodge. Our guide, young but very experienced and part-way through producing a photo-guide to the birds of Namibia with his father, said that this was a 'Black-backed Cisticola - Luapula' spot, and we stopped to see if we could find any.

We have photos of the back of the bird from that evening. But it was already nearly dark, so although the patterning is clear enough, they are not good photos. Also, my camera was set for the sunset shots we had taken 30 minutes before, and in the minute or two we saw Luapula in the evening I didn't think to reset the ISO even higher. (We got OK binocular views.) And it was 1st January and I was still hungover from the spectacular Mahangu Lodge live music New Year Party the night before, so that didn't help my photography either.

The following early morning, we got some OK shots from the front, one of which I posted earlier, but it wasn't possible to get behind the birds, so no back shots in good light. And we had no time to hang around as we needed to drive to Mushara (Etosha) that day.

By the way, I looked at Luapula in 'Birds of Africa South of the Sahara' and it has what seems to me a much more accurate picture of Luapula than does Sasol. Indeed BoA specifically labels the 'grey tail' which you can also see in my photos, whereas Sasol shows a bright beige tail.

Anyway, sorry about the quality, but I hope someone can get some information from these photos.

Thanks for these MacNara, we stayed at Ndhovu under canvas. Quite luxurious camping really. If only the army had such standards! lol

Thank you very much MacNara!
I'm sorry I missed the spectacular Mahangu Lodge live music New Year Party when we visited the area in 2009