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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MacNara" data-source="post: 2371062" data-attributes="member: 23290">The Bale Mountains in Ethiopia are famous for a local race or possibly species of Brown ParisomaI think pictures 1 and 2 show this bird. They were taken in the area by me with no-one else seeing the bird and show two different birds, but they match the book Parisoma pictures well.Pictures 3 and 4 show (three different) Willow Warblers, I think. However, it's not a bird I see where I normally am, so I'd like to check. More importantly, this is the bird that the local Bale Park guides - three of them - identified as the Parisoma, even insisting that we get out of the van to find it, and continuing to insist that this was right while looking at these photos on my camera and the Parisoma picture in the Horn of Africa book.Picture 5 shows, I think a Puffback also in Bale NP. It's higher than the book says this bird goes, so I wonder if I'm wrong?I suspect that one reason is that none of these guides has ever had a bird book to look at and study slowly. They seem to concentrate on the major mammals - Ethiopian Wolf and Mountain Nyala. The also misidentified the local endemic Black-headed Siskin (as a Baglafecht Weaver). But when we finished, I found out from the guide who accompanied us from Addis (the one who thought a Go-Away Bird was a Secretary Bird) that the local guide was paid 170 Birr for the day's guiding (about $10) and only gets this work for about one day a week or less). No wonder he looked happy with his tip (200% - I thought I was being mean; it's only four beers where I live, which I think is not a great tip for a day's work).</blockquote>

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