Birding South Sudan: Along the Nimule road

Last April, the Nimule road turned up a terrific range of birds for Tom Jenner and me, so I retraced part of that trip today. The onset of the rains transform the birdlife here and again it was a great outing. Highlights were three new species for my South Sudan list, all of which I had been looking out for: Black-faced Firefinch, Pale Flycatcher and Fox Kestrel. The firefinch is atypical, lacking extensive red in the plumage. It also has a distinctive pale blue eyering, not illustrated in Stevenson and Fanshawe's 'Birds of East Africa', though photos on the Web show this feature. There were a pair of Pale Flycatchers, one of which behaved aggressively towards intruding Lesser Grey Shrikes. I'm pretty sure now that Tom and I saw Pale Flycatchers last year. The Fox Kestrel was close to what would be called a 'kopje' in South Africa - a possible nesting site as it had some cliff faces.

Male Black-faced Firefinch

Pale Flycatchers

;">

Fox Kestrel

In his 'Birds of South Sudan', Nikolaus noted that there were no spring records of Lesser Grey Shrikes. I've seen a very few before now, but today was remarkable as I encountered at least a dozen individuals, in groups of up to four, and often in association with Woodchat Shrikes.

Lesser Grey Shrike

There were also good numbers of Willow Warblers. As I simply stopped at random in three places in a habitat covering several hundred square miles, it seems likely that thousands of Willow Warblers are passing through this part of South Sudan. Overhead there were a hundred or more Eurasian Swifts and 10 or more Steppe Buzzards, as well as a distant swarm of bee-eaters, likely to be Blue-cheeked or Eurasian. There were no Alpine Swifts or European Honey-buzzards, both of which Tom and I saw last year, albeit a few days later.

African migrants including over 100 Abdim's Storks - there'll be thousands more soon - and Red-chested and Black-and-White Cuckoos. Another cuckoo was either a Common or African. Other specialities of this area included Black-bellied Firefinch. I also had prolonged views of the usually shy Spotted Morning-Thrush gathering mud and vegetation for its nest.