KakaMEGA!!! (It really was mega) – Kenya

A place like Kakamega can feel overwhelming. It’s so grand, so different, so unique. Chalk full of a new set of birds we hadn’t seen yet in Kenya. Kakamega forest is more like Western Africa than anywhere else we had been in East Africa, which makes sense considering it is Kenya’s last remnant piece of the ancient Guineo-Congolian rainforest that once spanned the continent.
Beautiful forests, a network of nice, wide trails, not too hot, not too steep — the list of accolades goes on. And perhaps birders are more partial to forests than nonbirders, but there is something so special about this place that I can’t help but feel a bit mesmerized by it. If I had to pick a favorite birding location in all of Kenya this might well be it.
But with a new type of forest comes a new set of targets. Hence why it was feeling overwhelming. There was an easiness about walking around in Kakamega, which is a good thing because the targets we had in mind were anything but.

Technically getting a local guide is outside of our typical budget, but that’s not the real reason we usually opt against using one. The truth is, part of the enjoyment Ross gets from birding is the thrill of finding the birds himself. He doesn’t want to be shown birds, although there’s nothing wrong with that and I personally thoroughly enjoy being shown birds; It’s that he wants to find them and identify them himself. But with COVID upending all hopes of ecotourism all around the world and many guides living with no income for the last year, not to mention a handful of difficult to see birds, we decided to contact Job, a local bird guide and nature enthusiast, who not only donates his own money to conservation efforts surrounding Kakamega Forest each year, but goes into schools to educate the next generation on how to be better stewards of such a valuable resource: their native forest. Job also works to grow native plants and just last week donated over 3,000 baby trees to a government-funded initiative to plant them. He’s a bird guide and then some.
We contacted Job and he was available to meet. The following day we spent nearly 12 hours of straight walking and birding, 6am to 6:30pm. Ross and I had been up since 0400 to do a little nocturnal walk so for us the day was even longer! But more time in the field results in more targets acquired and at the end of the day we had 95 species!
Still, one very important one eluded us, Grey-breasted Kakamega, otherwise known as Grey-breasted Illadopsis. (Although it acts like a babbler and hides more like a thrush, which explains its other name Grey-breasted Babbler.) It’s not exactly similar to its Illadopsis counterparts so I think it’s safe to argue that Kakamega is an appropriate name for the genus.

Ross is the photographer among us. It is his photos that comprise all of the bird photos in this blog. While a birder does not need photos of every bird he sees, sometimes it’s a nice reward, especially for those extremely difficult to see birds. Ross had an ongoing bet with Stratton Hatfield that he would earn a case of beer if he could photograph Gray-breasted Illadopsis in Kenya (a feat unachieved up until this point.) I’m not sure if Stratton still owes him that beer since it was Stratton that gave Ross gen on where to look for the bird and drew a map of how to get there. Regardless, we made it to the spot and I remember closing my eyes hoping to hear the shutter clicks of Ross’s camera. (Not because of the beer but because I find myself doing that quite often. I might enjoy the photo documentation more than anyone.) Ross had crawled down the trail on his knees despite the thick mud, while I sat across the way. Somewhere between us sat the bluetooth speaker. Ross was in charge of taking the picture and I was in charge of the playback. Honestly, it was a team effort for this one and the bird stayed almost completely hidden the entire time. Perhaps I deserve partial credit and perhaps it is Ross who owes Stratton a case of beer because we never would have gotten this one if it weren’t for him!
The first photos Ross achieved looked like nothing more than vegetation. It was nearly impossible to even decipher that there was a bird in the photos, let alone Gray-breasted Illadopsis. And then Ross managed a photo that clearly showed a rufous backed, gray-bellied bird, although it was nearly entirely hidden by a leaf. This is a secretive, skulky bird that never gets higher than 5ft from the ground. It prefers the confines of thick vegetation and clearly enjoys hiding away in the shadows, which is why no one has a photo of this particular bird from Kenya. Stratton is a researcher, and perhaps he had some inkling that giving Ross a challenge might result in the best photos of a bird in the wild. Anyway, we ended up dedicating our entire morning to one species and Ross only barely managed identifiable photos. But the bird was exceptionally vocal and he obtained some fantastic audio recordings so at least there was that!

We spent two days at Kakamega Forest and whatever targets we missed on the first day with Job, we concentrated on finding ourselves the following day. This included Gray-breasted Kakamega, Yellow-bellied and Chestnut Wattle-eyes, Toro Olive Greenbul, Fawn-breasted Waxbill, Red-chested Owlet, White-spotted Flufftail, and Stuhlmann’s Starling. We may have walked 10 kilometers, but we saw every single target before 12 and for that reason decided we could move onwards to Uganda. Guess we didn’t even need the two full days!