ML516687641
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
Observation details
Bill Tweit notes - While birding in the late afternoon on the road heading north from Babu's Camp, we stopped at -3.95278, 37.81796. Isaac Kilusu said he thought he was hearing a Friedmann's Lark, and we both quickly found a skylarking bird that dropped into the grass near us. Isaac played a recording, and the lark popped up and perched on a short, bare acacia shrub next to the road. We watched, photographed and recorded the bird as it flew between several perches and skylarked a couple more times. Isaac mentioned that he heard another calling nearby, we did not see the second bird. The habitat at this site is lush, green grassland due to the recent rains, with scattered shrubs. I took the following notes as we observed it. In flight, when the tail is spread, the upperside of tail shows brown central rectrices, black rectrices in between those and the white outer rectrices. Upperparts show rusty secondaries in the folded wing, a thin pale wing bar at the edge of the greater coverts, and a dark bar on the middle coverts bordered by another thin pale wing bar. The back is streaked brown. The white chin patch wraps back towards the nape under the auriculars, which are brown with a darker edging. Below the white chin, the rest of the underparts are a pale buff, with a necklace of delicate streaks on the upper breast. Shows a pale supercilium bordering the brown crown, which usually shows a bushy crest. Dark iris. Bill is delicate for a lark, and is mostly pale with a dark ridge on the culmen. Legs are mostly pale. Typical lark flight style. Voice recordings of the two-syllable musical call, given both in flight and while perched, and another call which it gave while perched are attached. Time was about 1700, we watched the bird for about 15 minutes. Viewing and listening conditions were good, partly cloudy and calm. At a couple of points, we viewed the bird from 20m distance.
Technical information
- Model
- NIKON D3500
- ISO
- 220
- Focal length
- 180 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire
- f-stop
- f/7.1
- Shutter speed
- 1/320 sec
- Dimensions
- 451 pixels x 398 pixels
- Original file size
- 68.85 KB