david korte photographs

Another beautiful bird caught my eye while walking through a wooded savanna. In flight it looked like a small falcon with pointed wings and rapid wingbeat, gliding low above the savanna grasses. It returned to its perch and by approaching at an angle, I was able to get fairly close. Its bill wasn’t curved sharply like a falcon and it didn’t have talons like a predator. Later, with Borrow and Demy’s Birds of Western Africa, I was able to identify the African cuckoo, another dove-sized cuckoo, mostly grey and white with a yellow, black-tipped bill and yellow rings around the eyes. Its range excludes Gabon. I guess nobody told this one.