Donkeypecker

Amazing to see the difference in birds here in Ndioum.  There have been noisy morning choruses by green wood hoopoes, quiet shy purrs from the blue-naped mousebirds, the chuh-chuh-chuhs of the little weaver who perches each morning on the bedlegs of our mosquito net, the slightly out of tune whuoup-whuoup-whuoup duets  of the Vieillot’s barbet, and the skype-calls of the common bulbul.

But this morning.  Great morning.  There is a donkey with a broken front leg; he’s been stumbling his way across the sand the last weeks with pressure on the forearm, dragging the bottom half of his leg (metacarpus and below).  On my way to get some bread and beans for breakfast, I walked past him grazing and caught my eye on some bright bills of birds that I knew immediately but had never seen myself in real life.  Yell0w-billed oxpeckers!  I did not know they existed here in Northern Senegal!  And then on the way back from breakfast, a pair of African Grey Hornbills.