Pairs

I was not far from the house on my morning run the other day when from up in a Neem tree ahead of me came the unmistakable two-phrase laughing song of a male paradise flycatcher (Terpsiphone viridis). These strikingly beautiful birds, common in much of their range, are an uncommon find in Mbale, so I stopped to take a look. Turned out to be a pair (in the past I've come across single birds only here in town) of them. The male did not have his breeding-plumage long tail streamers, but it was special to see both birds at once.

Not two minutes after leaving the flycatchers I came across an avian version of the odd couple. A female gray woodpecker (Dendropicos goertae) was excavating for insect larvae at wire level on a utility pole. Juxtaposed less than three handbreadths away, on the wire, was a white-browed robin chat (Cossypha heuglini) busy with its morningly outpouring of song. The two of them, absorbed in their respective endeavors, ignored me as I ran by, giving them considerably more attention than they had for each other.

Shortly thereafter I noticed yet another pair of flycatchers flying across the road in front of me -- African blue flycatchers (Elminia longicauda), cousins, actually, to the paradise flycatcher, in a group called monarch flycatchers (probably because most or all of them are crested/"crowned"). These guys are an unusual (among birds) powder-blue and never stay still for more than a couple of seconds at a time. I had a good view of them as they perched briefly on a power line before diving into the foliage of a jambulan tree near the road.