On a thorny acacia tree is quietly sitting a bird. I shot some photos and head off with the group. Someone noticed a Senegal Eremomela (Eremomela pusilla) at that moment. And indeed: what I saw at home was – on first sight – the image of a yellow warbler
But a Senegal Eremomela? I was skeptical. I could see only a hint of a pale white supercilium. The back and mantle were uniform and not green, becoming brighter yellowish green on the rump. And the throat and upper breast were as bright lemon yellow as the lower breast, belly and vent. The bill was blackish with a pale part only in the beginning and the legs are not pale brownish but grey. I asked for help in ID at www.birdforum.net. After some confusion with the expression “Yellow Warbler” and the clarification that I did not mean yellow warbler as a species name. It is just the color: yellow a keen birdwatcher provided the right ID: Female Pygmy Sunbird (Hedydipna platura). The male should not create to many ID-problems: long tail, bright yellow underparts with coppery-green upperparts. But the female looks far less striking and the colors are quite drab.
Honestly I did not even think of a sunbird when sorting the images at the data bank at home. Posture and overall habit looked perfectly as a warbler – maybe in the direction even of a Melodious Warbler (Hippolais polyglotta). But the bill should have made me skeptical.
The Pygmy Sunbird is a species of bird in the Nectariniidae family. It is found in from Benin over Cameroon to Uganda in the east. The Pygmy Sunbird is on the WP-list as it is on the list of passerine species for Mauritania. We had the bird at the Ngaoundaba Ranch, Ngaoundéré, in Adamawa Province as well, but never saw them as close as at this site north of Maroua.
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The nice image of the blog is only first impressions of what you will find in behind “Picture Shop” for the Cameroon trip very soon. Simply contact bird-lens.com if you need an image of a bird before even more new pictures are online.