Birds of Inyati 🌍by Lars Svensson

White-Fronted Bee-Eaters

Waking up to the enchanting chorus of wild birds is a truly delightful experience. The lively and melodious white-fronted bee-eaters bring both visual and auditory joy to those fortunate enough to encounter them.

Saddle-billed Stork

A tall, lanky, black-and-white stork with a unique red, yellow, and black bill. The male has dark-brown eyes, and the female has yellow eyes. In flight, the bird’s massive size, and the dark bands in the center of the white wings are diagnostic.

African Hoopoe

The Hoopoe is highly distinctive, with a long, thin tapering bill that is black with a fawn base. The strengthened musculature of the head allows the bill to be opened when probing inside the soil. The Hoopoe has broad and rounded wings capable of strong flight.

The Hoopoe has a characteristic undulating flight, which is like that of a giant butterfly, caused by the wings half closing at the end of each beat or short sequence of beats.

African Green-Pigeon

A plump pigeon with green wings and back, dull burgundy shoulders, and a whitish bill with a red base. It prefers forest and thicker woodland, where nomadic groups congregate in fruiting trees, especially figs. They clamber around clumsily like parrots but can remain well hidden. When disturbed, they explode from a tree and fly quickly and directly. 

The Sand River, which flows in-front of Inyati Game lodge, is a source of a number of rarities including the secretive African Finfoot, Whitebacked Night-heron, Blackcrowned Night-heron, Purple Heron, African Black Duck, Half Collared and Malachite Kingfishers and African Crake.

There are 108 families of birds in Africa, 17 of these unique to the continent. Among the endemic families are mousebirds, turacos, woodhoopoes, sugarbirds, whydahs and guineafowl as well as the Secretary bird and Hamerkop, which are sole representatives of their families.