During our recent stay in Tsavo East at Satao Camp we had the great pleasure of seeing these beautiful, yet strange looking birds every day. There must have been around twenty or thirty of them living in the vacinity of the camp. I imagine it offered them a certain amount of protection from predators that would like to eat them.
I think these birds look stunning with their dark red eyes and royal blue feathers and intricate back and white patterns.
I must admit I was expecting a bit more of a challange photographing these guys. I knew we would see them in Tsavo but I thought we would be observing moving flocks out on the roads of the park and not very chilled out birds in the ground of the camp!
They were a great pleasure to photograph and they let you get very close as you can probably see from the images. They were often in close proximity to the resident impala, banded mongeese and baboons. Because they are all social creatures living in groups and I imagine they must all be looking out for each other to give warning of danger.
