All puffed up

A smart but fairly ordinary bush shrike, the Northern Puffback’s name gives away its claim to fame. Its scientific name is Dryoscopus gambensis, meaning ‘tree-watcher’, and this one lives up to its name:

It forages stealthily for insects, mostly in the canopy, but sometimes coming down to the top of tall bushes. Birds of the World describes it as “retiring, secretive and easily overlooked”.

But when it is courting, watch how the male transforms himself:

He does this by puffing out his white back and rump feathers to cover the darker back and base of his wings, till he looks like a fluffy pompom. In the next photo the bird at top right is the female. She looks entirely different, but she too has a bright orangey-red eye:

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Northern Puffbacks range across the tropical woodlands of central Africa north of the equator, and are not currently threatened, but habitat loss is a worry, and in some countries they are apparently killed for traditional medicine.