Western Bluebill.

The Western Bluebill is a difficult bird to see, it’s unobtrusive, skulking around, undetected by most. Seeing them is a real bonus and you can easily spend all your time in the Gambia without encountering them. They are at the northern edge of their range here so they are not common at all and they are very difficult to get out in the open.
There was an old hide/shed in an isolated wood outside a small village that had been built by some people from Holland quite some time ago. They also dug a pond out and lined it with concrete. No one goes there anymore and the locals certainly have no interest in it, but we visited it one afternoon.
This is a special place and the birdlife coming to visit there is something else, in the main flycatchers –but that’s for another blog.
As the afternoon wore on, to our surprise and delight we had a female Western Bluebill bathing in the pond right in front of us, what a find!


You can tell she's a female by the dense spotting on her belly.

However, after she left things got even better a gorgeous male bird came in and landed right in front of the hide.



Usually you only get, if any, a brief view of these difficult birds.
To have these lovely birds in this situation was special!