The first hours are a monotonous open grassland, the habitat of the super endemic Sidamo Lark, one of the birds with the smallest range in Africa, we were not lucky enough to see it, but we enjoyed both Ethiopian swallow and the handsome White crowned starling.
The latter were so use to people herding cattle that I could approach it at close quarters.
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The road from tarmac changed into dirt and from open grasslands we entered an acacia woodland.
We travel through a pristine nature dotted with small villages, some with mud houses with a strange roof of growing grass and others with round huts covered with plastic sheets. People is very colourful.
On the road we spotted a good number of Dik Diks, but they are different from what we are used to, they are in fact Guenther’s Dik Dik a different specie.
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Birding is quite good, amongst the acacias and commiphoras plenty of life is hidden. Shelley’s starling, Rosy patched bush shrike, Black billed wood hoopoe and Vulturine guineafowls made the drive more exciting then we were expecting, and this were only the ones we did not see before, we saw many other birds and even the special Golden breasted starling again and Pigmy falcon.
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Eventually we reached Yabello, a small town, very neat and clean. Our hotel is good and after a shower we head out with a precise target, it is a very localised bird, basically visible only around this town, it is on many bird books covers in
It is a beautiful bird, not black as we would normally expect from a crow but shining white with a fantastic blue eye rim.
To see it we drive towards a lodge under construction, we saw the first crows even before reaching the lodge, they were busy nesting and they are super wonderful. We observed them for half an hour and then went inside the lodge and enjoyed a couple of beers with Franco, the owner.
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