Walking Birds

While many of the birds we saw in Africa were magestic eagles and tiny sparrows, there were a handful of magnificent ground birds. Not all of them were flightless but they were all certainly striking in their own way, starting off with the obvious ostrich. There were 2 varieties to be seen, the Common Ostrich which we saw throughout Kenya and Tanzania and the Somali Ostrich which we hoped to see in Samburu but were unable to find.
The Kori Bustard was always an impressive sight. They are apparently the largest birds capable of flight, but we consistently saw them on the ground. They have a very striking courtship ritual in which the male tucks his head and seems to inflate his neck in a strange way but we only saw this from a distance or in a moving car and don't have any good pictures to back it up.
Rounding out the set, Secretary Birds were an infrequent treat that could be seen searching for lizards, snakes and insects in the grasses. There were several occassions where they were walking along parallel to the road and we could see them well, and a few occassions where we saw them in flight.