During our recent tour to Senegal, some welcome surprises joined the list. First of all, at Campement de Wassadou, we unexpectedly sighted a Brown-backed Honeybird (formerly known as Wahlberg’s Honeyguide) visiting a flowering tree. With a small handful of other records at this site since the first documented record for the country here in 2017, the localised presence in Niokola-Koba Park of the species is certainly confirmed.

The following week, near Dindefelo in the far south, we were staking out Black-faced Firefinch at a small waterhole. One bunting which came to visit was not the expected Brown-rumped Bunting, but proved to be a Cabanis’s Bunting, only the 2nd record for Senegal! The previous record was from this exact same waterhole in 2023, however multiple recent sightings of the otherwise scarce western cabanisi subspecies in surrounding countries (especially with Guinea-Bissau having recently acquired its first few records too), the species might regularly occur further to the northwest than previously thought.

Cabanis's Bunting (Emberiza cabanisi cabanisi) from southern Senegal by Joachim Bertrands