Journal of the East Africa Natural History Society and National Museum

In contrast to the large mammals, the bird faunas of East Africa's National Parks are rather poorly known. Williams (1967) provides a species list for most National Parks and several other reserves and the local National Parks organisations have also compiled a list for some. However, neither of these gives details of specific records nor, with a few exceptions any indication of the abundance or occurrence of the species. Also they often disagree. The only Parks for which an annotated list exists are Arusha National Park, Tanzania (Beesley 1972) and Kidepo National Park, Uganda (Elliott 1972). The purpose of this paper is to collate what is known of the birds of Tsavo East National Park at present. It is mainly based on our collective observations which span eight years. PL was in the Park working intensively on the land-birds from November 1974 till January 1977 and he also did a little mist-netting mostly just outside the Park boundary; WL made observations while working on mammals from November 1968 till May 1976 though doing very little fieldwork after mid 1974; and CS during a study on birds of prey from July 1970 till January 1973 (Smeenk 1974,Smeenk & SmeenkEnserink 1976). Various other people supplied additional information in response to two requests in the East Africa Natural History Society (EANHS) Bulletin, particularly A.D. Forbes-Watson, who lived in the area in 1959-60 and compiled a preliminary species list in 1967.