Ispidina picta
Silhouette: Rachael Joakim · PhyloPic
In 3 days <5% in a week ~10%
The African pygmy kingfisher (Ispidina picta) is a small insectivorous kingfisher found in the Afrotropics, mostly in woodland habitats. The African pygmy kingfisher was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Todier de Juida in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The type locality is Saint Louis, Senegal. The African pygmy kingfisher is now placed in the genus Ispidina that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup in 1848.
The specific epithet picta is from the Latin pictus meaning "painted". Some texts refer to this species as Ceyx pictus. There are three subspecies: Wikipedia →
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report an African Pygmy-Kingfisher sighting in Nairobi on a given day, based on 15 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 177th most-seen of the 234 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to under 5%, and over a week to about 10%, if each day is a fresh chance.
July
In that month about 10% of wildlife watchers report an African Pygmy-Kingfisher in Nairobi on a given day, against under 5% in August to June, the lowest months. That is one of Nairobi's driest months, with about 25 mm of rain against 150 mm in April.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most African Pygmy-Kingfisher sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
11th of 12
Of the 12 cities where we can rate African Pygmy-Kingfisher sightings, Nairobi ranks 11th at under 5%. The best odds are in Yaoundé (Cameroon, about 30%), Kampala (Uganda, about 30%) and Kigali (Rwanda, about 10%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the African Pygmy-Kingfisher is recorded against all the birds logged in Nairobi (15 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
