Long-tailed Fiscal
Lanius cabanisi
Photographed west of Insinya, Kajiado, Kenya. December 2015.
In dry open country with scattered trees this relative of the Common Fiscal will be found scanning the ground below from perches atop the trees. The back is dark gray and the long tail sweeps side to side and vertically. They hunt large insects especially grasshoppers and will swoop down and pick a quarry off the ground - often without landing fully. If the fiscal gathers more than it can eat at once it may impale the hopper on a thorn and consume it later or offer it as a gift to another fiscal.
Laniidae -- Shrike Family
Books
- Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania by Zimmerman et al.
- Birds of East Africa by Stevenson and Fanshawe