43. Singing Cisticola The word ‘cisticola’ is liable to cause the amateur birdwatcher like myself to sigh heavily. There are six pages of cisticolas in the Birds of East Africa guidebook and they are all different but they all look the same: small, light brown birds with streaks of dark brown. Like most small birds they are busy creatures and difficult to get the kind of sighting you need to identify them more precisely. Quite often the advice is to distinguish them by their songs rather than their appearance. The term ‘birdwatching’ is actually rather unhelpful: very often it is bird-listening that is more important, as it is in this case. For a long time, one made do with the rather strange and subjective descriptions of the sound in words: “loud chips followed by an explosive paired whi-chip whi-chip” after which the female joins in with “dry raspy churr notes” that’s the surprisingly loud call (I can’t really call it a song) of the Singing Cisticola. Nowadays, of course, armies of birders with large parabola microphones have recorded practically every tweet, whistle and mew and it is all easily available on the internet. That was what clinched this one for me. Birds of AFRICAMA House 90 Birds of AFRICAMA House 91