In my old neighborhood I was often referred to as David Birdman, not because of any super powers I was perceived to have but simply because I talked birds at every excuse. My favorite topic is often bird behavior, and the garden with multiple visitors and species is always a good place to observe bird behavior.
The African Paradise Flycatcher- Terpsiphone viridis
The African Paradise Flycatcher, particularly in breeding plumage, is a distinctive and easily identifiable garden bird. It is a widespread intra-African breeding migrant often appearing in the garden in mid-October and leaving by April or early May, with my earliest recorded nesting on 5th October, and the latest sighting on 20th June, in my garden in Lusaka.
The African Paradise Flycatcher is a small bird measuring under 20cm and at most up to 36 cm including tail feathers of breeding males belonging to the Monarch Flycatcher family. It has a breeding males have dark grey head and crest, cobalt-blue eye-ring and bill with chestnut upperparts and a middle pair of tail feathers greatly which are greatly elongated. Non-breeding male and female lack the elongated tail feathers and a reduced eye wattle, less blue and both have grey throat and breast with paler belly and flanks.
The African Paradise Flycatcher can often be seen foraging for insects in the garden, feeding chicks in the nest or fledglings in the garden and quite often defending its nest from predators.