Guinea-Congo rainforest at the eastern edge of its range

Kakamega is a biogeographic island: the last Kenyan remnant of the great forest belt that once ran from the Congo basin to the Atlantic. Roughly forty of its bird species occur nowhere else in Kenya, which makes three days here worth more to a country list than a fortnight almost anywhere else.

Great Blue Turaco — the size of a turkey and improbably blue — moves through the canopy in noisy parties. Blue-headed Bee-eater, Turner’s Eremomela and Chapin’s Flycatcher are the forest’s most wanted, all globally scarce and all findable with time. Black-and-white-casqued Hornbill flies over with a sound like a steam engine.

Night walks add African Wood Owl and, with luck, the flying squirrels the forest is quietly famous for.

Saiwa is tiny and entirely walkable, with raised boardwalks and observation towers that put you at canopy height over papyrus. Ross’s Turaco is the star, crimson-winged and common here. Double-toothed Barbet, Blue-headed Coucal and Grey Crowned Crane all use the swamp.

The park exists for the Sitatunga — a swamp-adapted antelope on splayed hooves — and the towers give the best views of them anywhere in Kenya.