Eritrea Wildlife

We find ourselves noticing quite a bit of wildlife, mainly birds, around just now – maybe it's the lack of other volunteers to talk to ...
We haven't turned into “birders”, though we enjoy watching the variety of birds which we can see from our garden, and this is hardly a definitive guide and is, more than likely, not accurate though I have tried to find the birds mentioned below in our copy of “Birds of Africa, South of the Sahara”.
The list of bird species which can be spotted in Eritrea is long and includes (seen in and from our garden):
Weavers, Firefinches, Cordon Blues, Swainson's Sparrows (I think), Little Swifts, Sunbirds, Tawny Eagles, Storks (Abdim's), Crested Mousebirds and the odd Hoopoe and Canary. And that says nothing about the resident Speckled Pigeons.
There are currently about five ball-shaped woven nests hanging from our palm trees, I haven't managed to spot any young though and I also can't really identify the weaver species which made them - so much for the book!
Out and about in Eritrea we have been able to photograph an Abyssinian Roller, an Osprey, Steppe Eagles, numerous Crab Plovers, a few Sacred Ibises and a couple of Hornbills of some description. Publishing the better shots, amongst our existing online photos, is out of the question for now, but other web-sites will have images.
It's the end of the first Summer ICT course and there are three to go, two more months in all. Last Saturday night there was a celebration at Hdmona (an Eri-style restaurant and dancing place) and the presence of beer meant a late-ish start on Sunday. A commotion in the garden turned out to be five storks having a disagreement in the big palm tree. Lots of ungainly wing flapping and high pitched calls. It was all a bit handbags though since there didn't seem to be any injured parties when it was all over.
We have also seen great swarms of helicopter-winged insects rising up from the ground a couple of times - I think they're some phase in the ant life-cycle baling out of the ant's nests dotted around the garden and heading out on mating flights and it all seems to be timed for early evening when there are no birds around, but I'm not really sure about all that; they don't really look like ants.

P