Quirimbas National Park Wader Ringing expedition Mozambique
November 14th to 28th 2009
Participants ;
Nick Tardivel
Jill Tardivel
Eugene Hood
Phil Hanmer
The focus of this trip was to spend most of the time ringing waders but to start with a bit of bush ringing to acclimatise the group was in order.
Pemba 14th to 16th
After settling into the chalet under an enormous Baobab tree, we set a line of nets through the coastal thicket and started catching. Most common were Sombre Greenbuls others included Terrestrial Brownbul, Tropical Boubou, Blue-mantled Crested Flycatcher, Black-throated Wattle-eye, White-browed Robinchat, Square-tailed Drongo, Golden-tailed Woodpecker, Burchell’s Coucal, Forest Weaver, Red-billed Firefinch, Red-winged Warbler and a Basra Reed Warbler.
Several retraps of over a year were caught of Red-throated Twinspot, Brown-crowned Tchagra, Green-winged Pytilia, Emerald-spotted Wood-dove, Pygmy Kingfisher and Olive Sunbird. Sitting in the beach-bar restaurant in the evenings we could hear lots of Whimbrel and other waders calling from the beach.
Mareja 17th and 18th
Mareja was an old renovated colonial farm house, set on a hill with commanding views across unspoilt Miombo forest and woodland. Our host was a German Count who had found the old house by driving into the front step with his landcruiser when exploring in the area 20 years ago and never left!
We arrived too late to set nets and as a pride of Lions had been in the area decided to wait for the rangers to assist us in the morning!
Set a line of 60’ nets at 0400hrs to the distant and mournful cries of a Southern Ground Hornbill and were out at 0500hrs just as a male African Broadbill started displaying deep in the woodland, such an odd sound as the bird flies from its perch in a circle rapidly clapping its wings together creating a manic buzzing sound.
Well its displaying worked as it wasn’t long before we caught the incoming female African Broadbill, a great result, such an interesting looking bird.
Netting in woodland is always slow but the species caught make up for this as we caught Pygmy Kingfisher, Little and Swallow-tailed Bee-eaters, Eastern Nicator, Pale Batis (a coastal endemic) and a real treat, Mangrove Kingfisher. A tail feather was taken from the latter species for stable isotope analysis to see if this bird was of the more southern migratory populations or had moved from the coastal mangroves to breed here in Miombo woodland.
During the heat of the day we had a net set in front of the accommodation and caught a few Little Swifts and Lesser-striped Swallows. One afternoon I was doing a net-round and looked down the line and about 4 nets down saw a big bird bouncing about in the net! Legging it I was fortunate to get hold of a very outraged male African Goshawk! During the day we were in a good spot for raptor watching and saw a very high fast moving European Marsh Harrier, several Bateleur, and a family party of 3 African Hawk Eagles. But best were a pair of pale morph Elenora’s Falcons heading south.
On the last day we got a pair of Ashy Flycatchers and 2 more African Broadbills! Also bounced a few Red-chested Cuckoo which were responding to the ipod and speaker. Sightings here included a pair of Livingstone’s Flycatchers which we somehow missed!
Nick and Jill as the trip Bat experts, caught a few specimens of the huge roost in the accommodation roof and painstakingly identified them as Small Free-tail Bats.
Ibo Island
Leaving the site we saw a few Dark-chanting Goshawk and lots of Broad-billed Rollers before heading for the landing site to the archipelago.
We met our motorised dhow which we were to have for the next 10 days at our disposal and set off at high tide for Ibo Island with thousands of waders flying about trying to find suitable roosting sites.
Landing on Ibo we met our team of trainees, Omar, Abdulla, Sufo, and Sufo Ibo who were all keen and ready to go.
We were not able to set nets this evening as a fierce wind had got up and so we relaxed on the terrace overlooking the bay and mangroves watching for Bat Hawks and enjoying the hospitality of our hosts.
Early next morning we set a few nets in the thickets around the ancient slave fort and started picking up a variety of birds including Little Bee-eater, Red-capped Robin-chat, Black-backed Puffback, and Brimstone Canary.
Sightings here included another pair of Elenora’s Falcons going over and at least 3 Osprey in residence.
The wind had dropped enough for us to get two lines of nets up on the flats on Ibo Point. The method here is for the tide to recede at dusk for birds to start dropping back in from roost and especially the Crab Plovers which come in once it is fully dark to feed on the abundant Ghost Crabs.
Just before dark there were a lot of birds dropping back in and we started picking off the odd individual including a surprise of 5 Common Terns.
We finished the evening at 2230hrs with 30 Crab Plover, 3 Greenshank, Grey Plover, Bar-tailed Godwit, Terek Sandpiper, Greater and Lesser Sandplover White-fronted and Ringed Plover.
We had a group of tourists come to watch us from the Lodge which was a great opportunity for our trainees to see how interested their visitors were.
Quirimbas Island
We only had the one night on Ibo as we had to get to Quirimba Island to get the right tide for the big roost where I had counted previously over 4,000 waders. Setting off at dawn we navigated the narrow winding channels through a vast swathe of mangrove forest eventually getting to Quirimba at 0700hrs. on the way we were lucky to have seen a pair of Humpback Dolphins and a single Elenora’s Falcon.
At the landing we were met by Kurt, one of a family of palm oil farmers who had been on the Island since the early part of last century and were taken to our very nice accommodation looking west out to sea.
The first thing we noticed was that we were surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of Madagascar Bee-eater burrows, mostly occupied! In no time we had a few 2 panel nets up and started catching these large and beautiful birds.
That afternoon we set off for the big roost only to find it was just too dangerous to work at night, too deep and very treacherous rocks made it impossible to take a catch safely.
Undeterred by this we set nets in the coastal thickets around the accommodation and had fun over the next two days catching a variety of new birds. Furling on the first day at dusk a small and very fast falcon came screaming along the beach and swooped just before the half furled net actually passing under it!!! Talk about bad timing!
Across the bay and on the low tide line we could see countless waders flying up and down as well as Swift Terns, Lesser Flamingo flocks and always the ubiquitous Osprey and Black Kites. At night we could hear the yapping calls of Crab Plovers moving with the tide.
The beach bush nets caught well with some surprises including Golden-tailed Woodpeckers, Brown-hooded, Malachite and Pygmy Kingfishers, Brown-breasted Barbet (a coastal endemic) Grey Sunbird (also) and African Paradise Flycatcher.
Ibo Island
We decided to head back to Ibo as wader netting was not an option here ad so caught the early morning tide and set off back to Ibo spotting another pair of Humpback Dolphin on the way.
That afternoon we set nets again on the flats and caught another 30 Crab Plovers, with Whimbrel, Greenshank, Grey Plover, Greater Sandplover, Terek Sandpiper and a Pied Kingfisher!
Matemo Island
Set off early on a mirror calm sea on the 2hr crossing to Matemo Island watching Common and Lesser-crested Terns feed above Skipjack Tuna crashing into bait-balls of smaller fish.
Wading ashore through the aquamarine sea, we saw at once the roost was good as birds began to congregate in the day. I had caught well here in the past and hoped to do so again.
We set up base at the ranger post for the island and in the afternoon set two lines of nets and waited for the tide. Over the next two nights we got 30 Whimbrel, Sanderling, Terek and Curlew Sandpiper, Lesser Sandplover and a Crab Plover. Unfortunately the tide had gone against us, not we were 3 days going into Neap tide from Spring tide so couldn’t get the concentration in the netting area.
Ibo Island
Back on Ibo we set the nets on the flat again and that night took a catch of mostly smaller waders a Whimbrel, Crab Plover and a Lesser-crested Tern.
Spent a pleasant morning during the heat of the day round the pool at the lodge and watched the waders out the front as well as Dimorphic Egrets, Black and Western Reef Herons working the exposed pools, the Black Herons employing their ‘umbrellas’.
That evening we took another catch, Whimbrel mostly, 2 Crab Plover and the usual smaller waders.
Pemba
The rains were expected and this morning as we set off on the Dhow as rain clouds gathered. We drove back to Pemba, counting no less than 25 Bateleur Eagles on the way as well as another 3 Elenora’s Falcons, a pair of Lanner and Wahlberg’s Eagles.
The rain now looked like it was serious, but we managed to get a few sessions in at the site in Pemba catching Red-winged Warbler, African Paradise Flycatcher, Grey and Blue Waxbills, a Garden Warbler and Yellow-breasted Apalis.
All in all a thoroughly enjoyable fortnight with ample species and time to look at them, spent at some very relaxing and conveniently situated sites.
See blow the species totals sheet
African Goshawk 1
Crab Plover 56
Common Ringed Plover 5
White-fronted Plover 5
Mongolian Sand Plover 3
Greater Sand Plover 12
Grey Plover 8
Terek Sandpiper 33
Common Greenshank 4
Sanderling 6
Bar-tailed Godwit 2
Common Whimbrel 30
Lesser-crested Tern 1
Common Tern 6
Emerald-spotted Wood-Dove 5
Burchell’s Coucal 1
White-rumped Swift 6
Malachite Kingfisher 1
Mangrove Kingfisher 1
Brown-hooded Kingfisher 1
African Pygmy-Kingfisher 4
Pied Kingfisher 1
Swallow-tailed Bee-eater 2
Little-Bee-eater 3
Madagascar Bee-eater 83
Brown - breasted Barbet 1
Golden-tailed Woodpecker 3
Cardinal Woodpecker 1
African Broadbill 3
Lesser Striped Swallow 3
Square-tailed Drongo 3
Dark-capped Bulbul 9
Terrestrial Brownbul 2
Sombre Greenbul 35
Yellow-bellied Greenbul 1
Eastern Nicator 2
Red-capped Robin-Chat 3
White-browed Robin-Chat 1
Bearded Scrub-Robin 1
Basra Reed Warbler 1
Garden Warbler 1
Red-faced Cisticola 1
Red-winged Warbler 2
Yellow-breasted Apalis 1
Green-backed Camaroptera 4
Ashy Flycatcher 2
African Paradise-Flycatcher 3
Blue-mantled Crested Flycatcher 2
Pale Batis 2
Black-throated Wattle-eye 2
Black-backed Puffback 6
Brown-crowned Tchagra 1
Tropical Boubou 1
Orange-breasted Bush-Shrike 1
Eastern Olive Sunbird 1
Grey Sunbird 2
Collared Sunbird 1
White-bellied Sunbird 1
Purple-banded Sunbird 5
Southern Grey-headed Sparrow 1
Spectacled Weaver 3
Village Weaver 2
Lesser Masked-Weaver 1
Dark-backed Weaver 4
Yellow Weaver 1
Yellow Bishop 2
Green-winged Pytilia 3
Red-billed Firefinch 7
Blue Waxbill 7
Grey Waxbill 1
Yellow-fronted Canary 3
Brimstone Canary 2
Golden-breasted Bunting 1
Friday, January 22, 2010
Bird Ringing Workshop
Quirimbas National Park
9th to 22nd April 2009
Facilitator; Malcolm Wilson
Summary
This workshop was designed to introduce the techniques of bird trapping and ringing to a selection of participants living in the National Park. The process of learning how to conduct this technique to full competency takes 2 to 3 years and requires a considerable level of enthusiasm and commitment.
Nine participants were chosen who consisted of park rangers, community volunteer rangers and two guides from Ibo Island. In addition to these participants Rebecca Phillips-marques was to begin her post observation practical training. Also in attendance was Mark Blythman an Australian volunteer who had been bird ringing for 3 years and still a trainee.
The purpose of showing and involving the participants the various techniques was to give them a sense of association as well as a different outlook and attitude towards birds and what they represent in the environment.
Four sites were chosen for the diversity of species of which a total of 63 were caught of 292 individuals.
Pemba Dive site.
This site constituted a very convenient and most effective venue for this type of workshop, being set in coastal scrub and thicket, the birdlife was prolific. Many individuals of lots of different species were caught here providing the participants with a good introduction to the technique.
With ample facilities to stay on-site, the participants were able to be in at the dawn start.
As usual there was a delay in all the participants arriving on the first day. The vehicle which was sent to collect the participants from Bilibiza and Mareja did not arrive on time and eventually appeared on the 3rd day.
It was explained at the start that the participants would initially just observe and gradually begin to assist and conduct tasks as directed. Extracting birds from mist nets, taking biometrics is a very difficult and intricate task which requires many hours of practice and therefore initially participants observed the method whilst an explanation was given by the facilitator.
Setting nets, opening and closing them for the night however was an activity the participants could and did get involved with and soon learnt the procedures.
It was important to explain to the group why we ring birds and an explanation was made that when a bird is ringed with a uniquely numbered ring it allows an accurate study of any given species population demographics. by identifying a large number of individuals in a number of local populations, it is possible to ascertain the health of a population and by looking at such things as adult to young ratios, impossible by just observation alone.
And even explaining the obvious reasons such as international recovery with is important as coastal Mozambique is on a migratory flyway and many birds are ringed to the north and south of Mozambique in Africa.
During the three mornings and days we caught a total of 105 birds of 28 species giving the participants a good opportunity to look at the various adaptations and specialisations of each species. In order for the participants to understand the complexities of specialisation and adaptation that creates bio diversity, we looked closely at what each species fed on, its habits, weather it was a terrestrial or arboreal species and sexual dimorphism which is a confusing phenomenon to anyone starting to learn about birds.
Among the 28 species we caught a number of Black-throated Wattle-eye, a bird which is listed by IUCN as near-threatened which seems to be particularly common here and in the park. it was noted that this would be a much sought after species by visiting birdwatchers. We listed all the ‘priority species’ that would be of prime interest to visitors, namely coastal endemics within this bio-geographical region.
There was a good opportunity to show everyone the abundance of African Paradise Flycatchers which given their high numbers in the area were on migration or had just finished and were now on their over-wintering grounds.
Other species which were of particular interest were Marsh Warbler and Basra Reed Warbler. These two species are very difficult to see in this dense bush habitat and so provided an opportunity to get a really good look at them. It was also pointed out that they were Palearctic migrants having finished breeding in the northern hemisphere, we compared the different shaped wings of a local resident and could see how much longer and better designed the migrants wings were for marathon flight.
Initially 3 x 18m nets were set so as not to get too many birds and not have time to go over the details with everyone. When Mark arrived on the second day I was able to put up another 2 x 18m and 4 x 12m, any more would have been too much with no time to spend on each bird.
Mareja
This site was quite a different habitat to the previous one, set in tall miombo woodland it did not have the abundance of species. However there were a few species which were quite different to what we had caught previously.
This was the first site where two of the participants lived and worked with the lodge and as such had more contact with visitors then the others.
We set 5 x 18m and 5 x 12m nets with everyone assisting the operation. As it was getting late we still managed to catch 4 birds before furling the nets for the night. At dusk we set a single 12m net at the accommodation buildings and caught 5 White-rumped Swifts and a Lesser Striped Swallow.
All the while I am under the impression that the participants are attending simply because they have been invited to. I don’t think they have a particularly demanding day in terms of work and it was somewhat disappointing to see some of the participants leave the workshop dead on 1700hrs even when there were still birds being caught and assumed this was the official time to finish work.
Conditions were not optimal with a strong wind blowing but caught a few birds at first light before things slowed down. We covered birds of prey in the bird book, which species occur in the park and how to tell them apart. The participants, in particular Jossias, asked a good question, why were some birds present in the park when the distribution map in the bird book said otherwise? It was pointed out that there had been very little observations and record submitting by ornithologists and so a lot of the work we were doing was discovering new species in areas otherwise unexplored.
We took a walk mid morning at one point to go and see a particular site which had riparian forest and possibly new species. We came to an area of open grassland where we found a lot of the coastal endemic, Zanzibar Red Bishop and decided to try and catch them the following day.
We never did find the riparian forest as the guides seemed hesitant to walk there, possibly due to elephants.
Anser Sofu was called to Pemba as his sister had unfortunately passed away during the night.
We caught very few birds in the morning however one in particular was an African Broadbill and as such an indicator of good forest.
We returned back to the open grassland area with 3 nets and spent an hour catching some of the Bishops here. As striking as the males are in this group, they differ only subtly and we went over the criterion of what to look for in each species as three quite similar species occur in this area.
In all we caught a total of 42 birds of 15 species at Mareja.
We had arranged for the driver to collect us early in the morning so that we could catch the tide to Ibo Island, the next site. However the vehicle failed to arrive until the afternoon having been used for other tasks around Pemba despite the vehicle having been allocated for this workshop. By the time we did get going it was far too late to set nets as planned for that evening on the tide flats for waders. As we only had three nights on Ibo this was very frustrating and disappointing as we had effectively lost one night of netting. Given the costs of the workshop as well as all the planning and logistics undertaken by Rebecca, it was a great waste and very short-sighted and selfish of whoever was responsible.
As we had not managed to organise any sites the previous afternoon, the morning was lost. However we took a walk round the town part of the island and found some good sites near the fort we could use for the next morning. The wind was quite strong which made it near impossible to do any netting.
That afternoon at 1500 we set two lines of special wader nets out on the sand flats in front of the lodge. It was explained to the group that in order to catch wading birds at night you had to know about the tides and how they influenced bird movements accordingly. As this activity began at dusk most of the group elected to leave and go back to base and so few of the participants got to see some of the shorebirds caught. In particular 3 Crab Plover were caught which is a much sought after bird in this part of the world and it was a shame all the group did not get to see this bird.
We continued till 2300hrs by which time the tide gone out and with it the birds.
In addition to the three Crab Plovers we got 3 Greater Sand Plovers and one White-fronted Plover.
The next morning we walked to the Old Fort and erected 2 x 18m and 3 x 12m nets in low scrubby vegetation and had a good morning catching a good variety of species and a good amount of individuals.. we got each member of the group to actually start extracting and ringing some of the birds. It was encouraging to see how keen they were, although one or two birds were handled a bit too roughly. This is normal though when it is the first time to handle a bird in this manner and were guided through the whole process from extracting from the bag, fitting the ring, measuring the wing, tail and finally weighing the bird. I checked all the wing measurements and was surprised to see how accurate they all were.
Thus all were very happy to have got to handle some birds and I hope that they can be given the opportunity to practice this technique more regularly in order to become more adept. It will take a long time as in all cases the skill level is directly correlated to the amount of time one spends training.
Ibo Island could potentially become a very good site for a bird observatory with a permanent ringing effort conducted by resident qualified rangers or local guides. This would enable the regular training of guides, rangers, community fiscals and others who would be interested and ultimately passionate about doing so. In time this can become a draw card for the many tourists who visit Ibo as happens in many other countries, the concept of which has been presented in previous proposals to WWF by Malcolm Wilson.
That evening we set the same number of nets in roughly the same area and waited for the tide to push birds up along the tide line. The wind was very strong and restricted us from setting too far out and putting more nets up.
We caught till 0030hrs and ended with 2 Crab Plovers, 8 White-fronted Plover and a Greenshank. Only one of the participants remained with us as well as 3 local students who helped take the nets down.
The following day we set off for Guludo Lodge in the bark boat with all the participants except the two from Ibo who remained behind.
On arrival at Guludo we made a reconnaissance of the area and set 5 x 18m nets at different location. The participants now getting to grips with the process and were all very keen to help.
During the three days at Guludo the participants made progress by handling and becoming more involved with the ringing. We caught 74 birds in all of 34 species, giving everyone many new species to observe close up. During the days we would cover the subject in the manual by having informal discussions and noted many good questions put forward, particularly by Jossias Paulo and Anser Sofu.
This was the last site of the workshop and from here we returned to Pemba directly.
Conclusions
Of the nine participants who attended, those who stood out marginally above the others, in terms of showing the most interest, were Jossias Paulo, Joao Assane and Anser Sofu.
The is an element among them which would seem to make it hard to venture into a new area of expertise. Having been employed in their current services for a long time, it will take time for projects to develop and with it this area of capability.
In time it would be good to recruit more younger people to the park service who are just starting out and can immerse themselves fully into the development of avi-tourism and research related monitoring projects.
One of the tasks of the workshop was to look at the potential of each site visited to see if they could be suitable for bird ringing expeditions and permanent monitoring sites (bird observatories) in the future.
For general convenience and good species diversity and numbers, the Pemba Dive site in Pemba was exceptionally good. Although not in the Park, it makes a perfect focal point for workshops to be held with all the facilities to cater for a large group.
Mareja has good potential having the facilities to cater for students and tourists alike. However the abundance of birds is lower with much the same species other than the various forest indicator species.
Mareja would not make a particularly good site for a bird observatory but possibly a once a month visit to monitor movements, moult and breeding stratagem.
Ibo Island would be an ideal choice to establish a bird observatory. With the main emphasis placed on ringing Palearctic migrants. It has the best habitats in the form of inter tidal sand-flats for migrant shorebirds as well as thicket scrub for migrant passerines. It is a good base to visit the many large shorebird roosts on Matemo Island and others. With a growing population on the island there are a lot of young people who showed very willing to get involved and it would be a great shame if these youngsters cannot be employed in some way to ultimately run an observatory. With good numbers of visitors to the island, an operational bird observatory can be a first class attraction to casual observers and keen birding enthusiasts alike. If a nominal fee could be charged per person with an explanation of how the fee is used it could go a long way to sustaining the operation. One example was of a group of over 100 tourists who came ashore from a visiting National Geographic oceanic cruise in an impressive operation involving 10 large ridged inflatable boats. If each one of these amateur naturalists were to donate $1 it would go a long way to helping a few local trainees become more focussed. Ultimately establishing a Bird Observatory on Ibo would not be a costly exercise.
Guludo in particularly the lodge was a good site, but really only if a group of visiting bird ringing tourists were staying at the lodge. The area all round the village has good habitat and in time a appropriate site could be found here and residents of the village may become interested in being trained to run a project. There is little potential for catching shorebirds here.
Future perspectives
To realise some of the projects outlined previously, the way forward now is to attract some of the many skilled and experienced bird ringers to come to Quirimbas National Park and spend time imparting this skill at some of the sites mentioned.
Malcolm Wilson with African Affinity have a pool of many such people who to date have spent many weeks bird ringing in South Africa, Kenya Rwanda and Uganda and as such are continually interested and passionate about visiting new countries to gain new experiences. From my experiences of ringing in Africa, Quirimbas National Park is an exceptional site generally and even more so for shorebirds.
Between the months of September and May hundreds of thousands of Palearctic migrating shorebirds visit the archipelago and valuable data on where these birds are actually from and where they may be going to, needs to be collected by trapping and ringing.
Once a picture is built up of the requirements these birds need on passage and at stopover sites, we can then pre-empt population declines due to short-sighted development because of bad management decisions. This can be done by making informed management decisions based on insight gained from accurate data collected from ringing effort.
These expeditions will have a three-fold purpose
1. bringing a new kind of tourism
2. gathering valuable research
3. capacity building.
Already after 3 visits we have discovered new species not only for the country but for the park and many other range extension records.
With additional numbers of skilled amateur ornithologists visiting the park, it will mean that the biodiversity increases and as such make the park even more of an attraction. There is the potential to initially conduct 4-6 of these expeditions per year and as found in other countries this will increase as word of mouth and editorials take effect.
List of birds caught and ringed during the workshop
White-fronted Plover 9
Greater Sandplover 3
Crab Plover 5 a priority target species
Greenshank 1
Brown-breasted Barbet 6 Coastal endemic
Yellow-rumped Tinkerbird 1
Golden-tailed Woodpecker 1
African Pygmy Kingfisher 7
Brown-hooded Kingfisher 3
Malachite Kingfisher 1
Red-faced Mousebird 1
White-rumped Swift 14
Little Bee-eater 6
Red-billed Wood Hoopoe 3
African Broadbill 1 Forest indicator
Lesser Striped Swallow 1
Black-throated Wattle-eye 7 IUCN threatened
Blue Waxbill 1
Red-billed Firefinch 6
Collared Sunbird 3
Purple-banded Sunbird 7
Olive Sunbird 1
Scarlet-chested Sunbird 2
Grey Sunbird 1 Coastal endemic
Blue-mantled Crested Flycatcher 1
African Paradise Flycatcher 14 Afro-tropical migrant
European Marsh Warbler 2
Green-backed Camaroptera 5
Red-faced Crombec 1
Pale Batis 3
Short-winged Cisticola 2
Red-faced Cisticola 4
Tawny-flanked Prinia 2
Green-winged Pytilia 11
Red-throated Twinspot 5
Eastern Paradise Whydah 1
Zanzibar Red Bishop 15 coastal endemic
Black-winged Red Bishop 8
Yellow-mantled Widowbird 1
Yellow-fronted Canary 1
European Sedge Warbler 1
Basra Reed Warbler 1
Red-billed Quelea 2
White-browed Scrub-robin 1
Red-capped Robin-chat 11
White-browed Robin-chat 1
Bearded Scrub-robin 1
Sombre Greenbul 26
Yellow-bellied Greenbul 27
Yellow-streaked Greenbul 1
Dark-capped Bulbul 12
Terrestrial Brownbul 3
Black-backed Puffback 8
Lesser-masked Weaver 10
Southern Grey-headed Sparrow 2
Spectacled Weaver 3
Village Weaver 4
Black-bellied Starling 3
Brown-crowned Tchagra 5
Eastern Nicator 2
Tropical Boubou 1
Grey-headed Bushshrike 2
Emerald-spotted Wood-dove 7
Tambourine Dove 1
Quirimbas National Park
9th to 22nd April 2009
Facilitator; Malcolm Wilson
Summary
This workshop was designed to introduce the techniques of bird trapping and ringing to a selection of participants living in the National Park. The process of learning how to conduct this technique to full competency takes 2 to 3 years and requires a considerable level of enthusiasm and commitment.
Nine participants were chosen who consisted of park rangers, community volunteer rangers and two guides from Ibo Island. In addition to these participants Rebecca Phillips-marques was to begin her post observation practical training. Also in attendance was Mark Blythman an Australian volunteer who had been bird ringing for 3 years and still a trainee.
The purpose of showing and involving the participants the various techniques was to give them a sense of association as well as a different outlook and attitude towards birds and what they represent in the environment.
Four sites were chosen for the diversity of species of which a total of 63 were caught of 292 individuals.
Pemba Dive site.
This site constituted a very convenient and most effective venue for this type of workshop, being set in coastal scrub and thicket, the birdlife was prolific. Many individuals of lots of different species were caught here providing the participants with a good introduction to the technique.
With ample facilities to stay on-site, the participants were able to be in at the dawn start.
As usual there was a delay in all the participants arriving on the first day. The vehicle which was sent to collect the participants from Bilibiza and Mareja did not arrive on time and eventually appeared on the 3rd day.
It was explained at the start that the participants would initially just observe and gradually begin to assist and conduct tasks as directed. Extracting birds from mist nets, taking biometrics is a very difficult and intricate task which requires many hours of practice and therefore initially participants observed the method whilst an explanation was given by the facilitator.
Setting nets, opening and closing them for the night however was an activity the participants could and did get involved with and soon learnt the procedures.
It was important to explain to the group why we ring birds and an explanation was made that when a bird is ringed with a uniquely numbered ring it allows an accurate study of any given species population demographics. by identifying a large number of individuals in a number of local populations, it is possible to ascertain the health of a population and by looking at such things as adult to young ratios, impossible by just observation alone.
And even explaining the obvious reasons such as international recovery with is important as coastal Mozambique is on a migratory flyway and many birds are ringed to the north and south of Mozambique in Africa.
During the three mornings and days we caught a total of 105 birds of 28 species giving the participants a good opportunity to look at the various adaptations and specialisations of each species. In order for the participants to understand the complexities of specialisation and adaptation that creates bio diversity, we looked closely at what each species fed on, its habits, weather it was a terrestrial or arboreal species and sexual dimorphism which is a confusing phenomenon to anyone starting to learn about birds.
Among the 28 species we caught a number of Black-throated Wattle-eye, a bird which is listed by IUCN as near-threatened which seems to be particularly common here and in the park. it was noted that this would be a much sought after species by visiting birdwatchers. We listed all the ‘priority species’ that would be of prime interest to visitors, namely coastal endemics within this bio-geographical region.
There was a good opportunity to show everyone the abundance of African Paradise Flycatchers which given their high numbers in the area were on migration or had just finished and were now on their over-wintering grounds.
Other species which were of particular interest were Marsh Warbler and Basra Reed Warbler. These two species are very difficult to see in this dense bush habitat and so provided an opportunity to get a really good look at them. It was also pointed out that they were Palearctic migrants having finished breeding in the northern hemisphere, we compared the different shaped wings of a local resident and could see how much longer and better designed the migrants wings were for marathon flight.
Initially 3 x 18m nets were set so as not to get too many birds and not have time to go over the details with everyone. When Mark arrived on the second day I was able to put up another 2 x 18m and 4 x 12m, any more would have been too much with no time to spend on each bird.
Mareja
This site was quite a different habitat to the previous one, set in tall miombo woodland it did not have the abundance of species. However there were a few species which were quite different to what we had caught previously.
This was the first site where two of the participants lived and worked with the lodge and as such had more contact with visitors then the others.
We set 5 x 18m and 5 x 12m nets with everyone assisting the operation. As it was getting late we still managed to catch 4 birds before furling the nets for the night. At dusk we set a single 12m net at the accommodation buildings and caught 5 White-rumped Swifts and a Lesser Striped Swallow.
All the while I am under the impression that the participants are attending simply because they have been invited to. I don’t think they have a particularly demanding day in terms of work and it was somewhat disappointing to see some of the participants leave the workshop dead on 1700hrs even when there were still birds being caught and assumed this was the official time to finish work.
Conditions were not optimal with a strong wind blowing but caught a few birds at first light before things slowed down. We covered birds of prey in the bird book, which species occur in the park and how to tell them apart. The participants, in particular Jossias, asked a good question, why were some birds present in the park when the distribution map in the bird book said otherwise? It was pointed out that there had been very little observations and record submitting by ornithologists and so a lot of the work we were doing was discovering new species in areas otherwise unexplored.
We took a walk mid morning at one point to go and see a particular site which had riparian forest and possibly new species. We came to an area of open grassland where we found a lot of the coastal endemic, Zanzibar Red Bishop and decided to try and catch them the following day.
We never did find the riparian forest as the guides seemed hesitant to walk there, possibly due to elephants.
Anser Sofu was called to Pemba as his sister had unfortunately passed away during the night.
We caught very few birds in the morning however one in particular was an African Broadbill and as such an indicator of good forest.
We returned back to the open grassland area with 3 nets and spent an hour catching some of the Bishops here. As striking as the males are in this group, they differ only subtly and we went over the criterion of what to look for in each species as three quite similar species occur in this area.
In all we caught a total of 42 birds of 15 species at Mareja.
We had arranged for the driver to collect us early in the morning so that we could catch the tide to Ibo Island, the next site. However the vehicle failed to arrive until the afternoon having been used for other tasks around Pemba despite the vehicle having been allocated for this workshop. By the time we did get going it was far too late to set nets as planned for that evening on the tide flats for waders. As we only had three nights on Ibo this was very frustrating and disappointing as we had effectively lost one night of netting. Given the costs of the workshop as well as all the planning and logistics undertaken by Rebecca, it was a great waste and very short-sighted and selfish of whoever was responsible.
As we had not managed to organise any sites the previous afternoon, the morning was lost. However we took a walk round the town part of the island and found some good sites near the fort we could use for the next morning. The wind was quite strong which made it near impossible to do any netting.
That afternoon at 1500 we set two lines of special wader nets out on the sand flats in front of the lodge. It was explained to the group that in order to catch wading birds at night you had to know about the tides and how they influenced bird movements accordingly. As this activity began at dusk most of the group elected to leave and go back to base and so few of the participants got to see some of the shorebirds caught. In particular 3 Crab Plover were caught which is a much sought after bird in this part of the world and it was a shame all the group did not get to see this bird.
We continued till 2300hrs by which time the tide gone out and with it the birds.
In addition to the three Crab Plovers we got 3 Greater Sand Plovers and one White-fronted Plover.
The next morning we walked to the Old Fort and erected 2 x 18m and 3 x 12m nets in low scrubby vegetation and had a good morning catching a good variety of species and a good amount of individuals.. we got each member of the group to actually start extracting and ringing some of the birds. It was encouraging to see how keen they were, although one or two birds were handled a bit too roughly. This is normal though when it is the first time to handle a bird in this manner and were guided through the whole process from extracting from the bag, fitting the ring, measuring the wing, tail and finally weighing the bird. I checked all the wing measurements and was surprised to see how accurate they all were.
Thus all were very happy to have got to handle some birds and I hope that they can be given the opportunity to practice this technique more regularly in order to become more adept. It will take a long time as in all cases the skill level is directly correlated to the amount of time one spends training.
Ibo Island could potentially become a very good site for a bird observatory with a permanent ringing effort conducted by resident qualified rangers or local guides. This would enable the regular training of guides, rangers, community fiscals and others who would be interested and ultimately passionate about doing so. In time this can become a draw card for the many tourists who visit Ibo as happens in many other countries, the concept of which has been presented in previous proposals to WWF by Malcolm Wilson.
That evening we set the same number of nets in roughly the same area and waited for the tide to push birds up along the tide line. The wind was very strong and restricted us from setting too far out and putting more nets up.
We caught till 0030hrs and ended with 2 Crab Plovers, 8 White-fronted Plover and a Greenshank. Only one of the participants remained with us as well as 3 local students who helped take the nets down.
The following day we set off for Guludo Lodge in the bark boat with all the participants except the two from Ibo who remained behind.
On arrival at Guludo we made a reconnaissance of the area and set 5 x 18m nets at different location. The participants now getting to grips with the process and were all very keen to help.
During the three days at Guludo the participants made progress by handling and becoming more involved with the ringing. We caught 74 birds in all of 34 species, giving everyone many new species to observe close up. During the days we would cover the subject in the manual by having informal discussions and noted many good questions put forward, particularly by Jossias Paulo and Anser Sofu.
This was the last site of the workshop and from here we returned to Pemba directly.
Conclusions
Of the nine participants who attended, those who stood out marginally above the others, in terms of showing the most interest, were Jossias Paulo, Joao Assane and Anser Sofu.
The is an element among them which would seem to make it hard to venture into a new area of expertise. Having been employed in their current services for a long time, it will take time for projects to develop and with it this area of capability.
In time it would be good to recruit more younger people to the park service who are just starting out and can immerse themselves fully into the development of avi-tourism and research related monitoring projects.
One of the tasks of the workshop was to look at the potential of each site visited to see if they could be suitable for bird ringing expeditions and permanent monitoring sites (bird observatories) in the future.
For general convenience and good species diversity and numbers, the Pemba Dive site in Pemba was exceptionally good. Although not in the Park, it makes a perfect focal point for workshops to be held with all the facilities to cater for a large group.
Mareja has good potential having the facilities to cater for students and tourists alike. However the abundance of birds is lower with much the same species other than the various forest indicator species.
Mareja would not make a particularly good site for a bird observatory but possibly a once a month visit to monitor movements, moult and breeding stratagem.
Ibo Island would be an ideal choice to establish a bird observatory. With the main emphasis placed on ringing Palearctic migrants. It has the best habitats in the form of inter tidal sand-flats for migrant shorebirds as well as thicket scrub for migrant passerines. It is a good base to visit the many large shorebird roosts on Matemo Island and others. With a growing population on the island there are a lot of young people who showed very willing to get involved and it would be a great shame if these youngsters cannot be employed in some way to ultimately run an observatory. With good numbers of visitors to the island, an operational bird observatory can be a first class attraction to casual observers and keen birding enthusiasts alike. If a nominal fee could be charged per person with an explanation of how the fee is used it could go a long way to sustaining the operation. One example was of a group of over 100 tourists who came ashore from a visiting National Geographic oceanic cruise in an impressive operation involving 10 large ridged inflatable boats. If each one of these amateur naturalists were to donate $1 it would go a long way to helping a few local trainees become more focussed. Ultimately establishing a Bird Observatory on Ibo would not be a costly exercise.
Guludo in particularly the lodge was a good site, but really only if a group of visiting bird ringing tourists were staying at the lodge. The area all round the village has good habitat and in time a appropriate site could be found here and residents of the village may become interested in being trained to run a project. There is little potential for catching shorebirds here.
Future perspectives
To realise some of the projects outlined previously, the way forward now is to attract some of the many skilled and experienced bird ringers to come to Quirimbas National Park and spend time imparting this skill at some of the sites mentioned.
Malcolm Wilson with African Affinity have a pool of many such people who to date have spent many weeks bird ringing in South Africa, Kenya Rwanda and Uganda and as such are continually interested and passionate about visiting new countries to gain new experiences. From my experiences of ringing in Africa, Quirimbas National Park is an exceptional site generally and even more so for shorebirds.
Between the months of September and May hundreds of thousands of Palearctic migrating shorebirds visit the archipelago and valuable data on where these birds are actually from and where they may be going to, needs to be collected by trapping and ringing.
Once a picture is built up of the requirements these birds need on passage and at stopover sites, we can then pre-empt population declines due to short-sighted development because of bad management decisions. This can be done by making informed management decisions based on insight gained from accurate data collected from ringing effort.
These expeditions will have a three-fold purpose
1. bringing a new kind of tourism
2. gathering valuable research
3. capacity building.
Already after 3 visits we have discovered new species not only for the country but for the park and many other range extension records.
With additional numbers of skilled amateur ornithologists visiting the park, it will mean that the biodiversity increases and as such make the park even more of an attraction. There is the potential to initially conduct 4-6 of these expeditions per year and as found in other countries this will increase as word of mouth and editorials take effect.
List of birds caught and ringed during the workshop
White-fronted Plover 9
Greater Sandplover 3
Crab Plover 5 a priority target species
Greenshank 1
Brown-breasted Barbet 6 Coastal endemic
Yellow-rumped Tinkerbird 1
Golden-tailed Woodpecker 1
African Pygmy Kingfisher 7
Brown-hooded Kingfisher 3
Malachite Kingfisher 1
Red-faced Mousebird 1
White-rumped Swift 14
Little Bee-eater 6
Red-billed Wood Hoopoe 3
African Broadbill 1 Forest indicator
Lesser Striped Swallow 1
Black-throated Wattle-eye 7 IUCN threatened
Blue Waxbill 1
Red-billed Firefinch 6
Collared Sunbird 3
Purple-banded Sunbird 7
Olive Sunbird 1
Scarlet-chested Sunbird 2
Grey Sunbird 1 Coastal endemic
Blue-mantled Crested Flycatcher 1
African Paradise Flycatcher 14 Afro-tropical migrant
European Marsh Warbler 2
Green-backed Camaroptera 5
Red-faced Crombec 1
Pale Batis 3
Short-winged Cisticola 2
Red-faced Cisticola 4
Tawny-flanked Prinia 2
Green-winged Pytilia 11
Red-throated Twinspot 5
Eastern Paradise Whydah 1
Zanzibar Red Bishop 15 coastal endemic
Black-winged Red Bishop 8
Yellow-mantled Widowbird 1
Yellow-fronted Canary 1
European Sedge Warbler 1
Basra Reed Warbler 1
Red-billed Quelea 2
White-browed Scrub-robin 1
Red-capped Robin-chat 11
White-browed Robin-chat 1
Bearded Scrub-robin 1
Sombre Greenbul 26
Yellow-bellied Greenbul 27
Yellow-streaked Greenbul 1
Dark-capped Bulbul 12
Terrestrial Brownbul 3
Black-backed Puffback 8
Lesser-masked Weaver 10
Southern Grey-headed Sparrow 2
Spectacled Weaver 3
Village Weaver 4
Black-bellied Starling 3
Brown-crowned Tchagra 5
Eastern Nicator 2
Tropical Boubou 1
Grey-headed Bushshrike 2
Emerald-spotted Wood-dove 7
Tambourine Dove 1
Limpopo Ringing Expedition South Africa
March 19th to 31st 2009
Billy Rutherford
Barry Williams
Richard Charles
Tim Ball
Claire McGuire
Mark Blythman
Jim Williams
Michael Parker
Loading up the trip vehicle was a challenge to say the least, but eventually we managed to fit everything in then squeeze in ourselves including the pigeon, 20 mice, zebra finch and mealworms!
First off we started dropping for raptors in the Nylsvlei area, big open farms with large patches of bushveld which made for good birding too.
So far we had seen 3 Brown Snake Eagles (BSE) and 1 Black-chested Snake Eagle (BCSE) a few Amur Falcons and Lesser Kestrel, but the bulk of migrant raptors it would seem had left. Steppe Buzzards were conspicuous by their absence.
We had a few Black-shouldered Kites onto traps but unusually very half-hearted attempts. These birds were very common and a count of 50 were made in this area. Eventually we caught an adult Greater Kestrel which was duly ringed by Billy and then had to get going to the Woodbush Forest.
We arrived late and managed to get a load of nets up before dark and furled. As we were preparing a braai (South African BBQ) a Wood Owl flew down onto the track by the cottage and picked up a beetle! In moments we had an owl net with a bal-chatri under it and watched for the next 2 hours as the owl swooped down over the net and back up into the trees. Eventually hunger or curiosity got he better of it and landed on the trap then quickly took off but into the bottom shelf of the net!
What a gorgeous bird, an adult with an interesting mix of new and old flight feathers.
Woodbush
We were hampered here in the mornings with a heavy drizzle, but between net rounds managed to pick up a number of birds of a variety of species including Kurrichane Thrush, Chorister Robin-chat, Dusky Flycatcher, Southern Double-collared Sunbird and Cape White-eye.
Setting off late morning to look for raptors we were soon presented with a Long-crested Eagle which took no time in coming to the trap and getting caught. It was a young bird, no primary moult and an off-yellow eye, Tim had the honor of ringing it and we had our first eagle in the bag.
A bit later we got a juvenile Jackal Buzzard not far from the town of Hearnetzburg.
During the morning we saw 3 Forest Buzzards but could not get near enough to drop a trap for them. Eventually we spotted one across the small valley by the guesthouse and put a trap up on the bank of the track and waited. It was a good 200m away and after 5 minutes it saw the mouse and came in, but very wary and took 20 minuets to alight next to the trap then another 10 to get on it where it caught itself. Unfortunately Jim, nominated to secure the bird, spent far too long getting to the trap by which time the buzzard had slipped free. A great shame after so much time and effort had gone into catching this bird, but that is the nature of the game.
In all we saw 5 Long-crested Eagles an adult Jackal Buzzard, 3 Steppe Buzzards and 4 Fish Eagles.
Mist netting in the garden that afternoon and the next morning produced a few more sunbirds and new birds included, several Forest Canary, Black-throated Apalis, Cape Robinchat and Cape Batis.
Lowveld
On the way out of Woodbush Forest we took the famous ‘Forest Drive’ which traverses many kilometres of beautiful forest. The highlight along this track was finding an adult Forest Buzzard which flushed as soon as we came across it, but fortunately landed in a dead tree further along the track. Got a trap down and in seconds the bird was on the trap, a very different attitude to the bird of yesterday.
We had the bird in no time where Barry Williams duly ringed it, having spent 3 trips previously attempting to catch this species he was suitably chuffed.
There is not much known about the seasonal movements of this species, breeding only south of the 30th parallel and moving up the escarpment to the northern Transvaal. This bird, an adult would have possibly finished breeding and possibly moving into a rainfall area to ‘over winter’.
On the way to Tzaneen, the small town en route to our destination we encountered 6 Brown Snake Eagles and dropped for 3 to no avail. Also had a Steppe Buzzard come in to the trap but ‘smelt a rat’ at the last second and kept on going!
Just outside the town of Phalaborwa an adult Black-chested Snake-eagle dropped out of the sky in a screaming dive to some unseen prey item, but aborted and landed in a tree nearby. We got a trap down but the bird was too interested in what it had missed.
Arriving at our lodge we got a good number of nets up in nice thorn scrub and before dark got a few Red-backed Shrikes, Fork-tailed Drongo and after supper the ipod produced a beautiful immature Southern White-faced owl.
The next morning after the catch rate subsided Claire whilst taking a shower was bitten by a tiny scorpion on the instep of her foot effectively putting her out of action and in great pain for the rest of the day.
Meanwhile some of us went out on a raptor run and just outside town came across a Brown Snake-eagle on a pylon, managed to manoeuvre the vehicle into position along a goat track and got the trap down. This time the eagle came in immediately and on the trap. we then spent a ‘heart-in-mouth’ 10 minutes before the bird was caught and we had a beauty of a beast, an adult at 2.9 kg and in fine shape. Billy was the lucky one who ringed it and thus confidently charged set off into the bush.
We caught 2 Dark-chanting Goshawks in the normal way and 2 Lilac-breasted Rollers, coming to mealworm bated spring-traps, but no more snake-eagles.
Back at the lodge we continued to run the nets catching till dusk when we put the ipod on a mix of nightjar calls and were rewarded with a Firey-necked Nightjar and whilst dazzling produced a Mozambique Nightjar and a Water Dikkop. We were not so lucky to have caught a Bronze-winged Courser and a Double-banded Sandgrouse which flushed too soon.
After a 2 hour session first thing we set off to the Soutpansberg Mountains following lots of little back roads, but again just outside Phalaborwa the pylons produced again, this time a second year Black-chested Snake Eagle. I was convinced it was a bird we had tried to catch the day before which was impossible to drop for, but this time we got a trap on a service track and the bird came in immediately. It was duly ringed (by Billy again!) and we continued.
We dropped for another Black-chested Snake Eagle an adult later on which came in, hovered over the trap and then landed in a tree nearby which sometimes happens. Then flew up to another tree apparently loosing interest.
Next up was a Lizard Buzzard which came in typically rocket-like and was caught right away. Richard ringed this one, a sub adult.
Soutpansberg
We arrived at the foot of the Soutpansberg and began the 8 km ascent up a tiny one lane track in the large mini bus we were in! Ignoring the crunching and grinding of the undercarriage we made it to the top, quite an achievement and the first 2x4 ever to do so!
We set a long line of nets in this wonderful wooded bushland right on the edge of a spectacular view overlooking the south. A pair of Verreaux’s Eagles had a nest just below us and would from time to time soar over us providing wonderful views of this magnificent eagle.
The setting here was paradise, with the ringing table set by the edge of the escarpment where we could keep an eye on passing raptors. Observations included three Cape Vultures a pair of African Hawk-eagles, an adult Black-chested Snake Eagle, an adult Jackal Buzzard, a Pair of local Peregrine Falcons, a Lanner, a fantastic displaying male Crowned Eagle a Honey Buzzard, 5 male Amur falcons heading north with a Steppe Buzzard.
A really exciting moment was seeing a small falcon way off hunting over the bushveld which could of possibly been a Taita Falcon, a very rare and localised bird found only in South Africa some 200km away as the falcon flies. However we were not able to get enough on it to clinch the identity, just that it was different!
The camera traps in the Soutpansberg to date have now caught 11 individual Leopards. Very encouraging to know this beautiful predator is doing well here.
We had the pigeon out in the basket trap all day and at one point a Peregrine looked very interested, cutting off a convincing stoop just before the trees.
During the night we played various calls for Cape and Spotted Eagle-owls and even got a response from the former but no luck.
Limpopo Valley
After the mornings catch we set off back down the track reshaping the bodywork as we went and headed north over the mountains to a vast area of dry bushveld. On route we caught a juvenile Pale-chanting Goshawk and a Purple Roller and had a Brown Snake Eagle on the trap which got off at the last second.
At our camp we caught another Pale-chanting Goshawk, this time a large adult female which had just devoured a dove.
We got into this great camp and set 2 wader nets by the waterhole before dusk and waited. After a while we heard the tale-tale whistling of Double-banded Sandgrouse coming into drink and got 6 birds, not as many as I had hoped as numbers were very much down compared to the catches last time.
Michael Parker arrived in time to ring one of the Sandgrouse. After supper we set the nightjar net and caught a Rufous-cheeked and European Nightjar.
In the morning we flushed a Verreaux’s Eagle Owl whilst opening the nets, one to watch! Caught lots of Cinnamon and Golden-breasted Buntings as well as Namaqua Dove, Familiar Chat, Arrow-marked Babbler and Fork-tailed Drongo.
After lunch we set off on a quick raptor run and for provisions down to the town of Alldays and got a Lesser Kestrel, a cracking adult male a lat one as this species has almost entirely moved north by now. Also caught were Rock Kestrel another adult male and an adult Shikra.
That evening we caught a few more Sandgrouse including a 29 month old re-trap.
Leaving after a couple of hours netting first thing we headed north to the Limpopo valley, the habitat changing now to a mixture of mature bushveld and thorny scrub dotted with giant Baobabs. On top of one of these we spotted an African Hawk Eagle and got two traps down. After 5 mins the bird saw the mouse and reacted by cautiously flying in to have a look, eventually landing beside the first trap. After a while it reassured itself this was ok and made a lunge for the mouse with the very long, extremely powerful legs and talons of this species.
Just then another bird flew in, a juvenile, landing next to the second trap just as the adult got caught, with the ensuing struggle the juvenile flew up into a tree, but we had to grab the first bird before any harm was done.
We aged it as a third year female at 1.520kg, it had two moult centres in the primary tract, with a retained outer juvenile feather.
By now the juvenile had taken to the wing and was circling overhead looking for its mum! So we quickly release the female and continued. We came across a Peregrine whch we set down the pigeon for, but unfortunately it hardly moved and the falcon never spotted it.
We passed through Mpangubwe Natioal Park and came across a large heard of Elephants at the same time as spotting a Brown Snake-eagle on a dead tree. Keeping a wary eye on the elephants we dropped for it and were soon rewarded with an incoming bird which soon got caught, but at the last moment, got off.
As we moved west we spotted lots of raptors up in the air, a pair of Tawny Eagles, a Steppe Eagle, 8 Wahlberg’s Eagles and 4 Brown Snake-eagles. We tried for 2 Black-chested on a pylon but they flew for some unknown reason.
Limpopo River
Arriving at our next camp in beautiful riparian forest on the banks of the Limpopo river, we set 12 nets and managed to catch a few birds before nightfall including Grey-headed Brown-hooded and Woodland Kingfishers.
The owl net produced a stunning little African Scops Owl at around midnight.
Next morning we opened at 0530hrs and began to catch quality not quantity with the best bird undoubtedly being a Greater-spotted Cuckoo, the 12th ringed in South Africa. Other birds of note were a Levaillant’s Cuckoo, several Meve’s Starling a Burchell’s Coucal and a Shikra.
The day was spent very pleasantly round the camp playing with spring-traps, and trying out ideas to catch targeted species and even time in the pool!
That night we made a night drive and managed to dazzle 2 Spotted Thick-knees and got a cracking Southern White-faced Owl on a bal-chatri. We searched in vain for a Verreaux’s Eagle-owl despite it calling from within the canopy of the huge Nyala trees along the river.
After the morning session some of us went on a raptor run which caught 3 Pale-chanting Goshawks and a Shikra. We almost had a Lanner which came in over the trap but decided against it and flew off. We found two Tawny Eagles but one was too low and far back from the track and the other flew on our approach.
Netting at the camp produced a whole flock of white Helmet-shrikes, delightful birds with such a strange adaptation of head feathers and eye-wattle. Other birds included a netted Jackal Buzzard! which must of gone in after a bird in the net, a Natal Spurfowl, 2 Red-billed Hornbill, a Southern Yellow-billed Hornbill, a Lesser-grey Shrike in one of the spring-traps, 2 Greater Honeyguide, a Pygmy Kingfisher, Willow and Marsh Warblers.
Dazzling that night was fun despite not catching anything as the moon was up making it difficult to approach birds. There were lots of Crowned, Blacksmith and Senegal Plovers as well as quite a number of Bronze-winged Coursers and Water Thick-knee.
After a short session we continued to add to the species list with a Terrestrial Bulbul, Yellow-bellied Greenbul a pair of Tropical Boubous.
We set off for ‘the Farm’ on the banks of the Oliphants River and on the way got Billy his target of 50 ‘ringing ticks’ in the form of a Dark-chanting Goshawk, one of two caught. Nearing the farm we began to see Black-shouldered Kites, the species greatly favouring farmland with so much spilt grain attracting mice along the roadsides. We caught two birds, an adult and juvenile but were pushed for time and got to the farm to set nets for the morning, not before catching a Mocking Cliff-chat and a Rufous-naped Lark around the farmhouse!
The morning provided Kurrichane and Karoo Thrushes, Fiscal Flycatcher, Black Cuckoo-shrike, Lesser-striped Swallows, Jamison’s Firefinches, Blue Waxbills and Rattling Cisticolas.
Then it was time to go, the airport an hour away allowed for some diversions to do some birdwatching, continuing to add to the impressive list of over 400 species seen on the trip.
From a ringing point, we managed to ring 322 birds of 109 species, not a huge amount of birds, but great diversity.
The main factor against us was an early winter front coming in from the south-west which in my opinion prompted an early northward migration for a lot of birds of prey. In the past this very period in march has produced far greater catch of raptors in particular Black-chested Snake-eagles which are usually present in far bigger numbers then Brown Snake-eagles which were the more common on this trip. However 18 species of raptor is not bad by any standards on a trip and what is nice is for everyone to have a good look at individual species instead of ‘doing big numbers’ and missing the details.
See below the trip list of birds ringed.
Natal Spurfowl 1
Greater Honeyguide 3
Lesser Honeyguide 1
Crested Barbet 4
Red-billed Hornbill 4
S Yellow-billed Hornbill 4
Green Wood-Hoopoe 2
Lilac-breasted Roller 2
Purple Roller 1
African Pygmy-Kingfisher 1
Grey-headed Kingfisher 1
Woodland Kingfisher 3
Brown-hooded Kingfisher 3
Levaillant's Cuckoo 1
Great Spotted Cuckoo 1
Burchell's Coucal 1
African Scops-Owl 1
S White-faced Scops-Owl 2
African Wood-Owl 1
Fiery-necked Nightjar 2
Square-tailed Nightjar 1
Rufous-cheeked Nightjar 2
European Nightjar 1
Laughing Dove 6
Cape Turtle-Dove 2
Emerald-spotted Wood-Dove 3
Namaqua Dove 5
Double-banded Sandgrouse 11
Spotted Thick-knee 3
Black-shouldered Kite 2
Black-chested Snake-Eagle 1
Brown Snake-Eagle 2
Lizard Buzzard 1
Dark Chanting Goshawk 4
S Pale Chanting Goshawk 9
Shikra 3
Forest Buzzard 1
Jackal Buzzard 2
African Hawk-Eagle 1
Long-crested Eagle 1
Lesser Kestrel 1
Rock Kestrel 1
Greater Kestrel 1
Black-headed Oriole 1
Fork-tailed Drongo 4
Blue-mantled Crested Flycatcher 1
African Paradise-Flycatcher 3
Black-backed Puffback 5
Tropical Boubou 2
Southern Boubou 2
Olive Bush-Shrike 1
White-crested Helmet-Shrike 7
Cape Batis 6
Red-backed Shrike 5
Lesser Grey Shrike 1
Southern White-crowned Shrike 1
Black Cuckooshrike 2
Lesser Striped Swallow 1
Dark-capped Bulbul 6
Yellow-bellied Greenbul 1
Terrestrial Brownbul 6
Marsh Warbler 2
Lesser Swamp-Warbler 1
Long-billed Crombec 1
Willow Warbler 2
Arrow-marked Babbler 2
Common Whitethroat 1
Cape White-eye 16
Lazy Cisticola 5
Rattling Cisticola 4
Neddicky 1
Tawny-flanked Prinia 2
Bar-throated Apalis 5
Grey-backed Camaroptera 6
Rufous-naped Lark 1
Kurrichane Thrush 10
Karoo Thrush 1
Fiscal Flycatcher 1
African Dusky Flycatcher 1
Ashy Flycatcher 5
Grey Tit-Flycatcher 1
Cape Robin-Chat 2
White-throated Robin-Chat 7
Chorister Robin-Chat 1
Bearded Scrub-Robin 1
White-browed Scrub-Robin 1
Familiar Chat 1
Mocking Cliff-Chat 1
Meves's Starling 5
Violet-backed Starling 2
Collared Sunbird 2
S Double-collared Sunbird 5
Southern Masked-Weaver 5
Red-headed Weaver 2
Red-billed Quelea 1
Yellow Bishop 2
Violet-eared Waxbill 1
Blue Waxbill 7
Green-winged Pytilia 6
Red-billed Firefinch 7
African Firefinch 2
Jameson's Firefinch 2
Bronze Mannikin 1
Southern Grey-headed Sparrow 6
Forest Canary 4
Yellow-fronted Canary 1
Streaky-headed Seedeater 1
Cinnamon-breasted Bunting 18
Golden-breasted Bunting 2
109 Species 322 Birds
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Uganda Ringing Expedition
8th to 20th December 2008
Participants
Dean Backhouse
John Glazebrook
Mick Wright
Roger Buxton
Nathan Eluku
Malcolm Wilson
Setting off from Entebbe we had the usual ordeal of circumnavigating Kampala on roads, no tracks with traffic just everywhere. Our driver Baker did a sterling job of diving and darting into spaces with not the most nippy of vehicles, a 10 seater stretch Landcruser!
Even so birding in this environment is quite productive with Long-crested Eagles, Lizard Buzzards and Grey Kestrel watching patches of roadside scrub for the many fat rats which do very well here. White-throated Bee-eaters festooned the tangle of phone wires and Winding Cisticolas defended tiny scraps of rank grass in between truck washing bays.
Eventually we got clear of the desperate traffic and were soon driving through the magnificent Mabira Forest, which has so far had a stay of execution from the voracious appetite of the sugar cane industry.
Soon after Jinja we had a chance to drop a trap for a Long-crested Eagle which soon hit the trap, but for some reason flew off before a noose could do its work.
Also tried for a Lizard Buzzard, but the usual problem of a party of village kids coming out to watch made it impossible for the bird to come down.
We got to Kibimba rice scheme at 1600hrs and after checking in to rooms, went to find a good spot to set nets for the night.
There had been no rain these last 3 weeks and so many of the paddies were dry and it took a while before we settled on Block 14 which had a good flock of mixed waders. We set 3 lines over mud and started catching as soon as the light went.
We caught steadily till 0100hrs with 44 Wood Sandpiper and 10 Little Stint making up the bulk. One Wood Sandpiper was a retrap from November 2007.
On the way back to the accommodation we put up a Genet which gave great views as it ran along the track in front of us which also put up a few Swamp Nightjars.
We opened the nets at 0600hrs in the pre dawn and continued catching as dawn broke and hundreds of thousands of Red-billed Quelea came out of roost in droves. Cashing in on this were a pair of Peregrine of the Siberian race ‘calidus’ which gave us a spectacular performance of catching these little pests!
Soon the peace of dawn was shattered with the screams and shouts of the Quelea patrol, a mob of locally employed lads whose sole task was to stand all day in the middle of the ripening rice paddies armed with good vocal chords a long whippy palm frond, with a lump of clay at the end, and fire the clay projectile at flocks of Quelea which looked like landing in the rice. These missiles can be fired over unbelievable distances and with incredible accuracy, flushing the Quelea off and onto less guarded paddies. Occasionally a Quelea would collide with the lump of clay and all you would see was a ‘puff’ of feathers and nothing more, not a great loss in the broad scheme of things!
A flock of 43 Grey-crowned Crane came out of a roost somewhere and dropped into the site to the south, while at least 6 European Marsh Harrier plied up and down the bunds dropping in on unsuspecting prey.
We furled late morning and took a drive down to the dam and flushed a Spotted Crake across the track, seems this species has become scarce over the years as we used to catch them here in the past. On the dam were a couple of Osprey and just to the north we found 3 large paddies well inundated that had approximately 800 Black-winged Stilt, a flock of 30 Greenshank and the odd Spotted Redshank also 9 Garganey, a duck we also used to catch and from observations has greatly declined. In addition to this were small flocks of White-faced and Fulvous Whistling Ducks and to cap it all a Lesser Jacana! Ok this is where we were coming next!
Coming back for lunch we spotted a Lesser Kestrel on a phone wire and so dropped for it, but the bird had fed well and showed no interested in rodent fare after all the dragonflies in the area.
In the afternoon before opening we came across a track with dozens of Red-throated Pipits feeding on something good. On closer inspection they were picking up rice seeds and bits of broken rice spilt from a couple of tractors and trailers that had been running up and down full of harvested rice.
Here was an opportunity, so we set a couple of single panel nets along the track and sat back and watched. In no time at all, the pipits came back onto the track and we started picking off one’s and two’s and after an hour had 8 Red-throated Pipits and a couple of Yellow Wagtails.
We opened at 1600hrs and continued to catch mainly Wood Sandpiper and Little Stint. The catch rate had slowed from the previous day as water was draining off the mud and so we had time to put up a nightjar net. Before we had walked back to the ringing camp, the ipod had done its trick and pulled in a cracking adult male Swamp Nightjar.
The best though was when after a string of ringing Common Snipe had been ringed, Mick pulled out a bird and with mild surprise identified a Jack Snipe!
Not a great rarity in the UK but the first one I have ever seen in Africa and a new distribution record.
Opened first thing and picked off a few Painted Snipe, Wood Sandpiper and Little Stint and Ringed Plover. After breakfast we set off along the main road to find some raptors and soon came across a Long-crested Eagle. Getting the trap under the bird was tricky, people came out to watch of course but these birds are sometimes so tame you can walk underneath the pole ther’e sitting on, as in this case. However despite the bird showing interest, it refused to drop to the trap.
We went through a patch of forest where Black and White Casqed Hornbills glided over the road. Sadly the forest was fast disappearing with obvious signs of the absence of the larger more valuable timber trees taken.
Back at Kibimba we had a go for the Red-throated Pipits again and got three birds and 3 yellow Wagtails despite the stiff breeze. We had a look round this huge place in search of a nice wader concentrations and found a pair of Spotted Redshank and a Black-headed Gull in one paddy as well as a European Roller and a Montague’s Harrier.
After lunch we set two big lines across fairly deep water each end of the paddy with some 800 Black-winged Stilt in between. The idea was to go for duck such as Garganey which would prefer this deeper water to feed in.
As dusk approached we had caught a few waders but the stilt were not moving, being notoriously difficult to catch our best hope was if they began moving with the moon. A Black-headed Heron flew into the net and Nathan dived in to get it, quite a handful but he did well and it was duly ringed by John.
At midnight we realised we were not going to be busy and had caught a few of the usual as well as 5 Long-toed Plover and a pair of Spurwing Plover. A Barn Owl was using the poles to perch on as it watched us extracting or getting stuck in the mud!
We decided to shelf the duck and stilt catching operation and set up on a new site for the last session that had just been rotivated where a huge concentration of Intermediate and Little Egret were feeding on beetle or cicada grubs. Also cashing in on this freshly revealed food abundance were White-winged and Whiskered Terns. Here we found Ruff, good numbers of Greenshank, Spotted Redshank, Glossy Ibis and Open Billed Storks.
We caught fairly well with a run of the usual painted Snipe, Ringed Plover, Wood Sandpiper as well as a Ruff and Common Pratincole.
Kampala
We set off early for the Magic Garden at Ggaba allowing time to drop a trap for raptors. This predictably was a Long-crested Eagle on a telegraph pole set back in a shamba and by usual standards a piece of cake. However with the trap right under his nose he looked keen for a while but eventually settled on an item not so trap bound and nailed a small rat 10m from the trap!
The next had the bird on the trap but did not try very hard to get the mouse and took off for some unknown reason before it could work a noose round its leg.
We spotted a real gem in the form of a Red-necked Falcon which was sat up in a big old palm tree but in a yard full of children, we had also released our Quelea bait from Kibimba which would have far out succeeded the mouse as a lure.
We got to Ggaba which is where David Pearson’s ringing site used to be in the 50’s when he taught at Makerere University and where he did a lot of pioneering work on Garden Warbler moult.
The Magic Garden is a sight for sore eyes, carefully planned and landscaped by our host Roger, it is a profusion of awesome colours and every kind of tropical shrub buzzing with dozens of sunbirds!
We soon set 5 x 60’ and 3 x 40’ before Kathy came out with the G&T’s on the veranda which had a commanding view of Lake Victoria. We got a few birds before dark including a Green Crombec, Yellow-throated Leaflove and last thing an adult male Shikra. African Hobby’s were hunting in the dusk as we furled.
Opened at 0600hrs and first round got a Black-headed Gonolek and a huge adult female African Goshawk. During the morning we caught a good varety of birds from Willow Warblers, to Snowy-headed and White-browed Robin-chats, Pygmy Kingfisher and 5 species of Sunbird. We were taunted with a large family flock of Ross’s Turaco flying across the garden but never low enough to get caught. African Grey and Meyer’s Parrots called from the nearby stand of Albizia trees.
We had to get on the road to set nets this afternoon at a new site in Budongo Forest and so got on the road just before lunch. On the way we had two more Long-crested Eagles ON trap, but again the nature of this beast is to shuffle on its tarsi and flatten the nooses.
Observations included Black-chested and Brown Snake Eagles and 2 grasshopper Buzzards a very encouraging sign as we this was to be our main quarry in Murchison Falls National Park.
We got to Busingiro in Budongo Forest and got 6 x 60 and 40 x 2 along one of the perfect transect lines needing the minimum of clearance to make a perfect net-ride. First round we got a rush of birds mostly White-throated Greenbuls with Scaly-breasted Illadopsis, Eastern Forest Robin, Chestnut Wattle-eye and Olive Sunbirds closed by 1730hrs.
Opened at 0550hrs, a bit too early for my liking, as we had caught a bat which had chewed through a shelf string to liberate itself, but it’s hard to keep a good trainee down and Nathan was just that. We took a good catch this morning with Brown Illadopsis, Red-tailed Bristlebill, Dwarf Kingfisher, Little Greenbul and a stunning male Jameson’s Wattle-eye added to the list of species.
Around the very comfortable ringing camp we had Rufous-crowned Eremomela, Chestnut-capped Flycatcher and Black-capped Apalis and calling Chocolate-backed Kingfisher which are indicators of the association this forest has with the great Ituri Forest in the Congo. Other examples of this are White-thighed Hornbills flying over camp and the Ituri Batis which is not a bird easily seen here. We also had a Honey Buzzard over.
We set off at 1030 for the Nile and our camp for the next 3 days. On the way we had a Grey Kestrel which wouldn’t sit for us and a Western banded Snake Eagle which came to the trap, hit it then was off! Also dropped for a Brown Snake Eagle but too hot for the mice. Observations included 4 Bateleur, 3 Wahlberg’s Eagle and a Montague’s Harrier. Just before the camp we found a Dark-chanting Goshawk and got it on the trap but flushed off continually by cyclists!
Set the line of nets along the path at Nile Safari Lodge and got a few birds before dark from Willow Warblers to White-browed Coucal! Before dusk we set a net along the track and with the ipod, caught a beautiful adult male Long-tailed Nightjar.
Opened at 0600hrs and got hit by a Village Weaver flock which is one way focusing one to the days tasks! These birds are nothing but trouble! Hissing, biting, grabbing and generally very unpleasant things to extract from nets, especially when you have 50+!
When things calmed down we began catching a more pleasant array of species such as Scaly-throated Honeyguide, Spotted Morning Thrush (including a 6 year old retrap) and a spectacular adult male white morph Paradise Flycatcher. Andy the fishing guide had arrived at 0700 to take Roger upto the falls for a days fishing for the mighty Nile Perch.
Before lunch we took a drive to the top of the falls looking for Grasshopper Buzzards, and found an adult male Pygmy Sunbird, this was a lifer for me, and is not common in these parts being restricted to arid savannah around the Sahel and moving into Uganda during the dry season.
Other observations were a group of Abyssinian Ground Hornbill and a group of Buffalo, but NO Grasshopper Buzzards!! Conditions were ok, there were burnt areas which is what this species comes all the way here for from the Sahel, so maybe we were too early?
At the falls we counted a flock of approximately 80 Rock Pratincole wheeling around the top of the falls and stood mesmerised by the sheer violence of this awesome river as it thundered through an 8m gap! Above the falls there were a few Steppe Buzzards lurking around the entrance to the small caves where thousands of bats roost and where upto 6 bat Hawk can be seen at dusk and dawn.
On the way back we noticed quite a few Harriers, mainly Marsh and Montague’s.
Back at camp opened at 1600 and got among others a Sulphur-breasted Bushshrike, Black-billed Wood and Vinaceous Doves and a Nubian Woodpecker.
Andy and Roger returned triumphant having bagged a brace of Perch of 28kg and 38kg.
North Bank
At 0700 we crossed over with Andy who was waiting for clients and avoided the old ferry, always a tense affair with regular breakdowns mid stream! And set off via a sandbar which had 60+ African Skimmer that all took wing a flew around the boat, often ‘skimming’.
We set off on the Buligi Circuit and got a few of the specials, Rufous Sparrow, Chestnut-backed Sparrow Weaver, Black-billed Barbet, Lesser Grey and Woodchat Shrike, Northern Carmine Bee-eater, Black-headed Plover, Beaudouin’s Snake Eagle an adult male Pallid Harrier, 8 White-backed Vulture and 3 Osprey. Sadly there were no Shoebill at the usual spot so the pressure was on now to find them with one option left!
At last we found a single Grasshopper Buzzard, too far to drop a trap for and so resigned ourselves to the fact that they had not come in. the best count for this species was this month the previous year with 300 on one burn site.
We spotted a few Giraffe here of the Rothchild race as well as a few lone bull Elephant, but no Lions!
We had a go for a Verreaux’s Eagle-owl, a family group of 3 birds were sat up in a large Kegilia tree but refused to drop, only bob and look curiously from within the tree.
Other wildlife seen included lots of Oribi, Side-striped Jackal, Jackson’s Hartebeste and Warthog.
We crossed back to the south bank in time to open at 1600hrs where among other birds got the 3rd Yellowbill for the site.
At 0700 the next day we got picked up by Andy in the boat and set off down river to the Delta on Lake Albert in search of the elusive Shoebill. On the way we saw lots of huge Nile Crocodiles and Hippos which erupted from the water in front of us. All the classic habitats were devoid of the large grey bird and now the pressure was really mounting!
But then at noon just before reaching the delta I spotted one about a mile off ahead. We all got cameras ready and quietly floated up to the bird which stood motionless, listening for lungfish.
We manovered ourselves into position and watched this mammoth bird, so focussed on listening for its quarry, all quietly euphoric and elated at finding this ancient and vague relative of the pelicans.
Kanyo Pabidi
After lunch we made our way back to Budong Forest via the park and the next site of kanyo Pabidi. It was hot and still with little moving and made good time to KP where we set 8 x 60 and 4 x 40 catching Eastern Forest Robin, White-throated and Yellow-whiskered Greenbuls and Olive Sunbirds before furling.
Opened at 0630hrs and through the morning got a variety of new and retraps including Fire-crested Alethe, Rufous Flycatcher Thrush and the usual run of Greenbul species.
Three of the guys went Chimpanzee trekking this morning and so left three of us to run the slow shift during the heat of the day, however we caught well up to the rush at 1700hrs with a stunning White-tailed Ant-thrush.
The others returned in the late afternoon having trekked many kilometres in the forest in search of the Chimps only to draw a blank. Such are the habits of this primate in the dry season as they travel far and wide in search of fruit which is more readily available in the wet season.
Opened again at 0630 to the blood-curdling screams of Tree Hyrax evoking primevil emotions in the gloom of the forest!
On the way back from opening we found a late returning Wood Owl which had hit the morning commuter rush and was currently being mobbed by a riot of small birds.
Through the day we continued to come up with surprises and one of which was a spectacular Blue-breasted Kingfisher. This large west African kingfisher just reaches into east Africa here in Western Uganda and like many species in Budongo is an indicator of how it is semi contiguous with the guinea-congo basin rainforest biome.
There was a second expedition to reach the Chimps and the team returned late morning and what a find! Not only did they find the chimps but also witnessed a kill of a Black and White Colobus monkey! This is a very rare and spectacular event which few people ever see. Usually the hapless creature is caught and torn to pieces by the dominant males whilst the monkey is still living. It is quite gruesome and particularly shocking to see such violence from beasts which share 98.7% of our genes! Needless to say we have made modest progress when it comes to dietary needs.
During the afternoon we continued to get more birds and one in particular
requires special mention here as there are birds and birds and this particular creature really has sock-blowing capabilities, a Narina Trogon.
A party of tourists had just returned from trekking and were shown the bird resulting in some impressive camera equipment taking a salvo of images.
After the Trogon, a Dusky Blue Flycatcher was caught and as enthusiastic as one can get over this species, it just did not educe the same reaction!
We carried on till dusk catching a few more Eastern Forest Robins, Cameroon Sombre Greenbul and a Yellow-spotted Barbet. Sadly we got the only Green Twinspot of the trip which had sadly been attacked by something, probably a rodent of some sort.
We couldn’t afford another mornings netting as people had to get flights in the early afternoon so we set off at 0700 and made good time till we spotted a Beaudouin’s Snake Eagle sat up on a pylon in a marsh. I walked/crawled the trap in and managed to get it right under the nose of the bird and for a hopeful minute got a good response of bobs. However that’s all that happened! Often in overcast and cool conditions birds of prey are reluctant to come to a trap and sit tight not feeding until its hot again.
After an hour or so we spotted a Long-crested Eagle on a telegraph pole in difficult conditions between two villages! I got a trap out whilst Baker shouted to approaching pedestrians that there was a snake and not to approach! I walked the trap right underneath the bird, dropped it and crossed the road to watch. It took about 20 seconds for the bird to spot the mouse, then lots of bobbing and after another 20 seconds launched itself down onto the trap.
Then another 20 and I could see a foot caught which eventually alerted the bird to its predicament and tried to fly off.
Mick ringed the bird which was a female and in its second year just starting its primary moult. A few photographs and then it was released to the befuddlement of the gathering crowds!
Next stop was Entebbe and farewells after a very pleasant and thouroughly enjoyable trip.
Species totals of new birds
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Total
Black-headed Heron 1 1 2
Knob-billed Duck 1 1
African Goshawk 1 1
Shikra 1 1
Long-crested Eagle 1.20th
Greater Painted-snipe 10 4 4 1 1 20
Collared Pratincole 1 1 2
Long-toed Lapwing 5 5
Spur-winged Plover 3 3
Common Ringed Plover 7 1 4 12
Jack Snipe 1 1
Common Snipe 7 6 4 17
Common Greenshank 1 1
Wood Sandpiper 33 9 5 9 1 57
Little Stint 10 35 5 50
Ruff 1 1
African Mourning Dove 1 1
Vinaceous Dove 2 2
Black-billed Wood-Dove 1 2 3
Blue-spotted Wood-Dove 4 1 5
Yellowbill 1 1
White-browed Coucal 1 1
Swamp Nightjar 1 1
Long-tailed Nightjar 1 1
Speckled Mousebird 1 1
Narina Trogon 1 1
Malachite Kingfisher 1 1
African Pygmy-Kingfisher 1 5 6
Dwarf Kingfisher 1 1
Blue-breasted Kingfisher 1 1
Yellow-spotted Barbet 1 1
Scaly-throated Honeyguide 1 1
Nubian Woodpecker 1 1
Buff-spotted Woodpecker 1 1
Sandmartin 1 1
Barn Swallow 1 1
Red-throated Pipit 8 4 12
Yellow Wagtail 2 2 4
Dark-capped Bulbul 2 3 5
Little Greenbul 2 3 5
Cam. Sombre Greenbul 1 1
Yellow-whiskered Greenbul 1 3 4
Yellow-throated Greenbul 2 2
White-throated Greenbul 18 1 9 3 31
Red-tailed Bristlebill 1 3 1 5
Rufous Flycatcher-Thrush 1 1 2
White-tailed Ant-Thrush 1 1 2
Brown-chested Alethe 2 2
Fire-crested Alethe 1 1
Tawny-flanked Prinia 1 1
Yellow-breasted Apalis 1 1
Gray-capped Warbler 1 1
Grey-backed Camaroptera 1 1 2
Olive-green Camaroptera 1 1
Eurasian Reed-Warbler 1 1
Green Crombec 1 1
Northern Crombec 1 3 4
Green Hylia 1 1
Willow Warbler 1 1 1 1 4
Dusky-blue flycatcher 2 2
Forest Robin 5 3 8
White-browed Robin-Chat 2 1 3
Spotted Morning-Thrush 3 3
Red-backed Scrub-Robin 1 1
Chestnut Wattle-eye 1 1
Jameson's Wattle-eye 1 1
Red-bellied Para-Flycatcher 2 2
African Paradise-Flycatcher 1 1 2
Scaly-breasted Illadopsis 4 1 5
Brown Illadopsis 1 1
Green-headed Sunbird 1 2 3
Eastern Olive Sunbird 3 1 1 1 1 7
Olive-bellied Sunbird 2 4 6
Red-chested Sunbird 2 5 7
Variable Sunbird 4 4
African Yellow White-eye 2 2
Black-crowned Tchagra 1 1
Black-headed Gonolek 1 1 2
Sulphur-breasted Bushshrike 1 1
Little Weaver 2 2
Spectacled Weaver 1 1
Village Weaver 1 1 2
Yellow-backed Weaver 3 3
Cardinal Quelea 4 4
Red-billed Quelea 1 1 2
Black-rumped Waxbill 1 1
Brimstone Canary 1 1
Day totals: 71 72 33 18 15 48 24 44 10 3 15 24 377
Total species = 87
Additional species that were retraps:
Yellow-breasted Apalis
Brown Twinspot
Collared Sunbird
Yellow-fronted Tinkerbird
Snowy-headed Robinchat
Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu
Rattling Cisticola
Puvel’ Illadopsis
8th to 20th December 2008
Participants
Dean Backhouse
John Glazebrook
Mick Wright
Roger Buxton
Nathan Eluku
Malcolm Wilson
Setting off from Entebbe we had the usual ordeal of circumnavigating Kampala on roads, no tracks with traffic just everywhere. Our driver Baker did a sterling job of diving and darting into spaces with not the most nippy of vehicles, a 10 seater stretch Landcruser!
Even so birding in this environment is quite productive with Long-crested Eagles, Lizard Buzzards and Grey Kestrel watching patches of roadside scrub for the many fat rats which do very well here. White-throated Bee-eaters festooned the tangle of phone wires and Winding Cisticolas defended tiny scraps of rank grass in between truck washing bays.
Eventually we got clear of the desperate traffic and were soon driving through the magnificent Mabira Forest, which has so far had a stay of execution from the voracious appetite of the sugar cane industry.
Soon after Jinja we had a chance to drop a trap for a Long-crested Eagle which soon hit the trap, but for some reason flew off before a noose could do its work.
Also tried for a Lizard Buzzard, but the usual problem of a party of village kids coming out to watch made it impossible for the bird to come down.
We got to Kibimba rice scheme at 1600hrs and after checking in to rooms, went to find a good spot to set nets for the night.
There had been no rain these last 3 weeks and so many of the paddies were dry and it took a while before we settled on Block 14 which had a good flock of mixed waders. We set 3 lines over mud and started catching as soon as the light went.
We caught steadily till 0100hrs with 44 Wood Sandpiper and 10 Little Stint making up the bulk. One Wood Sandpiper was a retrap from November 2007.
On the way back to the accommodation we put up a Genet which gave great views as it ran along the track in front of us which also put up a few Swamp Nightjars.
We opened the nets at 0600hrs in the pre dawn and continued catching as dawn broke and hundreds of thousands of Red-billed Quelea came out of roost in droves. Cashing in on this were a pair of Peregrine of the Siberian race ‘calidus’ which gave us a spectacular performance of catching these little pests!
Soon the peace of dawn was shattered with the screams and shouts of the Quelea patrol, a mob of locally employed lads whose sole task was to stand all day in the middle of the ripening rice paddies armed with good vocal chords a long whippy palm frond, with a lump of clay at the end, and fire the clay projectile at flocks of Quelea which looked like landing in the rice. These missiles can be fired over unbelievable distances and with incredible accuracy, flushing the Quelea off and onto less guarded paddies. Occasionally a Quelea would collide with the lump of clay and all you would see was a ‘puff’ of feathers and nothing more, not a great loss in the broad scheme of things!
A flock of 43 Grey-crowned Crane came out of a roost somewhere and dropped into the site to the south, while at least 6 European Marsh Harrier plied up and down the bunds dropping in on unsuspecting prey.
We furled late morning and took a drive down to the dam and flushed a Spotted Crake across the track, seems this species has become scarce over the years as we used to catch them here in the past. On the dam were a couple of Osprey and just to the north we found 3 large paddies well inundated that had approximately 800 Black-winged Stilt, a flock of 30 Greenshank and the odd Spotted Redshank also 9 Garganey, a duck we also used to catch and from observations has greatly declined. In addition to this were small flocks of White-faced and Fulvous Whistling Ducks and to cap it all a Lesser Jacana! Ok this is where we were coming next!
Coming back for lunch we spotted a Lesser Kestrel on a phone wire and so dropped for it, but the bird had fed well and showed no interested in rodent fare after all the dragonflies in the area.
In the afternoon before opening we came across a track with dozens of Red-throated Pipits feeding on something good. On closer inspection they were picking up rice seeds and bits of broken rice spilt from a couple of tractors and trailers that had been running up and down full of harvested rice.
Here was an opportunity, so we set a couple of single panel nets along the track and sat back and watched. In no time at all, the pipits came back onto the track and we started picking off one’s and two’s and after an hour had 8 Red-throated Pipits and a couple of Yellow Wagtails.
We opened at 1600hrs and continued to catch mainly Wood Sandpiper and Little Stint. The catch rate had slowed from the previous day as water was draining off the mud and so we had time to put up a nightjar net. Before we had walked back to the ringing camp, the ipod had done its trick and pulled in a cracking adult male Swamp Nightjar.
The best though was when after a string of ringing Common Snipe had been ringed, Mick pulled out a bird and with mild surprise identified a Jack Snipe!
Not a great rarity in the UK but the first one I have ever seen in Africa and a new distribution record.
Opened first thing and picked off a few Painted Snipe, Wood Sandpiper and Little Stint and Ringed Plover. After breakfast we set off along the main road to find some raptors and soon came across a Long-crested Eagle. Getting the trap under the bird was tricky, people came out to watch of course but these birds are sometimes so tame you can walk underneath the pole ther’e sitting on, as in this case. However despite the bird showing interest, it refused to drop to the trap.
We went through a patch of forest where Black and White Casqed Hornbills glided over the road. Sadly the forest was fast disappearing with obvious signs of the absence of the larger more valuable timber trees taken.
Back at Kibimba we had a go for the Red-throated Pipits again and got three birds and 3 yellow Wagtails despite the stiff breeze. We had a look round this huge place in search of a nice wader concentrations and found a pair of Spotted Redshank and a Black-headed Gull in one paddy as well as a European Roller and a Montague’s Harrier.
After lunch we set two big lines across fairly deep water each end of the paddy with some 800 Black-winged Stilt in between. The idea was to go for duck such as Garganey which would prefer this deeper water to feed in.
As dusk approached we had caught a few waders but the stilt were not moving, being notoriously difficult to catch our best hope was if they began moving with the moon. A Black-headed Heron flew into the net and Nathan dived in to get it, quite a handful but he did well and it was duly ringed by John.
At midnight we realised we were not going to be busy and had caught a few of the usual as well as 5 Long-toed Plover and a pair of Spurwing Plover. A Barn Owl was using the poles to perch on as it watched us extracting or getting stuck in the mud!
We decided to shelf the duck and stilt catching operation and set up on a new site for the last session that had just been rotivated where a huge concentration of Intermediate and Little Egret were feeding on beetle or cicada grubs. Also cashing in on this freshly revealed food abundance were White-winged and Whiskered Terns. Here we found Ruff, good numbers of Greenshank, Spotted Redshank, Glossy Ibis and Open Billed Storks.
We caught fairly well with a run of the usual painted Snipe, Ringed Plover, Wood Sandpiper as well as a Ruff and Common Pratincole.
Kampala
We set off early for the Magic Garden at Ggaba allowing time to drop a trap for raptors. This predictably was a Long-crested Eagle on a telegraph pole set back in a shamba and by usual standards a piece of cake. However with the trap right under his nose he looked keen for a while but eventually settled on an item not so trap bound and nailed a small rat 10m from the trap!
The next had the bird on the trap but did not try very hard to get the mouse and took off for some unknown reason before it could work a noose round its leg.
We spotted a real gem in the form of a Red-necked Falcon which was sat up in a big old palm tree but in a yard full of children, we had also released our Quelea bait from Kibimba which would have far out succeeded the mouse as a lure.
We got to Ggaba which is where David Pearson’s ringing site used to be in the 50’s when he taught at Makerere University and where he did a lot of pioneering work on Garden Warbler moult.
The Magic Garden is a sight for sore eyes, carefully planned and landscaped by our host Roger, it is a profusion of awesome colours and every kind of tropical shrub buzzing with dozens of sunbirds!
We soon set 5 x 60’ and 3 x 40’ before Kathy came out with the G&T’s on the veranda which had a commanding view of Lake Victoria. We got a few birds before dark including a Green Crombec, Yellow-throated Leaflove and last thing an adult male Shikra. African Hobby’s were hunting in the dusk as we furled.
Opened at 0600hrs and first round got a Black-headed Gonolek and a huge adult female African Goshawk. During the morning we caught a good varety of birds from Willow Warblers, to Snowy-headed and White-browed Robin-chats, Pygmy Kingfisher and 5 species of Sunbird. We were taunted with a large family flock of Ross’s Turaco flying across the garden but never low enough to get caught. African Grey and Meyer’s Parrots called from the nearby stand of Albizia trees.
We had to get on the road to set nets this afternoon at a new site in Budongo Forest and so got on the road just before lunch. On the way we had two more Long-crested Eagles ON trap, but again the nature of this beast is to shuffle on its tarsi and flatten the nooses.
Observations included Black-chested and Brown Snake Eagles and 2 grasshopper Buzzards a very encouraging sign as we this was to be our main quarry in Murchison Falls National Park.
We got to Busingiro in Budongo Forest and got 6 x 60 and 40 x 2 along one of the perfect transect lines needing the minimum of clearance to make a perfect net-ride. First round we got a rush of birds mostly White-throated Greenbuls with Scaly-breasted Illadopsis, Eastern Forest Robin, Chestnut Wattle-eye and Olive Sunbirds closed by 1730hrs.
Opened at 0550hrs, a bit too early for my liking, as we had caught a bat which had chewed through a shelf string to liberate itself, but it’s hard to keep a good trainee down and Nathan was just that. We took a good catch this morning with Brown Illadopsis, Red-tailed Bristlebill, Dwarf Kingfisher, Little Greenbul and a stunning male Jameson’s Wattle-eye added to the list of species.
Around the very comfortable ringing camp we had Rufous-crowned Eremomela, Chestnut-capped Flycatcher and Black-capped Apalis and calling Chocolate-backed Kingfisher which are indicators of the association this forest has with the great Ituri Forest in the Congo. Other examples of this are White-thighed Hornbills flying over camp and the Ituri Batis which is not a bird easily seen here. We also had a Honey Buzzard over.
We set off at 1030 for the Nile and our camp for the next 3 days. On the way we had a Grey Kestrel which wouldn’t sit for us and a Western banded Snake Eagle which came to the trap, hit it then was off! Also dropped for a Brown Snake Eagle but too hot for the mice. Observations included 4 Bateleur, 3 Wahlberg’s Eagle and a Montague’s Harrier. Just before the camp we found a Dark-chanting Goshawk and got it on the trap but flushed off continually by cyclists!
Set the line of nets along the path at Nile Safari Lodge and got a few birds before dark from Willow Warblers to White-browed Coucal! Before dusk we set a net along the track and with the ipod, caught a beautiful adult male Long-tailed Nightjar.
Opened at 0600hrs and got hit by a Village Weaver flock which is one way focusing one to the days tasks! These birds are nothing but trouble! Hissing, biting, grabbing and generally very unpleasant things to extract from nets, especially when you have 50+!
When things calmed down we began catching a more pleasant array of species such as Scaly-throated Honeyguide, Spotted Morning Thrush (including a 6 year old retrap) and a spectacular adult male white morph Paradise Flycatcher. Andy the fishing guide had arrived at 0700 to take Roger upto the falls for a days fishing for the mighty Nile Perch.
Before lunch we took a drive to the top of the falls looking for Grasshopper Buzzards, and found an adult male Pygmy Sunbird, this was a lifer for me, and is not common in these parts being restricted to arid savannah around the Sahel and moving into Uganda during the dry season.
Other observations were a group of Abyssinian Ground Hornbill and a group of Buffalo, but NO Grasshopper Buzzards!! Conditions were ok, there were burnt areas which is what this species comes all the way here for from the Sahel, so maybe we were too early?
At the falls we counted a flock of approximately 80 Rock Pratincole wheeling around the top of the falls and stood mesmerised by the sheer violence of this awesome river as it thundered through an 8m gap! Above the falls there were a few Steppe Buzzards lurking around the entrance to the small caves where thousands of bats roost and where upto 6 bat Hawk can be seen at dusk and dawn.
On the way back we noticed quite a few Harriers, mainly Marsh and Montague’s.
Back at camp opened at 1600 and got among others a Sulphur-breasted Bushshrike, Black-billed Wood and Vinaceous Doves and a Nubian Woodpecker.
Andy and Roger returned triumphant having bagged a brace of Perch of 28kg and 38kg.
North Bank
At 0700 we crossed over with Andy who was waiting for clients and avoided the old ferry, always a tense affair with regular breakdowns mid stream! And set off via a sandbar which had 60+ African Skimmer that all took wing a flew around the boat, often ‘skimming’.
We set off on the Buligi Circuit and got a few of the specials, Rufous Sparrow, Chestnut-backed Sparrow Weaver, Black-billed Barbet, Lesser Grey and Woodchat Shrike, Northern Carmine Bee-eater, Black-headed Plover, Beaudouin’s Snake Eagle an adult male Pallid Harrier, 8 White-backed Vulture and 3 Osprey. Sadly there were no Shoebill at the usual spot so the pressure was on now to find them with one option left!
At last we found a single Grasshopper Buzzard, too far to drop a trap for and so resigned ourselves to the fact that they had not come in. the best count for this species was this month the previous year with 300 on one burn site.
We spotted a few Giraffe here of the Rothchild race as well as a few lone bull Elephant, but no Lions!
We had a go for a Verreaux’s Eagle-owl, a family group of 3 birds were sat up in a large Kegilia tree but refused to drop, only bob and look curiously from within the tree.
Other wildlife seen included lots of Oribi, Side-striped Jackal, Jackson’s Hartebeste and Warthog.
We crossed back to the south bank in time to open at 1600hrs where among other birds got the 3rd Yellowbill for the site.
At 0700 the next day we got picked up by Andy in the boat and set off down river to the Delta on Lake Albert in search of the elusive Shoebill. On the way we saw lots of huge Nile Crocodiles and Hippos which erupted from the water in front of us. All the classic habitats were devoid of the large grey bird and now the pressure was really mounting!
But then at noon just before reaching the delta I spotted one about a mile off ahead. We all got cameras ready and quietly floated up to the bird which stood motionless, listening for lungfish.
We manovered ourselves into position and watched this mammoth bird, so focussed on listening for its quarry, all quietly euphoric and elated at finding this ancient and vague relative of the pelicans.
Kanyo Pabidi
After lunch we made our way back to Budong Forest via the park and the next site of kanyo Pabidi. It was hot and still with little moving and made good time to KP where we set 8 x 60 and 4 x 40 catching Eastern Forest Robin, White-throated and Yellow-whiskered Greenbuls and Olive Sunbirds before furling.
Opened at 0630hrs and through the morning got a variety of new and retraps including Fire-crested Alethe, Rufous Flycatcher Thrush and the usual run of Greenbul species.
Three of the guys went Chimpanzee trekking this morning and so left three of us to run the slow shift during the heat of the day, however we caught well up to the rush at 1700hrs with a stunning White-tailed Ant-thrush.
The others returned in the late afternoon having trekked many kilometres in the forest in search of the Chimps only to draw a blank. Such are the habits of this primate in the dry season as they travel far and wide in search of fruit which is more readily available in the wet season.
Opened again at 0630 to the blood-curdling screams of Tree Hyrax evoking primevil emotions in the gloom of the forest!
On the way back from opening we found a late returning Wood Owl which had hit the morning commuter rush and was currently being mobbed by a riot of small birds.
Through the day we continued to come up with surprises and one of which was a spectacular Blue-breasted Kingfisher. This large west African kingfisher just reaches into east Africa here in Western Uganda and like many species in Budongo is an indicator of how it is semi contiguous with the guinea-congo basin rainforest biome.
There was a second expedition to reach the Chimps and the team returned late morning and what a find! Not only did they find the chimps but also witnessed a kill of a Black and White Colobus monkey! This is a very rare and spectacular event which few people ever see. Usually the hapless creature is caught and torn to pieces by the dominant males whilst the monkey is still living. It is quite gruesome and particularly shocking to see such violence from beasts which share 98.7% of our genes! Needless to say we have made modest progress when it comes to dietary needs.
During the afternoon we continued to get more birds and one in particular
requires special mention here as there are birds and birds and this particular creature really has sock-blowing capabilities, a Narina Trogon.
A party of tourists had just returned from trekking and were shown the bird resulting in some impressive camera equipment taking a salvo of images.
After the Trogon, a Dusky Blue Flycatcher was caught and as enthusiastic as one can get over this species, it just did not educe the same reaction!
We carried on till dusk catching a few more Eastern Forest Robins, Cameroon Sombre Greenbul and a Yellow-spotted Barbet. Sadly we got the only Green Twinspot of the trip which had sadly been attacked by something, probably a rodent of some sort.
We couldn’t afford another mornings netting as people had to get flights in the early afternoon so we set off at 0700 and made good time till we spotted a Beaudouin’s Snake Eagle sat up on a pylon in a marsh. I walked/crawled the trap in and managed to get it right under the nose of the bird and for a hopeful minute got a good response of bobs. However that’s all that happened! Often in overcast and cool conditions birds of prey are reluctant to come to a trap and sit tight not feeding until its hot again.
After an hour or so we spotted a Long-crested Eagle on a telegraph pole in difficult conditions between two villages! I got a trap out whilst Baker shouted to approaching pedestrians that there was a snake and not to approach! I walked the trap right underneath the bird, dropped it and crossed the road to watch. It took about 20 seconds for the bird to spot the mouse, then lots of bobbing and after another 20 seconds launched itself down onto the trap.
Then another 20 and I could see a foot caught which eventually alerted the bird to its predicament and tried to fly off.
Mick ringed the bird which was a female and in its second year just starting its primary moult. A few photographs and then it was released to the befuddlement of the gathering crowds!
Next stop was Entebbe and farewells after a very pleasant and thouroughly enjoyable trip.
Species totals of new birds
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Total
Black-headed Heron 1 1 2
Knob-billed Duck 1 1
African Goshawk 1 1
Shikra 1 1
Long-crested Eagle 1.20th
Greater Painted-snipe 10 4 4 1 1 20
Collared Pratincole 1 1 2
Long-toed Lapwing 5 5
Spur-winged Plover 3 3
Common Ringed Plover 7 1 4 12
Jack Snipe 1 1
Common Snipe 7 6 4 17
Common Greenshank 1 1
Wood Sandpiper 33 9 5 9 1 57
Little Stint 10 35 5 50
Ruff 1 1
African Mourning Dove 1 1
Vinaceous Dove 2 2
Black-billed Wood-Dove 1 2 3
Blue-spotted Wood-Dove 4 1 5
Yellowbill 1 1
White-browed Coucal 1 1
Swamp Nightjar 1 1
Long-tailed Nightjar 1 1
Speckled Mousebird 1 1
Narina Trogon 1 1
Malachite Kingfisher 1 1
African Pygmy-Kingfisher 1 5 6
Dwarf Kingfisher 1 1
Blue-breasted Kingfisher 1 1
Yellow-spotted Barbet 1 1
Scaly-throated Honeyguide 1 1
Nubian Woodpecker 1 1
Buff-spotted Woodpecker 1 1
Sandmartin 1 1
Barn Swallow 1 1
Red-throated Pipit 8 4 12
Yellow Wagtail 2 2 4
Dark-capped Bulbul 2 3 5
Little Greenbul 2 3 5
Cam. Sombre Greenbul 1 1
Yellow-whiskered Greenbul 1 3 4
Yellow-throated Greenbul 2 2
White-throated Greenbul 18 1 9 3 31
Red-tailed Bristlebill 1 3 1 5
Rufous Flycatcher-Thrush 1 1 2
White-tailed Ant-Thrush 1 1 2
Brown-chested Alethe 2 2
Fire-crested Alethe 1 1
Tawny-flanked Prinia 1 1
Yellow-breasted Apalis 1 1
Gray-capped Warbler 1 1
Grey-backed Camaroptera 1 1 2
Olive-green Camaroptera 1 1
Eurasian Reed-Warbler 1 1
Green Crombec 1 1
Northern Crombec 1 3 4
Green Hylia 1 1
Willow Warbler 1 1 1 1 4
Dusky-blue flycatcher 2 2
Forest Robin 5 3 8
White-browed Robin-Chat 2 1 3
Spotted Morning-Thrush 3 3
Red-backed Scrub-Robin 1 1
Chestnut Wattle-eye 1 1
Jameson's Wattle-eye 1 1
Red-bellied Para-Flycatcher 2 2
African Paradise-Flycatcher 1 1 2
Scaly-breasted Illadopsis 4 1 5
Brown Illadopsis 1 1
Green-headed Sunbird 1 2 3
Eastern Olive Sunbird 3 1 1 1 1 7
Olive-bellied Sunbird 2 4 6
Red-chested Sunbird 2 5 7
Variable Sunbird 4 4
African Yellow White-eye 2 2
Black-crowned Tchagra 1 1
Black-headed Gonolek 1 1 2
Sulphur-breasted Bushshrike 1 1
Little Weaver 2 2
Spectacled Weaver 1 1
Village Weaver 1 1 2
Yellow-backed Weaver 3 3
Cardinal Quelea 4 4
Red-billed Quelea 1 1 2
Black-rumped Waxbill 1 1
Brimstone Canary 1 1
Day totals: 71 72 33 18 15 48 24 44 10 3 15 24 377
Total species = 87
Additional species that were retraps:
Yellow-breasted Apalis
Brown Twinspot
Collared Sunbird
Yellow-fronted Tinkerbird
Snowy-headed Robinchat
Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu
Rattling Cisticola
Puvel’ Illadopsis
Mozambique Wader expedition
Wader ringing reconnaissance to the Quirimbas archipelago, Quirimbas National Park
Northern Mozambique
14-28 October 2008
This was my second trip to Quirimbas National Park to work with WWF on a project to assess bird diversity and develop bird-watching tourism in this very un explored and remote part of the world.
In addition to this I wanted to find concentrations or roosts of Palearctic migrant waders to trap and ring.
Arriving at the coastal town of Pemba I was met by Rebecca Marques-Phillips who is the WWF tourism officer for the Quirimbas National Park. I was to stay at a beach lodge accommodation in a nature reserve just outside of the town run by Brenda and Rudi, a magnificent area of coastal scrub and huge Baobab trees set inside the largest inland lagoon in Africa.
Got there just in time for sundowners and a tray of huge fresh cooked prawns, however thinking of work I surreptitiously dropped a Sherman trap behind the bar and carried on with my sundowner. Half a beer later I heard the familiar ‘snap’ of the trap and on inspection found a perfect sized rat for the following days journey into the bush!
It gets light here at 0400hrs as Mozambique doesn’t have any time zones but Pemba is 1000kn east of Maputo and so should be on the east African time zone, so it gets dark at 1700hrs!
At dawn took an early morning walk along the trail system which are perfect net-rides and got a very good list going including a couple of coastal endemics, Pale Batis and Brown-breasted Barbet. Found a Spotted Eagle-owl which had left it a little too late returning to roost and so got caught out by a mob of other goodies from Square-tailed Drongo, Blue-mantled Crested flycatcher and a pair of Black-throated Wattle-eye, listed as threatened by the IUCN and then rounded off the morning with a lifer in the form of another coastal endemic, Grey Sunbird!
It was low tide and there were only a few waders on the waterline Whimbrel, Terek Sandpiper, Greenshank and a few Lesser Crested Tern.
We got off late morning after loading up the vehicle and set off with Roger the driver and Ibraim who was a park field assistant form the historical island of Ibo where we were to visit.
About 30 minutes out of Pemba a Northern Wheatear flew across the road which subsequently has become the first record for Mozambique!
On the way through the park we spotted a few raptors, Bateleur, Brown Snake-eagle, Black-chested Snake-eagle and a Wahlberg’s Eagle.
Going through some nice tall Miombo woodland Rebecca spotted a real gem and threatened coastal endemic in the form of a Southern-banded Snake-eagle! I feverishly got the Bal-chatri trap out and shook the rat out of the Sherman all the while preying for the bird to sit, when the rat ungraciously rolled out of the Sherman dead as a doornail! Bugger! just didn’t cover it! Here we were in perfect position to catch a rare and little known bird of prey and we get let-down by the hardiest of hard rodents in the crucial stages.
One of the remarkable produces of this part of the world is bamboo. Perfectly sized net-poles in 3 and 3.5m lengths, everywhere! And unlike the UK prices we ended up paying 35p for 20 X 3m poles (that’s for the lot!), Ibraim thought we got ripped off, the mind boggles!
Situ Island
We got to the landing stage for Situ Island in thick mangrove where Mangrove Kingfishers were calling everywhere.
This coastal endemic has the strange migratory habit of breeding inland in lowland forest and spending the non-breeding season back on the coast in mangrove forest. Unfortunately much of its breeding habitat has disappeared and so this kingfisher if very rare over much of its range. On the way we spotted a Wahlberg’s Eagle sitting on a nest, interesting record for this species which is could be either a central African breeder or a breeding migrant to the south.
We were met by South African lodge managers Tess and Craig who in their very flash boat took us to the island of Situ.
Landing on the golden white beach in front of the lodge I struggled to think of a better sited ringing spot, (with the exception of the Rye Meads sewage ponds, in Hertfordshire) along the beach were a flock of 20 Greater Sandplover and ten Greenshank.
We spent an arduous couple of hours snorkelling off the beach on a fantastic little reef where I spotted an immature Emperor Angel Fish (very different to the adult and far more beautiful) 3 large Devil Firefish, Moorish Idol, big Puffer-fish, Parrot Fish a large Boxfish and many more.
Eventually we dragged ourselves to the sundowner spot watching Dimorphic Egrets and Black Herons heading to roost, when Rebecca asked me what the flock of birds were which were flying into the bay, casually glancing at them I dismissed them as Greenshanks, then did a double take and nearly choked on my G&T as there, coming into land at the other end of the beach were a flock of 60 Crab Plover!!!
Right now we had work to do!
It was too late now to put up a net as I would just flush the birds but would watch tomorrow and work out a plan to catch them at high tide as it was a spring tide and only one spot to take a catch on a sand spit the birds were using to roost. The trouble was the birds were coming in well before dark, so other than taking a day catch I had to try and catch them once they were at roost.
The next day at dawn I put up a net in the mangrove for the afore mentioned Kingfisher and a riot of birds coming into a fruiting bush but ended up with only a single Sombre Greenbul. We walked/waded through the mangrove putting up hundreds of the delightful mud-skippers and found small islands with giant Baobabs the air above twittering with the strange looking tail-less Bohm’s Spinetail.
Before the Crab Plovers were scheduled to come into roost, we got 3 X 40 foot 2 panel nets up covering the sand-spit and left it open to wait for the birds. Eventually they came round the headland and were making a strong line directly to the nets and with heart in mouth hoped they were as dopey as Thick-knees when it came to catching in daylight. At the last second, the whole flock veered out to sea again to come round several times, eventually landing on the beach on the near side of the nets well below the high-tide mark, I had miss-judged the tide by 4 metres!
At 2130 I moved the line of nets down the beach to be in 1 m of water at high tide and furled.
At 0300hrs I crept along the beach to open the line, when half way along had the eerie sensation that I was being watched. Looking round in the now low moon right up on the top of the beach behind me was the entire flock of Crab Plovers some 10 metres away! Talk about getting caught with ones pants down. What to do? I quietly finished opening the line and carried walking on past the last net to think. It was soon going to be light so I had to do something now and decided to wade across the channel flowing out of the mangroves which formed the sand spit the birds were on and tried to get right behind them with the idea of flushing them out to sea and into the nets, simple yes, but a shorebird’s a shorebird and the lot then began to walk along the beach out of the line of nets so I then decided to charge them and watched as they all passed by the last net pole, however a single bird, the thick one, went the wrong side and into the net!
But what a bird! It was in primary moult and had brown streaking on the head making it a young bird in its second year. More like a robust tern than a wader but with very long legs!
Taking down later we caught a consolation Common Sandpiper!
After breakfast Craig announced a fishing trip so we all set off in the nice ski boat and out to sea. The sea was like a millpond and we soon found shoals of feeding Skipjack Tuna, jumping out in pursuit of fleeing baitfish, some of which were the amazing Flying fish zipping out of the water to glide 20-30m before landing back in the water, what an adaptation!
In no time at all we were stuck into fish, stripping metres of line of the small multiplier reels and after a great fight landed a pair of 12lb specimens.
Once we had 4 fish we called it a day and headed back to land when all of a sudden a tremendous explosion of air made us all jump and look round to see a huge Humpback Whale with calf surface 100 metres away! We watched them for 20 minutes before they sounded not to be seen again!
Thinking it couldn’t get any better the water in front of the boat erupted with jumping Bottle-nosed Dolphins! They spent 10 minutes playing around us before going back to chasing baitfish.
Ibo Island
To get to the landing for Ibo Island we had to drive north on the mainland for 3 hours through beautiful miombo woodland and visited a campsite the park was preparing which would have chalets and a bar to be run by the local community. The mist-netting potential here looked fabulous with nice thick bush just next to a wetland and a huge roost of African Open-billed Storks, Great White Egret and lots of other herons.
We arrived at the Ibo landing site in the dark and loaded the park boat with all the equipment and set off with Greater Galago screaming right next to the boat from the dense mangroves.
Ibo island is like an architectural museum of art deco and 14th centaury Portuguese. We got to the famous Ibo island Lodge and met Kevin the owner who promptly filled us up with a big plate of monster prawns and cold beer!
At first light I went to inspect the sea in front of the lodge and noticed that the tide was going out revealing a sandbar at one end of the sea wall. As this sandbar got bigger I noticed lots of waders landing on it having come from roost. I walked up along the sea wall and got quite close to see mostly Whimbrel, Grey Plover, Curlew and Terek Sandpiper, Greater Sandplover, Little Stint, Sanderling, Turnstone, Greenshank, Bar-tailed Godwit and scatterings of White-fronted plover.
Pretty good variety and approximately 2000 birds.
The tide went out to reveal a wonderful inter-tidal mud-flat where Dimorphic Egrets, Black Herons, Yellow-billed Storks and thousands of waders began feeding.
So, the high tide was at 1800hrs and I reckoned on setting a line on the sandbar to catch birds on the incoming tide and again on the outgoing tide.
At 1600hrs with the help of half the kids on Ibo, we set a line of 3 X 40’ and set up on the sea wall not too far away so we could watch the progress of the birds.
As the tide soon came in, birds started to congregate toward the sandbar but it was still too light for any birds to start flying into nets and so we watched as birds began to leave well before the tide was fully in.
Eventually at dark, all birds had left and so we waited for the tide to go out to see what that would do. At 1930 I went to inspect the nets and low and behold there were two Crab Plovers in! At 2000hrs I got another Crab Plover and thought that if only all the other waders were doing what the crab Plovers were doing, coming into the revealing mud and sand to feed. I left it till 2100hrs when the tide was not well out and nothing was moving to take down and get some sleep.
The following day we set off to explore a small island called Manual de Silver and found a considerable roost at high tide of mostly Whimbrel, Greater Sandplover and Grey Plover around 2-300 birds. We also had a Eurasian Curlew here too. Then we found a roost of 200 Crab Plovers on a sandy beach before getting back on the high tide as leaving it too late we faced a long walk across the mud and sand.
Back on Ibo the flats outside the lodge had a good number of birds. Again that afternoon we set the same line of nets plus 2 more 60’, I had to be aware of the fact that I was the only ringer present and if I did take a big catch, could get into trouble.
The high tide was now going to be an hour later and darker so hoped we would take a catch of birds leaving for roost. However the birds just left earlier and to the north away from the nets, I don’t think they had seen them.
Left it till 0100hrs and caught a Lesser Sandplover, Terek Sandpiper and a White-fronted Plover. The Crab Plovers were moving as we could hear the distinctive calls out across the bay.
Next day at high tide we took the boat to explore another part of the archipelago and crossing the bay got 4 Humpback Dolphins, a rare and unusual estuarine cetacean and great that they had survived the Chinese nets which are all over the place. We then had to pass through a fantastic maze of mangrove for an hour along impossibly tight channels, how the boatman knew was a mystery to me.
Out on the other side we passed a long spur of grey-brown jagged coral rock and thought what an odd colour, till we suddenly realised it was coverd in countless birds, what a shock! Here was The roost! Just on one side I estimated there to be at least 6-8,000 birds and possibly 10,000. It would be an easy site to work as the sea all round the roost was only a metre deep at high tide and completely dry at low tide. Hmm, would need a few more hands for that, but noted it and we moved on.
That evening we set nets again and caught another Crab Plover, Terek Sandpiper, Common Sandpiper, closed then opened again at 0300hrs and got another Terek, Curlew Sandpiper and a White-fronted Plover and took down.
There was a Black-chested Snake Eagle on the island and during the night we had some success with the Sherman trap and had got a decent sized rat. However getting the beast into the balchatri was not so easy and Florentine the French dive master whom we had been staying with decided to fast track the process and grab the tail of the animal before I could stop him. Needless to say the creature savaged his thumb, eliciting thundering Gallic curses and made off in the direction of the long-drop!
Ok so scrap that plan!
However at that point Demitri, another French dive master on the island wandered in with a plastic bottle containing another rat which we successfully transferred to the balchatri. At the airstrip we couldn’t find the Black-chested Snake Eagle but dropped for a Black-shouldered Kite which with utter distain flew off to better things.
Matemo Island
We packed the boat up and made off for Matemo Island and set up camp in the park HQ hut and took a walk along the beach to the very posh Rani Lodge. On the way we stopped to count a flock of 65 Roosting Whimbrel and suddenly realised that the entire area in front of us was covered with roosting birds. Mostly Greater Sandplover, Curlew sandpiper, Terek Sandpiper and Greenshank.
Wow! there must have been 5000 birds and not 15m away from where we stood! They were all congregated on a slightly raised bit of the beach where it came to a point, very subtle but a perfect roost.
We went and said hello to the lodge managers and got some alarmed looks from the guests (I tend to look a bit ‘bush’ after a few days of limited facilities!) before returning to make a plan for the coming night tide.
At dusk we set the 4 nets again, thinking I was probably taking a risk here and retreated to the beach head to wait, high tide was at 2130hrs. At 2100hrs I took a peek as I could not hear anything and took out a single Greater Sandplover. At 2130 went to see and there was one Curlew Sandpiper and a Water Thick-knee! Blast, missed judged the positioning as I could hear the roost very close of lots of birds. Waited till 1050hrs and took out a Sanderling before closing at 1230hrs.
At dawn we went to look at the site and 15m past the end net were the thousands of footmarks in the sand! Took down and thought about the following night.
Went to check on two other roosts within walking distance both smaller but one had a European Oystercatcher, a rare bird for this part of the world.
It was now a neap tide and so it would be the same as last night so that evening we set the same line of nets further out to cover the roost.
High tide was to be at 1110hrs and so other than a Terek Sandpiper and Greater Sandplover, had nothing till 1000hrs before taking a look.
OK now we were in business! The last two nets had caught a considerable number of birds, 87 to be exact!
The sight was something to behold in the dark, but now the tide was doing something very odd, it was coming in very fast and was already way beyond where it should have been. Getting stuck into the birds I worked with Rebecca holding bags and then running them up the beach to the camp. To make matters worse a wind had got up and things looked rather dire as the tide was now coming in fast!
I ran back and got one of the ‘pop-up’ tents to put birds in to save time but going to put the first lot in realised the wind had taken the tent out to sea!
Back for the other one this time with large rock and gradually filled it with birds.
I extracted the last bird at 1230hrs, with the sea up to my waist and furled. I then got stuck into the lot with Rebecca scribing and finished ringing the last bird at 0400hrs! quite an epic catch by normal standards and no casualties !
We collapsed on the wet sand at our feet to try and sleep, but the adrenalin had kicked in big time so I went to take down the nets at first light 20mins later and found the missing pop-up tent on the shoreline!
Birds from just the two nets were;
Whimbrel 3
Turnstone 2
Greater Sandplover 3
Lesser Sandplover 1
Sanderling 3
Terek Sandpiper 52
Curlew Sandpiper 22
Little Stint 1
The reason we later found out for the freak tide was a big cyclone to the north which had upset all the tides. Just goes to show how one can be caught out. Fortunately the shore gradient was very slight so no danger of complete submergence!
We had now come to the end of the archipelago trip and so made for the mainland in a heavy sea to meet up with Roger on the mainland. We spent a few hours heading south to Taratibo, on the way we spotted a Western Banded Snake Eagle, quite a good record and a first for the park, only being recorded as far as the western border with Zambia in the past.
Taritibo is a beautiful place, set at the base of a massive inselberg in pristine Miombo forest, the birding was gong to be interesting in the morning!
At 0500hrs (lie-in) we set off and soon got a bird party with Pale Batis, Dark-backed Weaver a party of 8 Chestnut-fronted Helmet-shrike, and a pair of crowned Eagle above us causing havoc among the Samango Monkeys.
I put a net up to try and get the Chestnut-fronted Helmet-shrikes but got a pair of Striped Pipits and an Emerald-spotted Wood-dove instead!
Then Rebecca spotted a pair of sunbirds which disappeared before I could get onto them. She described them as Ulunguru Violet-backed Sunbirds, quite a rarity in this part of the world and would be a new species for the park, after an hour of searching I found them again and indeed they were indeed Ulunguru Violet-backed Sunbirds, the only species to have both male and female with metallic plumage.
Last stop was Pemba and back to the beach lodge and this time with nets!
We got there and put up a line of 4 x 60’ nets and furled for the morning.
Went down to the fire on the beach where Rudi had prepared a feast of prawns and sea fish again.
Opened at 0430hrs and before I had finished birds were piling in. mostly Sombre Greenbuls but all sorts of other stuff too.
At one point I got hassled by a male African Goshawk, grabbing a Sombre Greenbul before I could get to it, the Greenbul was ok, but next net round he was in the net again again and this time I managed to get him. Then something big was bouncing around in the end net which prompted a quick dash to the last net and I had the female as well!
Considerably bigger at 378g compared to the male at 226g wings were 260mm for the female and 214mm for the male.
Netting here was such a pleasure and everything so convienient from the accommodation to the net lanes, not to mention the abundunce of birds. With more time and people it woould be a great wader site as well putting nets on the beachfront.
Here follows a list of species caught;
African Goshawk 2
Emerald-spotted Wood-dove 1
Little Bee-eater 1
Burchell’s Coucal 1
Brown-hooded Kingfisher 1
Sombre Greenbul 47
Yellow-bellied Greenbul 2
Terrestrial Brownbul 3
Dark-capped Bulbul 1
Tropical Boubou 4
Brown-crowned Tchagra 1
Black-backed Puffback 4
Square-tailed Drongo 3
Orange-breasted Bush-shrike 1
Eastern Nicator 2
Red-capped Robinchat 13
White-browed Robinchat 1
Bearded Scrub-robin 3
Eastern Olive Sunbird 10
Purple-banded Sunbird 1
White-bellied Sunbird 3
Variable Sunbird 1
Collared Sunbird 3
Grey Tit-flycatcher 1
Blue-mantled Crested Flycatcher 4
Green-backed Camaroptera 8
Black-throated Wattle-eye 2
Dark-backed Weaver 1
Yellow Weaver 2
Spectacled Weaver 4
Green-winged Pytillia 3
Red-throated Twinspot 2
Red-billed Firefinch 5
Blue Waxbill 1
Red-faced Cisticola 4
Altogether over 3 mornings ringing I caught 146 birds of 35 species and a total of 107 Waders of 12 species.
All in all a great trip and with a team of 6 or so, considerably more birds could be ringed.
I will be returning to Quirimbas National Park over the next few years with the aim of training a team to carry out CES style ringing.
Northern Mozambique
14-28 October 2008
This was my second trip to Quirimbas National Park to work with WWF on a project to assess bird diversity and develop bird-watching tourism in this very un explored and remote part of the world.
In addition to this I wanted to find concentrations or roosts of Palearctic migrant waders to trap and ring.
Arriving at the coastal town of Pemba I was met by Rebecca Marques-Phillips who is the WWF tourism officer for the Quirimbas National Park. I was to stay at a beach lodge accommodation in a nature reserve just outside of the town run by Brenda and Rudi, a magnificent area of coastal scrub and huge Baobab trees set inside the largest inland lagoon in Africa.
Got there just in time for sundowners and a tray of huge fresh cooked prawns, however thinking of work I surreptitiously dropped a Sherman trap behind the bar and carried on with my sundowner. Half a beer later I heard the familiar ‘snap’ of the trap and on inspection found a perfect sized rat for the following days journey into the bush!
It gets light here at 0400hrs as Mozambique doesn’t have any time zones but Pemba is 1000kn east of Maputo and so should be on the east African time zone, so it gets dark at 1700hrs!
At dawn took an early morning walk along the trail system which are perfect net-rides and got a very good list going including a couple of coastal endemics, Pale Batis and Brown-breasted Barbet. Found a Spotted Eagle-owl which had left it a little too late returning to roost and so got caught out by a mob of other goodies from Square-tailed Drongo, Blue-mantled Crested flycatcher and a pair of Black-throated Wattle-eye, listed as threatened by the IUCN and then rounded off the morning with a lifer in the form of another coastal endemic, Grey Sunbird!
It was low tide and there were only a few waders on the waterline Whimbrel, Terek Sandpiper, Greenshank and a few Lesser Crested Tern.
We got off late morning after loading up the vehicle and set off with Roger the driver and Ibraim who was a park field assistant form the historical island of Ibo where we were to visit.
About 30 minutes out of Pemba a Northern Wheatear flew across the road which subsequently has become the first record for Mozambique!
On the way through the park we spotted a few raptors, Bateleur, Brown Snake-eagle, Black-chested Snake-eagle and a Wahlberg’s Eagle.
Going through some nice tall Miombo woodland Rebecca spotted a real gem and threatened coastal endemic in the form of a Southern-banded Snake-eagle! I feverishly got the Bal-chatri trap out and shook the rat out of the Sherman all the while preying for the bird to sit, when the rat ungraciously rolled out of the Sherman dead as a doornail! Bugger! just didn’t cover it! Here we were in perfect position to catch a rare and little known bird of prey and we get let-down by the hardiest of hard rodents in the crucial stages.
One of the remarkable produces of this part of the world is bamboo. Perfectly sized net-poles in 3 and 3.5m lengths, everywhere! And unlike the UK prices we ended up paying 35p for 20 X 3m poles (that’s for the lot!), Ibraim thought we got ripped off, the mind boggles!
Situ Island
We got to the landing stage for Situ Island in thick mangrove where Mangrove Kingfishers were calling everywhere.
This coastal endemic has the strange migratory habit of breeding inland in lowland forest and spending the non-breeding season back on the coast in mangrove forest. Unfortunately much of its breeding habitat has disappeared and so this kingfisher if very rare over much of its range. On the way we spotted a Wahlberg’s Eagle sitting on a nest, interesting record for this species which is could be either a central African breeder or a breeding migrant to the south.
We were met by South African lodge managers Tess and Craig who in their very flash boat took us to the island of Situ.
Landing on the golden white beach in front of the lodge I struggled to think of a better sited ringing spot, (with the exception of the Rye Meads sewage ponds, in Hertfordshire) along the beach were a flock of 20 Greater Sandplover and ten Greenshank.
We spent an arduous couple of hours snorkelling off the beach on a fantastic little reef where I spotted an immature Emperor Angel Fish (very different to the adult and far more beautiful) 3 large Devil Firefish, Moorish Idol, big Puffer-fish, Parrot Fish a large Boxfish and many more.
Eventually we dragged ourselves to the sundowner spot watching Dimorphic Egrets and Black Herons heading to roost, when Rebecca asked me what the flock of birds were which were flying into the bay, casually glancing at them I dismissed them as Greenshanks, then did a double take and nearly choked on my G&T as there, coming into land at the other end of the beach were a flock of 60 Crab Plover!!!
Right now we had work to do!
It was too late now to put up a net as I would just flush the birds but would watch tomorrow and work out a plan to catch them at high tide as it was a spring tide and only one spot to take a catch on a sand spit the birds were using to roost. The trouble was the birds were coming in well before dark, so other than taking a day catch I had to try and catch them once they were at roost.
The next day at dawn I put up a net in the mangrove for the afore mentioned Kingfisher and a riot of birds coming into a fruiting bush but ended up with only a single Sombre Greenbul. We walked/waded through the mangrove putting up hundreds of the delightful mud-skippers and found small islands with giant Baobabs the air above twittering with the strange looking tail-less Bohm’s Spinetail.
Before the Crab Plovers were scheduled to come into roost, we got 3 X 40 foot 2 panel nets up covering the sand-spit and left it open to wait for the birds. Eventually they came round the headland and were making a strong line directly to the nets and with heart in mouth hoped they were as dopey as Thick-knees when it came to catching in daylight. At the last second, the whole flock veered out to sea again to come round several times, eventually landing on the beach on the near side of the nets well below the high-tide mark, I had miss-judged the tide by 4 metres!
At 2130 I moved the line of nets down the beach to be in 1 m of water at high tide and furled.
At 0300hrs I crept along the beach to open the line, when half way along had the eerie sensation that I was being watched. Looking round in the now low moon right up on the top of the beach behind me was the entire flock of Crab Plovers some 10 metres away! Talk about getting caught with ones pants down. What to do? I quietly finished opening the line and carried walking on past the last net to think. It was soon going to be light so I had to do something now and decided to wade across the channel flowing out of the mangroves which formed the sand spit the birds were on and tried to get right behind them with the idea of flushing them out to sea and into the nets, simple yes, but a shorebird’s a shorebird and the lot then began to walk along the beach out of the line of nets so I then decided to charge them and watched as they all passed by the last net pole, however a single bird, the thick one, went the wrong side and into the net!
But what a bird! It was in primary moult and had brown streaking on the head making it a young bird in its second year. More like a robust tern than a wader but with very long legs!
Taking down later we caught a consolation Common Sandpiper!
After breakfast Craig announced a fishing trip so we all set off in the nice ski boat and out to sea. The sea was like a millpond and we soon found shoals of feeding Skipjack Tuna, jumping out in pursuit of fleeing baitfish, some of which were the amazing Flying fish zipping out of the water to glide 20-30m before landing back in the water, what an adaptation!
In no time at all we were stuck into fish, stripping metres of line of the small multiplier reels and after a great fight landed a pair of 12lb specimens.
Once we had 4 fish we called it a day and headed back to land when all of a sudden a tremendous explosion of air made us all jump and look round to see a huge Humpback Whale with calf surface 100 metres away! We watched them for 20 minutes before they sounded not to be seen again!
Thinking it couldn’t get any better the water in front of the boat erupted with jumping Bottle-nosed Dolphins! They spent 10 minutes playing around us before going back to chasing baitfish.
Ibo Island
To get to the landing for Ibo Island we had to drive north on the mainland for 3 hours through beautiful miombo woodland and visited a campsite the park was preparing which would have chalets and a bar to be run by the local community. The mist-netting potential here looked fabulous with nice thick bush just next to a wetland and a huge roost of African Open-billed Storks, Great White Egret and lots of other herons.
We arrived at the Ibo landing site in the dark and loaded the park boat with all the equipment and set off with Greater Galago screaming right next to the boat from the dense mangroves.
Ibo island is like an architectural museum of art deco and 14th centaury Portuguese. We got to the famous Ibo island Lodge and met Kevin the owner who promptly filled us up with a big plate of monster prawns and cold beer!
At first light I went to inspect the sea in front of the lodge and noticed that the tide was going out revealing a sandbar at one end of the sea wall. As this sandbar got bigger I noticed lots of waders landing on it having come from roost. I walked up along the sea wall and got quite close to see mostly Whimbrel, Grey Plover, Curlew and Terek Sandpiper, Greater Sandplover, Little Stint, Sanderling, Turnstone, Greenshank, Bar-tailed Godwit and scatterings of White-fronted plover.
Pretty good variety and approximately 2000 birds.
The tide went out to reveal a wonderful inter-tidal mud-flat where Dimorphic Egrets, Black Herons, Yellow-billed Storks and thousands of waders began feeding.
So, the high tide was at 1800hrs and I reckoned on setting a line on the sandbar to catch birds on the incoming tide and again on the outgoing tide.
At 1600hrs with the help of half the kids on Ibo, we set a line of 3 X 40’ and set up on the sea wall not too far away so we could watch the progress of the birds.
As the tide soon came in, birds started to congregate toward the sandbar but it was still too light for any birds to start flying into nets and so we watched as birds began to leave well before the tide was fully in.
Eventually at dark, all birds had left and so we waited for the tide to go out to see what that would do. At 1930 I went to inspect the nets and low and behold there were two Crab Plovers in! At 2000hrs I got another Crab Plover and thought that if only all the other waders were doing what the crab Plovers were doing, coming into the revealing mud and sand to feed. I left it till 2100hrs when the tide was not well out and nothing was moving to take down and get some sleep.
The following day we set off to explore a small island called Manual de Silver and found a considerable roost at high tide of mostly Whimbrel, Greater Sandplover and Grey Plover around 2-300 birds. We also had a Eurasian Curlew here too. Then we found a roost of 200 Crab Plovers on a sandy beach before getting back on the high tide as leaving it too late we faced a long walk across the mud and sand.
Back on Ibo the flats outside the lodge had a good number of birds. Again that afternoon we set the same line of nets plus 2 more 60’, I had to be aware of the fact that I was the only ringer present and if I did take a big catch, could get into trouble.
The high tide was now going to be an hour later and darker so hoped we would take a catch of birds leaving for roost. However the birds just left earlier and to the north away from the nets, I don’t think they had seen them.
Left it till 0100hrs and caught a Lesser Sandplover, Terek Sandpiper and a White-fronted Plover. The Crab Plovers were moving as we could hear the distinctive calls out across the bay.
Next day at high tide we took the boat to explore another part of the archipelago and crossing the bay got 4 Humpback Dolphins, a rare and unusual estuarine cetacean and great that they had survived the Chinese nets which are all over the place. We then had to pass through a fantastic maze of mangrove for an hour along impossibly tight channels, how the boatman knew was a mystery to me.
Out on the other side we passed a long spur of grey-brown jagged coral rock and thought what an odd colour, till we suddenly realised it was coverd in countless birds, what a shock! Here was The roost! Just on one side I estimated there to be at least 6-8,000 birds and possibly 10,000. It would be an easy site to work as the sea all round the roost was only a metre deep at high tide and completely dry at low tide. Hmm, would need a few more hands for that, but noted it and we moved on.
That evening we set nets again and caught another Crab Plover, Terek Sandpiper, Common Sandpiper, closed then opened again at 0300hrs and got another Terek, Curlew Sandpiper and a White-fronted Plover and took down.
There was a Black-chested Snake Eagle on the island and during the night we had some success with the Sherman trap and had got a decent sized rat. However getting the beast into the balchatri was not so easy and Florentine the French dive master whom we had been staying with decided to fast track the process and grab the tail of the animal before I could stop him. Needless to say the creature savaged his thumb, eliciting thundering Gallic curses and made off in the direction of the long-drop!
Ok so scrap that plan!
However at that point Demitri, another French dive master on the island wandered in with a plastic bottle containing another rat which we successfully transferred to the balchatri. At the airstrip we couldn’t find the Black-chested Snake Eagle but dropped for a Black-shouldered Kite which with utter distain flew off to better things.
Matemo Island
We packed the boat up and made off for Matemo Island and set up camp in the park HQ hut and took a walk along the beach to the very posh Rani Lodge. On the way we stopped to count a flock of 65 Roosting Whimbrel and suddenly realised that the entire area in front of us was covered with roosting birds. Mostly Greater Sandplover, Curlew sandpiper, Terek Sandpiper and Greenshank.
Wow! there must have been 5000 birds and not 15m away from where we stood! They were all congregated on a slightly raised bit of the beach where it came to a point, very subtle but a perfect roost.
We went and said hello to the lodge managers and got some alarmed looks from the guests (I tend to look a bit ‘bush’ after a few days of limited facilities!) before returning to make a plan for the coming night tide.
At dusk we set the 4 nets again, thinking I was probably taking a risk here and retreated to the beach head to wait, high tide was at 2130hrs. At 2100hrs I took a peek as I could not hear anything and took out a single Greater Sandplover. At 2130 went to see and there was one Curlew Sandpiper and a Water Thick-knee! Blast, missed judged the positioning as I could hear the roost very close of lots of birds. Waited till 1050hrs and took out a Sanderling before closing at 1230hrs.
At dawn we went to look at the site and 15m past the end net were the thousands of footmarks in the sand! Took down and thought about the following night.
Went to check on two other roosts within walking distance both smaller but one had a European Oystercatcher, a rare bird for this part of the world.
It was now a neap tide and so it would be the same as last night so that evening we set the same line of nets further out to cover the roost.
High tide was to be at 1110hrs and so other than a Terek Sandpiper and Greater Sandplover, had nothing till 1000hrs before taking a look.
OK now we were in business! The last two nets had caught a considerable number of birds, 87 to be exact!
The sight was something to behold in the dark, but now the tide was doing something very odd, it was coming in very fast and was already way beyond where it should have been. Getting stuck into the birds I worked with Rebecca holding bags and then running them up the beach to the camp. To make matters worse a wind had got up and things looked rather dire as the tide was now coming in fast!
I ran back and got one of the ‘pop-up’ tents to put birds in to save time but going to put the first lot in realised the wind had taken the tent out to sea!
Back for the other one this time with large rock and gradually filled it with birds.
I extracted the last bird at 1230hrs, with the sea up to my waist and furled. I then got stuck into the lot with Rebecca scribing and finished ringing the last bird at 0400hrs! quite an epic catch by normal standards and no casualties !
We collapsed on the wet sand at our feet to try and sleep, but the adrenalin had kicked in big time so I went to take down the nets at first light 20mins later and found the missing pop-up tent on the shoreline!
Birds from just the two nets were;
Whimbrel 3
Turnstone 2
Greater Sandplover 3
Lesser Sandplover 1
Sanderling 3
Terek Sandpiper 52
Curlew Sandpiper 22
Little Stint 1
The reason we later found out for the freak tide was a big cyclone to the north which had upset all the tides. Just goes to show how one can be caught out. Fortunately the shore gradient was very slight so no danger of complete submergence!
We had now come to the end of the archipelago trip and so made for the mainland in a heavy sea to meet up with Roger on the mainland. We spent a few hours heading south to Taratibo, on the way we spotted a Western Banded Snake Eagle, quite a good record and a first for the park, only being recorded as far as the western border with Zambia in the past.
Taritibo is a beautiful place, set at the base of a massive inselberg in pristine Miombo forest, the birding was gong to be interesting in the morning!
At 0500hrs (lie-in) we set off and soon got a bird party with Pale Batis, Dark-backed Weaver a party of 8 Chestnut-fronted Helmet-shrike, and a pair of crowned Eagle above us causing havoc among the Samango Monkeys.
I put a net up to try and get the Chestnut-fronted Helmet-shrikes but got a pair of Striped Pipits and an Emerald-spotted Wood-dove instead!
Then Rebecca spotted a pair of sunbirds which disappeared before I could get onto them. She described them as Ulunguru Violet-backed Sunbirds, quite a rarity in this part of the world and would be a new species for the park, after an hour of searching I found them again and indeed they were indeed Ulunguru Violet-backed Sunbirds, the only species to have both male and female with metallic plumage.
Last stop was Pemba and back to the beach lodge and this time with nets!
We got there and put up a line of 4 x 60’ nets and furled for the morning.
Went down to the fire on the beach where Rudi had prepared a feast of prawns and sea fish again.
Opened at 0430hrs and before I had finished birds were piling in. mostly Sombre Greenbuls but all sorts of other stuff too.
At one point I got hassled by a male African Goshawk, grabbing a Sombre Greenbul before I could get to it, the Greenbul was ok, but next net round he was in the net again again and this time I managed to get him. Then something big was bouncing around in the end net which prompted a quick dash to the last net and I had the female as well!
Considerably bigger at 378g compared to the male at 226g wings were 260mm for the female and 214mm for the male.
Netting here was such a pleasure and everything so convienient from the accommodation to the net lanes, not to mention the abundunce of birds. With more time and people it woould be a great wader site as well putting nets on the beachfront.
Here follows a list of species caught;
African Goshawk 2
Emerald-spotted Wood-dove 1
Little Bee-eater 1
Burchell’s Coucal 1
Brown-hooded Kingfisher 1
Sombre Greenbul 47
Yellow-bellied Greenbul 2
Terrestrial Brownbul 3
Dark-capped Bulbul 1
Tropical Boubou 4
Brown-crowned Tchagra 1
Black-backed Puffback 4
Square-tailed Drongo 3
Orange-breasted Bush-shrike 1
Eastern Nicator 2
Red-capped Robinchat 13
White-browed Robinchat 1
Bearded Scrub-robin 3
Eastern Olive Sunbird 10
Purple-banded Sunbird 1
White-bellied Sunbird 3
Variable Sunbird 1
Collared Sunbird 3
Grey Tit-flycatcher 1
Blue-mantled Crested Flycatcher 4
Green-backed Camaroptera 8
Black-throated Wattle-eye 2
Dark-backed Weaver 1
Yellow Weaver 2
Spectacled Weaver 4
Green-winged Pytillia 3
Red-throated Twinspot 2
Red-billed Firefinch 5
Blue Waxbill 1
Red-faced Cisticola 4
Altogether over 3 mornings ringing I caught 146 birds of 35 species and a total of 107 Waders of 12 species.
All in all a great trip and with a team of 6 or so, considerably more birds could be ringed.
I will be returning to Quirimbas National Park over the next few years with the aim of training a team to carry out CES style ringing.
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