ABUKO NATIONAL
PARK - LAMIN RICE FIELDS
Abuko is a place that is rapidly growing on me,
the more I visit it the more I like it. You can be very disappointed with the
number of species that you see if you walk round too quickly, but a slow amble along
the well trodden forest tracks with plenty of stops should provided a mouth
watering list.
It was a Sunday so many people were in the park
and we also bumped into a couple of large English bird-watching parties, too
large in my opinion, 14 people plus two-three guides, how many species does the
last person in the long line get to see?
Anyway, back to birding! The Giant Kingfisher is a formidable beast
and no match for any fish in the pools at Abuko, we saw a female sitting with a
fish in her bill, she had already chased off the male and she sat waiting to
dive into the nest hole to feed the chicks. We left her to it after taking some
superb pictures. At the Darwin centre we watched a Crocodile as it snaked its’
way through the main pool, a Squacco
Heron jumped from the water as it approached. The pretty little Malachite Kingfisher posed nicely for
us on the fishing posts provided, as did a
Forked-tailed Drongo, which spent its’ time fly-catching from overhanging
branches above the pool.
After the Darwin Centre the next
part of the trail takes you through some dense forest where it is possible to
see the skulking Grey-headed Bristlebill
and the Western Bluebill, we had
good views of the former a fleeting view of the latter. The Little Greenbul sang beautifully and
the Yellow-breasted Apalis drove us
mad with its monotonous pulsing call, both showed well for us.
A little further on a few more
mature trees appear and it was in the canopy of these that we searched for the
beautiful Turacos. The Violet Turaco showed very well, we saw
a few of those but the Green version
was much harder to find and we had to wait until later for that one.
At the ‘Animal Orphanage’ we rested
for a while and drank cold drinks then we sat in the photographic hide for an
hour so, it was wonderful a whole host of species were coming down to a
drinking pool. We quickly added: Lavender
Waxbill, Orange-cheeked Waxbill, Brown Babbler, African Thrush, Red-billed
Firefinch, Black-necked and Village
Weaver, Common Bubul, Blue-spotted and Black-billed
Wood Dove to our day list. Two
little gems appeared and stole the show, the first was an African Flycatcher and the second was the minute Pygmy Kingfisher. A huge, menacing
looking, Nile Monitor Lizard came down to drink a couple times which scattered
all the birds.
We went back the way we came and the
reverse route was just as good as it was on the way in, we watched Common Wattle-eye, Collared Sunbird (a
family), Beautiful Sunbird, Green Turaco,
Fanti Saw-wing, Palm-nut Vulture and many of the species we had seen on the
way in.
We ate lunch sitting in the shade of
a make-shift hut where we drank cold drinks and ate bread, cheese, fish and
bananas, not altogether I hasten to add! At 3:30pm we took a walk into the rice
fields at Lamin which just across the road from Abuko. Our first birds were Lesser-blue Eared and Long-tailed Glossy Starlings, then we
found a Northern Black Flycatcher, which
led us onto another delightful Pygmy
Kingfisher, this one sat out in the open for us. It was very busy with
workers out in the rice fields and so there was a lot of disturbance,
consequently there were fewer birds than last week when we visited.
However we did manage to see quite a
few: Yellow-fronted Tinkerbird, Black Heron,
Black Crake, Hammerkop, Wattle & Spur-winged Plover, African Mourning Dove,
Senegal Thick-knee, Great White Egret, Grey Heron, Grey Kestrel, Senegal Parrot,
Rose-ringed Parakeet, to name but a few. We did see some predatory action when
a Blue-breasted kingfisher was taken
by a Lanner Falcon, ouch! Such a
thing of beauty destroyed in seconds!
The large Splendid Sunbird was seen several times as many of them visited the
palm trees to steal the palm oil that was being collected in bottles by the
locals. Gangs of Piapiacs also
roamed the palms as did the very common Green
Wood-hoopoe.
After 2 hours of very hot and humid
conditions we decided to call it a day and headed off back to the hotel as the
sun began to go down.
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