Burkina Faso: 17 November. Start of the second visit to Oursi

Chris Orsman writes: We've managed to find the only cyber pc in Gorom-Gorom, the nearest town to our camp! Briefly, we've completed day 3 of our second visit to Oursi, and with Rosemary's help have managed to put up more nets, at least at site 1 (east of the Le Mare d'Oursi). On day one they caught 103 birds, but there were a lot of Quelea amongst those. Site two hasn't been expanded as there is less scope to do so, but this morning they still managed to catch 54 birds. There aren't huge numbers of migrants in the catches, but there are lots of unidentifiable juvenile weaver types which are having to be released "sans bague". Migrants present at the moment include plenty of Olivaceous, Subalpine and Bonelli's Warblers, more Orphean Warblers and Yellow Wagtails than before, but fewer Redstarts than last month, and no Whitethroats or Melodious Warblers (that we know of!). The transects are producing very few Wheatears in the more open plains than was hoped for, in fact they're rather barren of birds at all now that most of the resident species appear to have finished breeding. No hirundines have yet been seen on any of the transects this time round, although we have seen a few about otherwise. The crops are now largely in and the grass is now being grazed heavily since the livestock are more free to roam. This also means that the ringing team have to take extra vigilance at the nets as there are no warning signs that livestock are approaching as there was before!

Sleeping arrangements are much as before - a mozzie net on a wooden platform is all that is needed!