Thursday 11th Oct. Final day’s filming and training

The tracking and film crews leave early this morning, the latter hoping to get one last shot at a Burkina sunrise out in the bush.  The rest turn up a little later, and Aly and Oumar lead the training whereby the Mauritanian guys themselves undertake the bird count and habitat recording.  This goes extremely well, and the four trainees seem well prepared to take these new skills back home to apply to point-count transects at their local sites.

Roger and Japheth continue a cracking job of plotting the tagged wood warbler locations, taking the odd leaf sample from any unidentified trees.  If properly pressed these should be identifiable later, but with the help of an expert botanist methinks!  With one net up this morning, we manage to catch a further 2 wood warblers, and tag these with the transmitters that have been previously used on other birds, and dropped with the tail moult. One of these should last at least another 7 days, whilst the other was only active for a day before being picked up, so with any luck it should continue transmitting until around the 23^rd or 24^th Oct.  At the ringing station, though, there’s more attention from the local youth (Thursday again!)

For the afternoon, it’s one final foray in to the bush for Toby and Roger Jr, in search for Fulani herdsmen and their communities, and one final sunset too!

Once Carlo has finished arranging for his feather samples to be shipped back to the US, we head out for the final group meal, at a favourite of ours from previous visits, Dany Ice.  Despite a tiny quibble over the bill (my mistake - apologies to the staff!) the evening was enjoyed by all.