18 -23 February: Three is the magic number

The wind on week three has become stronger, making it more difficult to catch the birds, and we are getting up earlier with the increasing day length to make sure the first couple of net rounds are as productive as possible. Early starts are meaning early nights, and a 9.00pm bed time is becoming the norm now. Monday on the south side was quiet but had two afro-trop rarities for this ringing site –African Moustached Warbler and Greater Honeyguide plus a Garden Warbler originally ringed in Holland.

The weather this week is exceptionally hot and humid, fifteen minutes after a cold shower you feel like having another. In the shade of the plantains the group had a good day on Tuesday for migrants with ten new birds, including a new Nightingale and three retraps, and a more moderate Wednesday session with four new Reed Warblers, a Pied Flycatcher and a retrap Garden Warbler. Local birds included two retrap Common Wattle-eyes, one from October 2011 and one from earlier in our trip. The slower session allowed us to pack up the south east nets and put up the the north east nets again, speedily in time for Mark’s birthday celebrations. Vicky had planned some birthday surprises with the expert help of Eric – (now a mixologist as well as a chef) who made home-made pina-colada with fresh pineapple and coconut, mixed, of course with some rum as a present, a homemade card and traditional spice bowl and grinder. Many happy returns Mark!

Celebrating Marks birthday (Vicky Gilson)

The next day brought a new Lizard Buzzard and our success with catching migrants continued with two Pied Flycatchers, Reed Warblers and Garden Warblers.

Lizard Buzzard and Vicky (John Black)

In the afternoon amidst oppressive conditions and under mountainous clouds the south nets were taken down and placed back on the north west side as more Nightingales were singing there. With the temperature and humidity rising we were very relieved when rain fell later, albeit very briefly the clouds soon rolling away as if nothing had ever happened, and had a magic effect on the humidity so we were able to get some proper sleep for the first time in several nights. Friday was a brilliant bird day for variety with Garden, Reed, and Grasshopper Warblers, Wryneck, and a retrap of a Nightingale ringed by us in the first week here, showing it is a resident bird. African Pygmy Kingfishers and a Yellow-crowned Gonolek which had not been caught before at this site added a splash of colour to the otherwise brown/grey bird day.

Grasshopper Warbler and Wryneck (Mark Hulme)

African Pygmy Kingfishers (Vicky Gilson)

Yellow-crowned Gonolek (Mark Hulme)

Amazingly in the morning John extracted a control Reed Warbler from the north west nets, our second control, and from Holland again! Obviously on a winning streak having extracted both the controls we are hoping John will make it third time lucky for us with another.

Above Garden and European Reed Warbler controls from Holland

A Lizard Buzzard rounded off the day, when chatting at the table during a blank net round a Lizard Buzzard came hurtling from the sky, and hit the ground with a thud next to our ringing base. Concerned it had been shot at first John leapt up to see what it was, the inanimate bird suddenly got up and flew off, a lucky agama lizard scurrying into the bushes just having escaped its talons. We are learning to always expect the unexpected here! Wildlife is even following us indoors, praying mantis attracted to the light, giant wasps looking for places to nest, large and intimidating flat spiders lurking in between the gaps of the skirting boards, and recently discovered colony of termites currently eating Vicky’s bedroom door.

Following the usual raucous Nsoatre Friday night from the energetic locals (for we are now fast becoming grumpy stop-ins owing to the early mornings) a sleepy team again assembled for ringing on the north side. There was a horrible smell by the north east ride which was later discovered by John to be small mongoose that had died at some point after being caught around its arm and head in a spring loaded snare. These cruel traps are widely used throughout the local area and indiscriminately used for hunting bush meat, we have seen snakes and ground squirrels trapped in them also. We all hope that the use of these inhumane devices is stopped.

On a more positive note, our efforts were rewarded with 17 migrant birds captured, including five Nightingales. Three of these were new birds without rings, and one of the retraps was a bird that had been fitted with a tail mounted radio tag in January 2012 (the tag has long since dropped off) and to our delight the remaining retrap provided our third Geolocator recovery! This bird is suspected to have already been on passage when the device was fitted in 2012 and was carrying the most fat of any Nightingale trapped this month, indicating the journey northward is underway. We are looking forward to discovering if the data from this individual tells a different story to the two devices already recovered from Nightingales that were known to over-winter locally.

John, Vicky and Mark with two Nightingales, the one on the right is the third caught with a geolocator (Nick Aduse-Gyan)

Feathers parted to reveal the geolocator device in-situ (Mark Hulme)



Sunday 6th –Mon 14th Jan 2013 Back to Ghana, and a visit from the experts!

The New Year is underway, and the Ghana wood warbler team is augmented by the arrival from the UK of project manager Danaë Sheehan and head of species recovery Norbert Schaffer from the RSPB’s International department, and Franz Bairlein, from the Institute of Avian Research in Germany and one of the world’s foremost bird migration experts, all here to visit the study site and formulate a programme of fieldwork for the remainder of this season and for those to come.

After a brief visit to Ghana Wildlife Society HQ, we set off for the study site, the old team feeling a little anxious as to what first impressions the ‘new’ members will get from the wooded farmland at Pepease.  For our first morning in the field we walk the usual transect route that we follow to do the regular wood warbler survey.  Our own first impressions are that the vegetation has not dried out anything near as much as it had done by January of last year.  The air is dry, suggesting the harmattan may be just starting, but very little burning has taken place.  Thankfully we’re able to find a few wood warblers for the visitors, but here in the eastern section of the site, where no wood warblers were ringed last month, no colour ringed birds are spotted.  The following morning we head for the western side, where last month we caught and colour-ringed 11 birds.  This time we spot 4 of these, and a decent number of unringed individuals too.  Of note was the number of birds that could be seen with incomplete tails, demonstrating nicely that they are well into their winter moult.  All in all a great introduction to the site, and aside from the field visits some very interesting discussions about the future directions for the fieldwork were had.

Danaë, Norbert and Franz continued their Ghana visit with a trip to the lowland forest zone, whilst over the next 3 days we undertook a full site survey, with additional waypoints through a site extension encompassing the area inhabited by Black Star, our second tagged bird from last November. We then tackled the issue of some habitat recording for the areas occupied by the three tagged birds from November and December, and also spent time dissecting some of the whole-site habitat survey from the end of last season, before we embark on mapping any changes in late March.  Throughout this period we note that after the dry air of the 7th and 8th of January, the humidity levels have risen again.  There really is no sign of the harmattan yet....

Our study-site tasks completed, we then planned our own foray into the forest zone.  With the local wood warblers in moult rendering them near un-taggable, and after our experience last season of failing to catch any in January and early February (save the one tail-less individual!), our next job is to visit as many of the forest blocks in the south as possible. The aim is as last season – to prove or otherwise the presence of wood warblers in the forests that we have not yet visited, to improve the model that will help to predict the presence or absence of wood warblers elsewhere.  On top of this, we will attempt to measure wood warbler densities in the varying forest types and qualities, and where time permits, the adjacent farmland.  Should prove pretty interesting!!

1st - 12th December - Final push to catch more birds

These last two weeks have flown by!   After expressing a wish to catch more wood warblers in our last post, on the 2nd December the team managed to get a third, and was named Cocoa.  Unfortunately with one of our two radio receivers out of action, it did mean that we had to leave it at 3 birds to track - enough to keep the team busy with 3 tracks per bird per day.  This only lasted until the 6th, however, as by then Roger and Japheth were having problems with Black Star. The problem was solved when they found its tag on the ground, attached to a moulted tail feather.  This is about the time when they should be starting their moult, and so it came as no great surprise.

With Black Star now out of the picture, so to speak, and just 2 trackable wood warblers remaining, we wondered whether it was wise to try and tag another bird with just a few days left, when a tag can last up to 3 weeks.  We decided against it after carrying out a site survey on the 7th.  When using playback to illicit a response from birds otherwise not seen, both Asante and Cocoa were detected, their colour rings clearly visible.  Also, a much greater number of birds appeared to be around, compared to our earlier counts on the 16th & 17th November, and, it seemed, more than were around even since Cocoa was caught.  Therefore some more trapping effort was embarked upon to just colour-ring as many as possible.  Having learnt last season that we can resight November & December-caught birds even in late March, the more colour-ringed birds around, the better. 

Asante's tag eventually failed on the 9th, which allowed Roger and Japheth even more time to try catching and colour-ringing.  In the last few days in the field, in between tracking, R & J colour-ringed another 8 wood warblers - a testament to their great effort, but also perhaps to the genuine increase in overall numbers now present.  We now have 10 colour-ringed birds on the main site, plus Black Star a few hundred metres outside.  Should provide us with some extra home-range info if we get any resightings from January.

We wrapped up on the study site on the 12th, with Japheth and Oppong returning to Accra, hopefully for a good rest!  Now back in the UK, Roger and I will re-group with and expanded team on the 6th of Jan, and will hopefully be back in the field on the 8th.

For the time being, have a Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2013!

Thursday 18th Oct. City park visit

We take a long-planned break from tracking this morning.  Aware from previous experience that disturbance can be a bit of an issue on Thursdays with noisy children around the ringing site, we leave for Ouaga forest park early  to check on presence of wood warblers there.

After a quiet start, with a flock of lesser blue-eared starlings overhead and later foraging for berries in some low shrubs, we hear a first nightingale, soon followed by another, and then a couple of melodious warblers.  A willow warbler is seen, but for a while no wood warblers respond to the mp3 playback.  Things pick up a little as the sun rises and mixed Estrilda finches flit around low on and near the path.  At about 0630, we hear our fist wood warbler call.

A stroll around a fair section of the park over the next 3 hours yields an amazing 54 wood warblers, including at one spot over 15 birds – we actually lost count as they kept arriving in response to the playback!  To me this is a truly amazing tally, especially when one considers the total lack of records from Burkina in our first year of surveys – the park was clearly the place to be back then, if perhaps only during October!  It seems hard to believe these birds will remain here once the site begins to dry out, and one would expect them to head south to more-humid zones as the days pass.

After a quick shop for breakfast things and a visit to the office, we head back to attempt tracking again after the difficulties of last night.  We have absolutely no problem whatsoever!  All 3 birds are easily located, so our worries about a hastened departure are assuaged for now.

We’re invited to dinner with Henri this evening.  A very un-African sausage and mash!

Wednesday 17th Oct. Decoy wood warbler works wonders!

Following last night’s rather stormy weather, we manage to find the tagged birds quite easily; bird “10” is in a surprisingly low bush, happily preening away, and the other two are also quickly located.  We wonder whether the lost tag from the 14^th/15^th may have made its way down from its suspected lodgings in that tree.  Using the radio receiver, it is very quickly pin-pointed on the ground – once again still attached to a pair of moulted tail feathers.  It does seem odd that these birds should drop their feathers quite so readily.  The Ghana birds, which didn’t arrive on site until well after mid-November last year, retained their tags until we left the site on the 13^th of December, which was actually just after the start of moult witnessed in other birds in the area.

Our trapping effort with the mp3 playback is yielding very little, so we decide to try our wood warbler decoy one more time.  Oppong deftly straps it to a “branch” of a small “tree” (a fallen piece of brushwood) and then sticks this vertically in the ground right next to the net with the mp3 song playing.  Not really expecting much, after all the song alone is not working and the decoy has not appeared to work before, we are therefore surprised when 20 minutes alter Japheth returns from a net round with 3 wood warblers.  I’m not even sure I’ve seen 3 wood warblers in a net before – in fact, definitely not!  We colour-ring and fully process these birds, but we won’t be tagging any more birds for now.  We need to move on to other potential wood warbler sites in southern Burkina within the next week.  Ideally we’d like to get some gauge of the importance of the region as a staging post before the birds head further south to the more humid forest zones, in Ghana and beyond.

This evening Roger and Japheth report that one bird has apparently completely disappeared, and the other 2 are getting tricky to find!  Well, this rather brings our potential departure date forward!  The “vanished” bird’s tag was due to last well into next week.  If this is the case, then more exploration for potential wood warbler sites will begin over the weekend – but where should we go?  Time to consult some satellite images, and our colleagues at Naturama!

26th Jan: A tot up

Nightingale Team: Our third morning in succession, ringing in the eastern patch produced yet another Nightingale. So a nice cluster of four new birds to radio track from now on in this area. One Snowy-crowned Robin Chat was a new bird for the totals. As a resident and potential competitor to the Nightingales (work by Peter Jones has previously suggested that Nightingales are interspecifically territorial and move south within West Africa at the same rate during the dry season) this individual was radio-tagged too, to provide information about its movements relative to the neighbouring Nightingales.


A low overall catch grave me a chance to do what ringers do and tot up the migrant score in the 10 days since my arrival on the 16th Jan, so here goes: Garden Warbler (40), Reed Warbler (10), Nightingale (7), Melodious Warbler (5), Willow Warbler (4) and one each of Grasshopper Warbler, Blackcap, Common Whitethroat and Great Reed Warbler; 70 individual migrants in all; 57% Garden Warblers. According to the field guide, several of these species are well out of range here close to Berekum, especially Grasshopper Warbler! The Melodious Warblers are among the personal favourites for Vicky and I since this is not a species we bump into every day in the UK

The Afro-tropical species number 49 from 10 species, plus one or two released immediately when we are pressed for time, so perhaps 50:50 ‘residents’ to migrants? Whatever, the ‘volume’ of migrants is an interesting reminder that here too the composition of the bird fauna is dramatically altered by their arrival or departure, in manner we are entirely used to in Europe in summer.

Posted on behalf of Ian

18 Jan: Melodious and gropper

After a rather noisy night- (every night is party night in a Ghana), we got up at 5 to a healthy pineapple and bread breakfast. The first net round saw a rush of Palearctic migrants with 5 Garden Warblers, 2 Reeds Warblers, 1 Grasshopper Warbler and 1 Melodious Warbler. From the guide book recently published on Ghanaian birds ‘groppers’ shouldn’t be here so it’s an interesting species to catch, Bee says there has been one seen before Christmas too- so not just a fluke! I’d not seen a melodious before so it was great to have the chance to ring it (thanks Ian). They look superficially like an Icterine, but smaller and quite yellowy green whereas Ickies tend to have a buffy tinge and a thinner looking bill. Also I find Icterines tend to shout at you in the net, and this little bird stayed very quiet.

We colour ringed all the migrants and took, feather, faecal and blood samples for analysis in the lab later, as well as fat and muscle scores. None seem to carry a lot of fat, the Garden Warblers were carrying some - up to score 3. Afrotrops caught were a Greenbul, Bronze Mannikin, and Red-headed Quelea. We also saw some European Bee Eaters fly over. After all the birds were ringed we packed up shop and had a civilised lunch at the dining table. Bee and I did our impression of two washer women as Ian sorted out charging flat batteries and action man Oppong helped me put up an ad hoc washing line. Nets will go up later today and hopefully it will be a good day.#

Above: Grasshopper Warbler

Above: Melodious Warbler

Posted on behalf of Vicky