22 Jan: No Nightingales today

Nightingale Team: An extra 15 minutes in bed for everyone today as it’s dark at 6am still we wanted to avoid catching bats instead of birds - nice as they are. We soon had plenty of migrants to keep us busy with Common Whitethroat, Willow Warbler, a Blackcap (two others caught previously last year 9th and 24th November) and Melodious Warbler.

The bird of the day was a Great Reed Warbler, which looked like a highly-magnified Reed Warbler. An Olive Sunbird put in an appearance - complete with pectoral “tufts” that looked a bit like it hadn’t shaved its underarms. The weather was very sunny and breezy so not ideal for ringing. The wind soon got up so Ian and I took down the nets as Bee radio-tracked the two tagged Nightingales. Oppong and Ian went out after lunch for petrol and a cutlass to trim net rides and came back with a coconut each too. Delicious and full to the top of coconut milk. We had a front row seat on how to open a coconut using a cutlass and I’m surprised so many Ghanaians still have a full compliment of fingers!

Little Bee-eaters and a two Lanners also flew over the hostel in the afternoon. No Nightingales (boo) today but as it still seems to be quite breezy we’ll do the non playback Nightingale transects tomorrow instead of ringing. Internet is very temperamental and intermittent at best so apologies updates are slow......

Posted on behalf of Vicky

21 Jan: Nightingales 8 and 11

Nightingale Team: After a moist and noisy night it took a good slug of caffeine to bring me into the world of the living. We set off to the usual Nsuatre trap site to radio track Nightingale 8 which we duly found, and he’d/she’d swapped sides to make it interesting for us. The long walk over the north side survey took around 3 hours. We saw on our travels: Tropical Boubou, Viellot’s Black Weaver (complete with nests), Village Weaver, Palm Swift, a Cuckoo Hawk, a noisy African Thrush and Grey Kestrel. We also saw a Willow Warbler and a Tree Pipit.


Bee said there were some usual spots where they tended to hear them each time. We checked for Nightingale 11 with the radio receiver and it had stayed put. Radio tracking the transmitters on the birds is not as simple as it seems, it needs good deal of focus and determination (and a good pair of ears) to find the birds. Nightingales behaviour also means that they stay low in the vegetation so you don’t get the satisfying visual confirmation like you do with more arboreal species for instance, and the transmitters signal can go weak if the bird moves down near the ground. It’s going to mean tracking taking longer for us every time we tag a Nightingale. Hope they appreciate it!


After a lunch of an Oppong special chicken recipe we relaxed for a bit and I stalked a few lizards with my camera. The plan was to ring tomorrow so we put up 8x18m mist nets on the south side, Bee and I radio tracked while Ian introduced himself to the local Whinchats and watched them fly-catching. We might try to catch some with spring traps. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll get some more Nightingales and make a lot more work for ourselves.

Above: Vicky and Ian

Posted on behalf of Vicky

Friday 20/01/12 Wood warbler “triangle”, and re-finding another colour-ringed bird

We head off with our hopes high that today we will get our first wood warbler tagged. The wood warbler hot-spot from Wednesday – dubbed wood warbler triangle – sees its first ever mist-netting. Things look hopeful with two birds pewing close by one net before we even start any playback. The hope soon fades though! An African paradise flycatcher is the sole bird caught, until I decide to change the playback towards the end. In order to keep the interest levels up, I change one tape to melodious warbler. At least we can get some comparable data from a species that the team at Nsoatre are catching, and one is singing near the net. Straight away it’s caught. If only the wood warblers were so obliging!

Late morning we head off to find bird 3, flushed with our success so far with birds 2 and 4. Over an hour of effort in its favoured areas finds a couple of unringed birds, but not our target. We’ll try again, but in the draining midday heat we head off for another rethink on the general fieldwork front.

It has to be said that Emma’s cooking has continued to surprise. After such indifference and reluctance last year, we appear to have a seriously capable chef on the team. Is he as good as Oppong? Not sure about that just yet, but keep it up Emma!

With some office catch up for me this afternoon, Emma drives Japheth, Nick and Roger out to delve into “death valley” in search of bird 1, the site so-called last year because the climb back out in the late morning was always a bit of a struggle with the sun on your back. Sadly though, despite all that effort, they return without any sightings. They’re not put off, however, and actually suggest trying again tomorrow. If you like, guys!

Chris O

20 Jan: Tricky tracking

Nightingale Team: The noisiest night yet so there were a few sleepyheads this morning. We took the car to the trap site and started radio-tracking the two Nightingales we tagged yesterday as it was still quite overcast and too dark for the playback surveys. Bee has used the radio transmitter and receiver before on Capercaillie and whilst in Ghana so showed us the ropes. 

We tracked down one that was sitting in its usual habitat patch - amazingly close to other Nightingales. At 6.20am it was light so we kicked off the survey, first playing Nightingale call and croaks and then listening for a response. We repeated the survey approx every 25m.The transects took us through areas of scrub, maize, cassava, papaya, teak, plantain and bananas, and their responses always came where there was scrub. We had a count of 20 Nightingales in 2hrs 20mins.

We had just enough time to find the other Nightingale, which had settled nearby to where we’d originally caught it. A quick dash and pack after an early lunch, we just had time to freshen up. Bee came back from her wash looking rather flushed, after having opened the shower room door to find a Ghanaian chap having a good scrub! After Bee and I composed ourselves we moved back to Gladys’s in Nsuatre. We also discovered various beasties had also moved in - a few flat spiders, ants in the bed rooms and a skink in the loo. I hope that they will be quieter neighbours than at the last place!  We put up some nets to see if we could catch any, but succeeded only to catch thin air (usually quiet in the afternoons), but did have a good view of some Cattle Egrets and amused ourselves annoying mimosas (sensitive plants). We also did a repeat radio track of the Nightingales. The tracking is trickier than it looks - especially as the birds are at close range. Tomorrow we will do a play back survey of the north side - It’s nice to be busy!

Posted on behalf of Vicky

Thursday 19/01/12 Re-visiting the mountain

Considering our poor catch rates thus far, this morning we have a change of scene. Up on the well-forested Odwenanoma Mountain, where we used to reside when in the area, we had early success in spotting wood warblers this season, before any were located on the study site. As we’ve established a transect route here, it was thought that some “validation” was in order. In other words, survey the route, and if lots of wood warblers are seen/heard, then perhaps we really do need to consider searching for a true forest study site.

7 wood warblers are registered in all, but 3 of these are unseen, “pewing” birds only detected after the mp3 playback. Compared with previous visits, this is not an exceptional total. It is some affirmation that the study site is the better for both numbers of birds, or at least our ability to detect them, and for overall access.

Back at the site in the afternoon, and heartened by our finding bird 4 yesterday, we start a search for one of the others. Bird 2 is considered the most likely, based on its movements last year when tracked. Within an hour 4 birds are spotted/heard, and then Roger spies a pewing bird in the high crown of a maple-leafed tree (subsequently identified as a Cola species). Sure enough, it has a red over a pale blue ring on its left leg, white over metal ring on the right. This bird has now been around for at least 54 days. Will bird 3 prove traceable? And what about bird 1? We failed to find this one again after the supposed tag failure back in December.

Chris O

19 Jan: A Happy Birthday and the first Nightingale of the year

Nightingale Team: Today was my birthday so the pressure was on the gods of ringing to send us a Nightingale. The weather today was damp, with mist hanging the air, but it didn’t seem to put the birds off as we caught our first Nightingale of the year (that’s Palearctic migrant no.96). We also caught a retrap which Bee had originally ringed on the 24th November (No. 8). Both very nice presents! We tagged both Nightingales with radio transmitters as the retrap’s original transmitter had now run out of battery life. We’ll be tracking the birds ideally twice a day now so where ever they go we will have to follow to find them!

To make the day even better we also had our warbler count topped up with a flurry of Garden Warblers, Reed Warblers, Melodious Warblers (one new and a retrap), and a Willow Warbler. For Afro-tropical species, we caught a Black-and-White Mannikin, Common Waxbill, Blue-billed Firefinch, Copper Sunbird, Olive-bellied Sunbird, Collared Sunbird, Grey-backed Cameroptera, Red-faced Cisticola, Little Greenbul, Green Crombec and a Senegal Coucal who’s red eyes rivalled that of a demented Blue Tit’s.

 A lunch of cheese, bread and salad washed down with coffee and condensed milk provided us with energy for an afternoon of productive loafing. Ian got to know the GPS better, Bee sorted emails and ringing records and I sought assistance for the broken light bulb in my bedroom that was becoming a sore point after a few stubbed toes... Kestrel, Common Wattle-eye and Common Bulbul were observed around the hostel. We also celebrated my birthday with a nice spaghetti dinner, and toasted marshmallows to a chorus of bats chattering as they hoovered up the flying termites that had emerged with the increased moisture in the air. Oppong made us laugh at the table as when his phone went beep at the table. The question “Is that your wife?” was quickly answered with “No, it is my phone”. Oppong surprised me with a bottle of sparkling apple juice and a cake. Thanks to everyone for a great day and Happy Birthday to my twin sister at home too! Plan is for playback survey work tomorrow, and then we go back to Gladys’s hostel in Nsuatre.

Posted on behalf of Vicky

Wednesday 18/01/12 Exploring new ground, and finding one of our birds!

We try another leap-frogging netting session this morning, where we have seen birds recently and where we tried with Chas and co in December. Zilch. Well, one little greenbul and a grey-backed camaroptera. It’s really beginning to look like we’re going to struggle. On top of the failures to catch wood warblers, it has to be said that most of the birds we’re seeing are in various stages of tail moult, not a good sign for the tagging. A few more attempts I think before our time will undoubtedly be better spent considering a different aspect of the fieldwork. More of that later on I suspect.

Meanwhile, after giving up on the netting we head of to explore in the direction of the “best-looking” area of habitat as indicated on the satellite image. It seems the image is at least in part correct. There are progressively more trees, and taller, as we move into the hinterland. There are also more mature palm plantations – are these possibly not differentiated on the image? We walk a 1.5km route, and encounter 13 birds, all of them within a 700m stretch of the path. Pretty good “densities” I reckon. We will definitely be back here to attempt to catch. After some deliberation with the UK crew, we resolve to stretch the present study block of 2kmx2km to encompass another 4km² in this direction.

In the afternoon we explore yet more paths in the new patch, mapping them with the gps as we go. The route brings us to the spot where bird 4 was caught last month. Japheth spots a wood warbler here and Roger immediately adds that it’s colour-ringed. It’s only bird 4! No more than 15m from where the net was placed to catch it, some 40 days ago. It appears that the tail is still in moult, but with just the outer-most one or two pairs still growing. It’s quite amazing to see it again. We decide to spend more time looking for the other 3 birds from last year.

Chris O