Met up with Roger today back in the UK, after his return on the 3rd. Brilliant to catch up first hand with how things went for the last week. Thoughts now turn to sifting through all the data, and already preparing for next season!
Have to say a very big thank you to Roger for his amazing dedication these past 11 weeks or so. You can come again! Also to Japheth and Nick for their unerring commitment and great company (since last October!), to Oppong and Emmanuel for their company and (mostly) great cooking, Augustus for all the trouble-shooting from Accra, Vicky and John for their fantastic efforts helping Ian and Chris with the nightingales, and of course to Bee for working tirelessly for over 3 months on the project, and brilliant company to boot. Very many thanks one and all.
Let's not forget that Aly and Oumar, and new recruits Idrissa and le Député continue until the end of this month with their ringing and survey work in the sahel of Burkina Faso. Another incredible season of work from the Oursi team, and with a recovery of a German-ringed sedge warbler the first foreign-ringed bird that has turned up in the Oursi nets since the start of the project! Well done and thank you guys - here's to more of the same next season...
Saturday-Saturday 24th-31st March: The season ends, and the birds disperse?
The very last period of tracking of the season, and Rog and Japheth kept up with our wood warblers for much of the period. They did report however that the birds’ movements were becoming more erratic, seemingly roving over a wider area. Eventually, one by one from around the 28th to 30th the tags failed, or the birds disappeared – at this late stage we may never know which! Certainly there’s no time left available to cold-search for any colour-ringed birds. Roger tells me he felt that on the 31st, as they were finishing off some habitat surveys, they encountered far fewer wood warblers than we might have expected at the peak. Do fewer vocalisations mean they have just gone quiet, or have they genuinely moved on? Roger says he’s erring on the side of the latter!
Friday 23rd March: Landing in the UK
This morning I arrived back at Heathrow, and as regards the biological samples and all of that paperwork, in Accra no-one wanted to see anything, and in London, there wasn’t even anyone at the airport to declare anything to!
Meanwhile back in Ghana, Oppong has driven Japheth and Roger back to the study site to continue with tracking our three birds. The latest news is that the three birds have been tracked down once more – fabulous work guys!
Meanwhile back in Ghana, Oppong has driven Japheth and Roger back to the study site to continue with tracking our three birds. The latest news is that the three birds have been tracked down once more – fabulous work guys!
Thursday 22nd March: Preparing to leave
Returned to Accra last night, and with my flight back to the UK this evening today has been the usual last-minute panic of making sure all lose ends are tied up – although this time I’m leaving Japheth and Roger to continue tracking until the 31st, as we think the tags will last until then. The main worry has been getting the paperwork sorted for the export from Ghana and then import to the UK of our biological samples (a few feathers etc). Japheth patiently spent hours at the Wildlife Division offices waiting for a simple signature on the export permit. Even 2 hrs before the airport check in, back at the hotel Roger and I were labelling the samples appropriately for transit, according to the terms of the import licence! Eventually job done, and I can now relax when I get to the airport!!
Monday-Wednesday 19th-21st March: My final days in the field
Much of this time spent in the “office” sadly! Japheth returned to Accra on the Monday and so Roger and Nick teamed up for the last few tracking sessions. I tried to make sense of all the tracking data so far, and catalogued as far as possible the rapidly growing library of canopy and leaf pictures. We hope at some stage to identify most of the commoner tree species either used by, or closely associated with the wood warblers (and indeed those species not being used that we record at the control habitat spots).
Saturday-Sunday 17th-18th March: The wood warblers grouping together
No tracking problems over the weekend, and exciting news is that at one point bird 7 and bird 3 were seen with bird 9, and even bird 10 was close to the same spot. It looks like the birds are coalescing a bit more, compared to their apparent solitary existence whilst moulting for much of the winter.
Friday 16th March: Finding the 3 new birds
Whilst Nick and I headed off to get stuck into some habitat mapping, Roger and Japheth set about tracking the 3 new birds. Unfortunately, Nick’s bird, number 8, proved very difficult. The signal was there but the bird seemed very mobile, so was not seen after early morning and mid-day attempts. Not such a problem with birds 9 and 10, and in fact a big bonus was spotting recently-lost bird 7 with bird 9. Perhaps even better still was that Roger and Japheth caught up with bird 5, for the first time since it was ringed on the 15th Jan!! A pretty good morning all told. In the evening Nick and I had a go looking for “his” bird #8, and we found it within about 10 minutes, teaching Japheth and Roger a lesson in tracking! (Just kidding guys! We got lucky, and the tag frequency had changed a bit).
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