Yesterday I blogged about how to visit the Kakum National Park in Ghana. Now lets see some of the birds!
Firstly, we actually SAW a lot more than I could get photos of. These birds are camera shy and they are fast! The few bird pics I got are terrible to the point that I can’t match them to a pic in the bird book other than the red bird (Red-headed Malimbe) and the blue bird (Splendid Glossy Starling). I will try to make up for it with photos of the actual canopy walkway.
Pied Crow
Cattle Egret
The trail leading up to the canopy walkway, see how dark it is? We saw a Paradise Flycatcher along the way but the photo didn’t come out – too dark.
These are our guides. Only one was the real paid guide, the other one was his friend who just tagged along, I think he is in training.
Some independent birders already there.
The organized birding group who are also staying at the Rainforest Lodge. I noticed they were watching something very intently so I followed their gaze but couldn’t see anything. All of a sudden, a small bird flew out of the foliage very quickly and the group burst into applause. What WAS that bird? We caught up to them and found out it was a Rosy Bee-eater, one of the target birds in Kakum! At least I caught a glimpse of him!
They are really beautiful, check out this video!
Black Bee-eater
Velvet-mantled Drongo
Red-headed Malimbe
At this point my husband is bored and just having fun with the walkways.
Splendid Glossy Starling
See how beautiful he is!
A lizard walking in front of us.
Back at the reception, the shop was finally open.
Our two guides. Sorry I can’t remember their names but they did know the birds quite well so if you see them there, I can recommend them!
Back in the carp park a Little Bee-eater
Lesser Honeyguide
The private bus for the tour group.
While I usually do just fine as an independent birder with a local guide, I have to say that Ghana is the first place where I got real “tour-group envy”. They got into the park much earlier, they have private transport so they can get to more remote places where I couldn’t go using tro-tros and their guide supplies them with a checklist of all the birds they saw.
I did get my guide to thumb through my book with me so I could highlight the birds we saw but I am a long way off from anything that resembles the nicely organized bird list the tour groups get. Here is an example of one for all of Ghana but they do make notes on the exact place the bird was seen.
We had lunch at the small cafe just outside the park and hung around the rest of the day for birding in the car park and surrounding areas. My cash reserves were down (when will I learn to change enough money) so we couldn’t make a second trip into the park, they charge by the hour, not the whole day!