Côte d'Ivoire: 29th Jan-12 Feb 2016 (1 Viewer)

I thought I would post a quick trip report from the fieldwork I conducted in Côte d'Ivoire earlier this year, there seems to be very little information about this country anywhere online due to the issues the country has faced in the past 15 years or so.

Background

I am a PhD student working with Ficedula Flycatchers at Uppsala University in Sweden and every summer I work with a breeding population of Pied and Collared Flycatchers on Öland, a Swedish island in the Baltic. These two species are some of the best studies passerines in Europe, yet surprisingly little is known about them when they leave Europe. Pied Flycatchers generally winter in West Africa, while Collared Flycatchers are thought to mostly winter in South-Central Africa, between the DRC and Zimbabwe. At an office party last year, my colleague, Eryn and I, helped by wine came up with a plan to try and find out more about our study species in Africa. The cold light of day revealed that we would have to write of Collared Flycatchers. The logistics of doing fieldwork in places like Angola or the DRC (in the rainy season) were just too great. Pieds were a better prospect as their range, abundances and preference for the dry season meant that we would have a fighting chance of getting some data.

Our initial plan was to visit one of the more accessible, English speaking West African such as Ghana or Nigeria, as my French skills could best be described as "Hotel French", although as a Canadian, Eryn's is much more passable. However a search of the literature showed that Pieds had been caught in good numbers in Côte d'Ivoire and that there was a permanent research station there, or at least there had been 20 years ago when the papers were published.

To our delight, we found that the research station in Comoé National Park had survived the subsequent Ivorian crisis and was still open for business. Therefore we booked our slots and Côte d'Ivoire became our destination.

Literature
As I mentioned previously, information on Côte d'Ivoire is hard to find, especially from after the Ivorian crisis. Most of our planning was based on papers and trip reports from the 1990's, however we found that things had not changed quite so much since this time, so if anyone is planning on visiting, the reports are still valid in many ways.

Firstly, there are a series of papers published by Volker Salweski and others on Western Palearctic migrants in the park, and on bird diversity there in general. If you can access it: Salewski, V. 2000. The birds of Comoé National Park, Ivory Coast. Malimbus 22:55-76 contains a good checklist.

Otherwise, the only other trip report I could find which covered Comoé was this report from 2000 by Frank Rheindt and Minnattallah Boutros http://www.surfbirds.com/Trip Reports/ivorycoast.html
Much of the information here is also still relevant.

For a field guide we used the classic Borrow & Deney Birds of Western Africa which is really quite good.

History
Côte d'Ivoire used to be one of the most stable and wealthy countries in West Africa. That all changed in 2002 when civil war broke out. I'm not going to go into all the details here but there was a decade of violence, with occasional periods of uneasy peace. By 2012 things had calmed down and in late 2015, free and fair elections were held. It appears that things have returned to business as usual. Although the recent terror attack at a beach resort in Grand-Bassam a few weeks ago suggests that like many other West African countries, the nation is not impervious to the threat of terrorism. This is a new chapter for the country and only time will tell how lasting this will be.

Comoé National Park
Comoé is the largest national park in West Africa and is situated in the Northeastern corner of Côte d'Ivoire. The size of the park (11,500 km2) and the diversity of habitats means that it has a large number of species to find there, and as a poorly explored park, there is definitely the potential to find new species for the park or the country.
The majority of the park consists of woodland savannah, however there are drier plains and bowals dotted around, especially in the north of the park. The park is bisected by the Comoé which flows south towards the coast. The river is almost completely guarded by gallery forest which can reach almost a kilometer thick in some places. There are also islands of denser forest, more akin to the gallery forest. It's this forest mosaic habitat that generates the high bird diversity here ~500 species. Comoé is probably most similar to Mole NP, across the border in Ghana. However the diversity here is higher, and there are several species that are absent from there and are tricky to find in other places such as Emin's Shrike (which I dipped). The habitat in the park has survived remarkably well during the past 20 years. However the Ivorian crisis did cause a high level of poaching here, so large mammal numbers are much lower and can be very hard to locate. The most common antelope species is the Kob, which if anything has increased in numbers since the 90's. Sable Antelope, and various Duiker species are also moderately common and can be found without too much effort, although we didn't see them, Royal Antelope droppings could be found everywhere. Hippos are still present in small numbers and there are several primate species to be found we personally saw Patas Monkey, Lowe's Monkey and White-naped Mangabey. Elephants, Spotted Hyena, Bongo, Lions, Forest Buffalo, Chimpanzees, Colobus and Diana Monkeys are much harder to see and are all at various risk of extirpation, if they haven't gone already. I saw none of these species, although we did see signs of Chimpanzees, Buffalo and Hyena.

Logistics
The research station is run by the University of Würzburg and has amazing facilities for rural Africa. It is situated in the southern end of the park, not far from the Kakpin entrance. If there are any researchers looking for a place to collect data in Africa, then I urge them to consider here. Their information pack can be found here: http://www.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/fileadmin/07020300/Info_pack.pdf

If you are a tourist however, it may be trickier to visit. There is virtually no infrastructure in the park. However there used to be a hostel, which may or may not still be there (no one seems sure) near the northern entrance at Kaffolo. There may be a chance to stay at the research station itself, if there is space, but contact the guys at Würzburg well in advance to check.

Despite the great research station, it is imperative to remember that this is a very remote place, people have gone missing here in the past due to the sheer size of the park and the nearest medical treatment is a bone-jarring 4 hour jeep ride away in Bondoukou. Don't be careless (like I was one afternoon!)

The park is probably closed to tourists during the wet season, although some researchers stay throughout that period. Roads get washed away and the savannah grasses will be taller than even my 2 meter frame.

Birds
As mentioned before. There is a huge diversity of birds here, mostly due to the varied habitats. While I was out in the field for a lot of the time, much of the best parts of the day were devoted to mist-netting so I will have missed many species, especially in some of the juicier habitats such as the gallery forest along the Iringou river which almost resembles true tropical rainforest. Their had been very little rain in the preceding months, so many of the pools and smaller rivers were completely dry which also will have reduced the number of birds seen. I found the park to be particularly good for Raptor, Sunbird and Kingfisher diversity, and I also managed to see several iconic and sought after species such as African Finfoot, Bateleur, Standard-winged Nightjar, Latham's Francolin, Northern Carmine Bee-eater and Togo Paradise Whydah.

I'll update this with a day-by-day account as and when I can.

Looking forward to reading more of a report from a 'different' area.

foresttwitcher said:

Looking forward to reading more of a report from a 'different' area.

Click to expand...

agree, interesting stuff :t:

29/01/16

We left Uppsala at some god-awful time to catch our flight from Stockholm. With us we had a whole load of field equipment, some of which looks decidedly dodgy to anyone who doesn't know. The airlines were forewarned, but still... You never know quite what people will think. Probably our most dangerous looking bit of apparatus was the respirometer, used to measure metabolic rate. It's small and portable and built into a heavy-duty camera case. The one problem is that it looks like a bomb from a James Bond prop studio and with 5 sets of airport security to get through on the trip, we were sure something was going to happen. Fortunately, after the first look of shock from security we actually got everything through the whole trip without a hitch.

From Stockholm we took a flight to Brussels, and then on to Abidjan, the largest city in Côte d'Ivoire and financial capital of West Africa. We were met at the airport by a contact from one of the Abidjan Universities who took us straight to our hotel.

I've only been once to West Africa, to Senegal in 2014. Given the comparative histories on the two countries I was expecting Abidjan to be in a worse state than Dakar. However I was quite surprised how much more modern it was. This was a feeling that extended to much of the rest of the country. The roads were in very good condition and those that weren't (excluding the smaller country roads) were in various states of repair. Traffic in Abidjan was much less hectic than Dakar too.

We only had about an hour of daylight by the time we left the airport so the first birds were the usual suspects to be encountered in any African city. The Weavers at the aiport were Heuglin's Masked Weaver. Yellow-billed Kites and Pied Crows were hanging in the air, Cattle Egrets stalked the ditches, Western Reef Herons, Great and Little Egrets at the lagoons, African Palm Swifts hawked overhead and Laughing doves dodged the traffic.

We got an early night to steel ourselves for the journey north in the morning.

Apologies for the delay! I forgot I started this.

30/01/16

We were up early to get to the bus station to take us north. We waited for a few hours for our bus to Bondoukou to fill up with passengers which gave us an opportunity to stretch our legs before the long journey. Northern Grey-headed and House Sparrows fought for crumbs around the passengers, Yellow-billed Kites rose up as the air warmed and African Pied Wagtails bobbed along the roofs. At one point an African Hobby shot overhead.

Eventually we were squeezed into the bus and rattling on our way out of Abidjan on our 8 hour journey to Bondoukou. As mentioned earlier, the roads were really quite good and metalled all the way to Adzope. From there they were either fully or partially metalled, and in the process of being improved along most of the way. The scenery slowly changed from humid forest and farmland to drier scrub and woodland savannah as we passed through Adzope, Abengourou and Agnibilekrou. Due to cramped conditions in the bus we saw relatively little. Broad-billed Rollers, African Pied Hornbillsand Blue-spotted Wood Doves were frequent. At one point near Abidjan a flock of Vieillot's Black Weavers flew over the road. Nearer Bondoukou we saw Purple Rollers, Black-winged Kites and a Dark Chanting Goshawk.

We eventually arrived in Bondoukou in the late afternoon, aching and covered in a thick film of red dust. We quickly found our hosts from the research station who had being picking up supplies in town and we were off again for another 4 hours along very poor roads to the station. This was probably the worst part of the journey for me. Being 2 meters (6' 6'') tall I was already feeling a little cramped from the previous journey. We were both silently praying that the rattling and dust hadn't damaged the precious respirometer, which I had been clutching as if it was my first-born the whole journey to protect it from the worst of the bumps. The silver lining was seeing Greyish Eagle-Owl and several Standard-winged Nightjars along the way.

By 8:30 we had reached Kakpin, a large village at the southern entrance to the park and by 9pm we had arrived at the research station where we made a brief greeting to some of the other workers and researchers before we collapsed onto our beds in exhaustion.

31/01/16

The research station is located close to the Comoé river beside a thin belt of gallery forest. There are also a couple of forest islands in the vicinity, but the dominant habitat is woodland savannah. I awoke early, excited by what new species I'd find and whether there would be any Pied Flycatchers for us to catch. Almost immediately I heard the familiar alarm calls of Pied Flycatchers everywhere, interspersed with the calls and songs of the dawn chorus. This was a huge relief, as we found them to be one of the most abundant birds in the area. That was the easy part. Next we had to find a way to catch them!

I walked down to the river through the gallery forest and riverine scrub. Common Bulbuls were everywhere, while Red-bellied Paradise Flycatchers, Grey-headed Bristlebills and White-browed Forest Flycatchers proved to be the most obvious species in the forest. A pair of Black-winged Orioles were poking around in one of the tall Baobab trees. Malachite and Pied Kingfishers and Common Sandpipers flew up and down the river, White-crowned Lapwings were being noisy on a small beach. A quiet splash revealed the best bird of the morning, an African Finfoot which proved to be a regular sighting for the rest of the trip. Before I left for breakfast, Collared Sunbirds, Bronze Mannikins and a pair of Red-eyed Doves made an appearance. During breakfast we were treated to sightings of Red-necked Buzzard, Bataleur, Grasshopper Buzzard, Tawny-flanked Prinia, Bush Petronia, Black-faced Firefinch, Wire-tailed Swallow and Tree Pipit.

We decided to set up our nets before it got too hot in the scruby gallery forest just behind the station where the Flycatchers seemed to be most abundant. We had them there for a couple of days, but we failed to catch any. While clearing net lanes we disturbed a large flock of Crested Guineafowl, African Thrush and an African Harrier-Hawk.

The rest of the day was spent setting up lab equipment and planning the rest of our stay. A brief foray in the heat of the day along the road turned up White-shouldered Black Tit, Vinaceous Dove, African Green Pigeon and African Grey Hornbill, but nothing else new.

Two hours before dusk we opened our nets. We didn't catch much. Just a couple of Bristlebills, African Thrush, Collared Sunbird and a trio White-tailed Alethes. In the evening we heard several Owl species, including Pearl-spotted Owlet, African Wood Owl and African Scops Owl, although we never saw any owls on the trip, other than the Eagle-Owls from the night before.

In the morning we would start our proper surveys.