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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dandsblair" data-source="post: 3182116" data-attributes="member: 107571">First full day at MoleUp bright and early, there is no one about, so Victor goes over to the staff quarters and drags someone out to get breakfast started, he effectively did half of the preparation and serving himself so that we have finished breakfast by 6.10, the other group are still waiting for any sign of breakfast as we get off and head down into the main part of the park. Today we walk around the woodland that surrounds the main waterholes in the cooler early morning and then visit a hide to sit watching the birds and animals come down. In the first bit of scrub we see a good assortment of firefinches, Bar-breasted, Red-billed and Black-bellied Firefinch all seen well with Red-cheeked Cordon Bleu and Black-rumped Waxbill.  We then see Snowy-crowned and White-crowned Robin Chats and a Yellow-crowned Gonolek, it is noticeable that these birds are much more wary and thus harder to see and photograph than in other parts of Africa where we have seen them.From the hide we see Black Crake, Hadada Ibis, Jacana and Hammerkop; while on the water there are White-faced Whistling Ducks and in the nearby trees Yellow-breasted Apalis, Northern Puffback, and both Swamp and Lead coloured flycatchers, apart from one small group of Swallow-tailed Bee-eaters all the Bee-eaters are Red-throated. Birds of prey include Bateleur, Lanner Falcon and Grasshopper BuzzardOther wildlife includes Elephant, which are really approachable on foot at Mole, Nile Crocodile, Buffon Kob, Reedbuck, Warthog and Patas Monkey. During the heat of the afternoon, we could have gone to nearby Larabanga and the 14th century mud and stick mosque, but we decide not to and have a swim and bird around the hotel grounds but it over 40C so we don’t do much, only trip birds are a pair of Martial Eagles and two Saddle-bill Storks.  Once the sun cools a little we set off looking for more species, the first really good bird is  Sulphur-breasted Bush-shrike, then Lesser Blue-eared Starling, big problem though is the heat and the flies, particularly for Sarah who is getting eaten through her shirt by large horse flies, the bites took ages to clear, on then to a plains type area where we find Flappet Larks and then a couple of Sun Larks (should be called sunset larks as that is only time we saw these birds active) but bird we are looking for is Forbes’s Plover which is target for the afternoon, we search lots of burnt areas with Victor going off on foot to one area and Appiah driving around another. We see a distant bird from the bus and get reasonably close to it, there are 7 others in the area Victor is in, in the failing light the diagnostic red eye-ring of the Forbes’s Plover seems to glow. We were  staying out around the pounds until the early evening to search for night birds – not hugely successful as we miss Sandgrouse at the pools and there is no sign of Pel’s Fishing or Greyish Eagle owl (not too bothered about Pel’s as we saw this well on a previous trip) but finally we did get a few good birds; the remarkable Standard-winged Nightjar (at first Sarah thought it was being mobbed by two smaller birds – the Standards) and a nice African Scops Owl that posed for a photo but wouldn’t come out from behind a shadow of a leaf.</blockquote>

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