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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dandsblair" data-source="post: 3186932" data-attributes="member: 107571">Coconut Grove ResortCoconut Grove Resort – this resort near Cape Coast was an excellent place to spend a few days unwinding with just a little bit of incidental birding. Guests get free access to the Golf Course to play or walk (hire for clubs $3), a Gym, Pool and nice grounds and beach. The golf course is little used so it was a very good quiet place to wander around and get good views of local birds. You are also quite close, a 20 minute walk to some Salt Pans and a Lagoon where most of the common species could be found. For those who want culture there is a local fort and it is just an easy 15 minute taxi to Cape Coast.The food was really excellent and good value albeit a little more expensive than other places in Ghana, to give an idea of cost; Valentines dinner full seafood feast Lobster, King Prawns, Grouper, etc with drinks would have been £40 for 2 but we were luckily upgraded to full board from Bed and breakfast so only had to pay for drinks.Birds in the grounds included, Splendid Sunbird, Yellow Wagtail, Rosy Bee-eater, White-throated Bee-eater, Woodland and Pied Kingfisher, Cattle Egret, Yellow-billed Kite, Little Swift (nesting in the water tower), Hooded Vultures, Palm Swift, Village Weavers, and although not meant to occur in this area a Pearl-spotted Owlet spent our first night directly outside our windows calling and making his presence known. I also suspect that a Fraser’s Eagle Owl frequents the grounds as we heard what sounded like one and the next morning a load of weaver and swift nest were on the ground (behaviour I’ve seen from a Verraux’s Eagle Owl)We also had out last new bird late one afternoon when a Mottled Spinetail joined other swifts over the golf course, whilst superficially like a Little Swift it is very different when seen well.Victor insisted in coming to the airport with us on the last day to see us off Appiah was going to pick up another group, and we had time to stop and enjoy a final beer in the bar right next to the airport. Fortunately the flight back was without incident or delay, we tried hard to get an upgrade to business to make up for our missed day on the way out but despite lots of trying we had to settle for flying back Premium Economy and getting an upgrade to UK Business, that at least got us priority boarding and access to the lounge - so a little compensation for the delays in the snow that seemed so long ago.Summary: In all we saw 375 birds another 12 heard (10 would have been lifers if we saw them but we don’t record heard on our life lists – this is most heard only new birds we have ever had on a trip).We didn’t totally clean up, we didn't expect to, but we did see more lifers over 140 than we expected, largely due to numbers of Greenbuls, Sunbirds and Flycatchers and we only missed 4 target birds out of our top 30 wish list.Highlights were the Picathartes, Rufous-sided Broadbill, Nkulengu Rail, the 9 Hornbills, 4 Nightjars and the two Eagle Owls.We would highly recommend Ashanti African Tours for their flexibility and pricing and most importantly knowledge of the difficult to get birds and sites.I’ll attach a single version of the total report in case anyone wants to use information to plan a trip from it and also a list of all birds seen and heard.As Rob said in his report between the two of us we have covered off most of Ghana, I guess only question for people considering a trip, is whether to go up beyond Mole to Bolgatanga area for Egyptian Plover and other arid area species. We decided not to as we had seen this bird in Gambia but having seen photographs of this bird from some others I wonder whether we should have added a day here and for anyone wanting the Plover it is probably worth taking on the heat and the bumpy drive.</blockquote>

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