Guinea [4]

Sutton, 21 Dec 2009

I returned to Guinea in mid-November for five weeks to find that the post-rainy season road clearing and grading was behind schedule and I would have to walk the roads to some of the sites I needed to get to. Hopefully that meant I might be able to photograph a few birds and insects along the way.

Birding in primary and even some of the long-established secondary forest in tropical West Africa is not for the faint-hearted. You are more likely to hear birds than see them, particularly those that love skulking in the undergrowth, such as the bulbuls (Family Pycnonotidae). Many of these have distinctive calls such as the Simple Greenbul (Chlorocichla simplex),

Swamp Palm Bulbul (Thescelocichla leucopleura)

and Little Greenbul (Eurillas virens).

These three I managed to glimpse long enough to be able to confirm an ID. However, others are just taunting me. Heard almost every day, but yet unseen, are Red-tailed Bristlebill (Bleda syndactylus)

and Red-tailed Greenbul (Criniger calurus).

Fortunately, there were birds that were easier to see. These included Grey Kestrel (Falco ardosiaceus), Black-winged Red Bishop (Euplectes hordeaceus) and White-throated Bee-eater (Merops albicollis).

My focus this trip would inevitably be butterflies, as they were to be seen everywhere, although I did manage a few photos of other things. Some of these were a flat-faced longhorn beetle (Zographus regalis), a Two-banded Blister-beetle (Mylabris bifasciata), a Giant African Mantis (Sphodromantis viridis) in my room at our base in N’Zérékoré and back in Conakry on my way out at the end of this tour a possible Peter’s Rock Agama (Agama picticauda). One of the more common flowers seen in the field area is a Hibiscus sp. 

As for the butterflies, I won’t name them all, just post two sets of images.