Guinea [6] – Chimpanzees

Atlasville, 18 May 2010

I am back in South Africa after a sixth and final work trip to Guinea.

As this was to be the last time in Guinea for several of us, we decided to arrange another visit to see the chimpanzees in the Bossou Forest. This time of course it would be dry season (well not the wet season anyway, when it rains every day) and conditions should hopefully be much better for moving around the forest. The big bonus with the weather this time would be great light for photos too. The date was set, 9^th May, only 9 days ago.

Just as on our previous visit last August our guides knew exactly where to find the chimps. After walking for only 20 minutes we were instructed to squat down, stay still and keep quiet. In no time at all the first glimpse we got was of a hand appearing along a branch above us, then an old female, the matriarch of the family we were told, came into full view. Then a younger female. At one point we had a clear view of four chimpanzees. As silently as they had appeared, they moved through the trees above us and were gone in what had seemed no time at all, spellbound as we all were. It was surprising to find later from my image timestamps that I had taken 140 images over a 15-minute period. It was a truly emotional 15 minutes and such a privilege to have been allowed into their world.

I’ve said before that birding in the tropics, even in secondary forest, is not easy. However, when large raptors sit perched on tall dead trees or simply fly low overhead, it makes photography much simpler. That’s what a Red-necked Buzzard and an Ayres’s Hawk-Eagle did. Other birds seen either out at the project site or in the grounds of our city base included Northern White-faced Owl, Village Weaver, Red-vented Malimbe, Common Bulbul, Red-bellied Paradise Flycatcher, Northern Yellow White-eye, Western House Martin, Alpine Swift, Naked-faced Barbet, Cassin’s Honeybird, European Pied Flycatcher, White-throated Bee-eater and my very last photograph on sight Black Bee-eater.

The Lepidoptera featured large again this trip, with some attractive moths seen at field camp. Large security lights are on at night and in the early morning many of the night visitors can be found at rest on wooden boxes in our storage facility.

As for the butterflies, a few were seen belonging to the Pieridae, Lycaenidae, Hesperidae and Papilionidae families …

… but the majority are from the family Nymphalidae.

Other photos, of subjects not in any of the above categories, included a mud-dauber wasp, Centaurus Beetle and Lime Reed Frog.

I wait to see where the next project might take me.