Tuesday 30 October 2012

Mandena


In Malagasy Mandena means the place where you get wet. This morning we visited Mandena and we did. Very. I had high hopes of seeing the lovely red-collared brown lemur and dared even to hope we might see a southern grey bamboo lemur or a southern avahi (neither of which is probably a valid species). We saw none. We heard barely a bird and we were soaked.

On these sandy soils around Fort Dauphin a unique and beautiful low-nutrient rainforest grows, beautiful even under a downpour. In the edge of a marsh here, where scant nutrients may be obtained from soil or water, we saw, looping through the surrounding vegetation, the sci-fi vines of Nepenthes madagascariensis, a carnivorous pitcher plant.

Mandena: the place where you get wet.

Monday 29 October 2012

Holiday snaps


Ring-tailed lemur, mother and infant, Berenty

Ring-tailed lemur having a scratch

A marsh tit's nest in Berenty, behind an endemic triangle palm Dypsis decaryi

Big wings



29th October

New in a rough sea off Tolagnaro today

Mammals

103
humpback whale
Megaptera novaeangliae

Birds

953
wedge-tailed shearwater
Puffinus pacificus

Madagascar kelp gull
Larus dominicanus melisandae

2012 Totals
Mammals: 103
Birds: 953
Reptiles: 53
Amphibians: 15
Fish: 11

The king of flying creatures


28th October

In Madagascar the tale is told that in the first days of the world a great fire threatened to consume all creation. God told the flying creatures that whoever put out the fire would forever be king among them. Having great leathery wings the flying fox succeeded in putting out the blaze and thus in saving the world. The drongo however, being canny and fast of flight, smothered himself in soot and reached God first. He told Him that he had put out the blaze and that the soot on his plumage was proof of his deed. God was pleased and made the drongo, who to this day is blackened with soot, king of the flying creatures.

Some time later the flying fox arrived and told God that he had put out the blaze. God turned him away saying that it was the drongo who had saved the world and had therefore been honoured as king. The flying fox was hurt to have been cheated and resolved no longer to show respect to God. From now onwards he would hang upside down in the trees and show God his bum.


New today in Berenty

Mammals

102
Madagascar flying fox
Pteropus rufus

Birds

952
Madagascar sandgrouse
Pterocles personatus

peregrine
Falco peregrinus radama

Reptiles

50

Tracheloptychus madagascariensis
51

Trachylepis gravenhorstii
52
spider tortoise
Pyxis arachnoides
53
bark gecko
Blaesodactylus sakalava

2012 Totals
Mammals: 102
Birds: 952
Reptiles: 53
Amphibians: 15
Fish: 11

Berenty


27th October

As I write tonight a white-footed sportive lemur bounds down the tin roof of my cabin and disappears into the night giving his breathy call. A Torotoroka scops owl hoots, softly, rhythmically, nearby. Today we reached Berenty.

The road was very bad – worse even than last year – and the journey long; but this place has an alchemy of its own and it’s impossible for anyone – clients and tour leaders alike – to arrive here and not forget in five minutes the early start, the incompetence of Air Madagascar, and the coccyx-crunching state of disrepair of Route Nationale 13.

For as soon as you step from your minibus in Berenty you are greeted by ring-tailed lemurs strutting across the red soil of the car park. In the edge of the forest are families of hybrid brown lemurs with little youngsters (these are the gene-jumbled descendents of red-fronted brown and red-collared brown lemurs, neither of which belongs here but which were misguidedly released in the past). A family of Verreaux’s sifakas speeds through the trees and all thoughts of discomfort or of long journeys are forgotten.

This evening we walked in the gallery forest. Almost as soon as we entered it my torch’s beam fell on the bright eyes of a sedate sportive lemur, the first of several we saw. Less sedate were four grey mouse lemurs which pinged through the understorey at speed. Spiny-backed chameleons dozed, white-browed owls sang – wrrroh! – and we felt privileged to have reached this last island of wild habitat in a sisal sea.


New today in Berenty and on our journey here

Mammals

100
white-footed sportive lemur
Lepilemur leucopus
101
grey mouse lemur
Microcebus murinus

Birds

950
giant coua
Coua gigas
951
Torotoroka scops owl
Otus madagascariensis

Reptiles

47
Madagascar lined snake
Bibilava lateralis
48
changeable day gecko
Phelsuma mutabilis
49

Lygodactylus tuberosus

2012 Totals
Mammals: 101
Birds: 951
Reptiles: 49
Amphibians: 15
Fish: 11

Friday 26 October 2012

Toliara


26th October

Today, having come by boat from Anakao, we wait for five hours in Tulear. Nothing for it: on a whim Air Madagascar rescheduled our morning flight for the evening. It is hot but we are in the shade. My clients are drinking beer and in the hotel garden’s palms is another new species of Phelsuma day gecko. Life could be worse.


New today in Toliara

Reptiles

46

Phelsuma leiogaster

2012 Totals
Mammals: 99
Birds: 949
Reptiles: 46
Amphibians: 15
Fish: 11

Vorona


25th October

I wonder whether the littoral rock thrush is so called because it lives by the sea or because it has no grasp of irony. Either way it is a lovely bird and Anakao is a lovely place. To sea is Nosy Ve, a small coral island, eight metres above sea level at its highest point and dotted with Euphorbia bushes. Under these are nesting red-tailed tropicbirds, some of them adults in rosy breeding colours, in the pink so to speak. Others are chicks in various states of downiness. This is the only place in Madagascar where they are known to breed and against the hot blue sky they are celestial.

On a tinier island still, no more than a sandbar, are a dozen crab plovers and a huddle of terns. Most are greater crested, which I last saw in Sri Lanka in March. With them are a few lesser crested, new to my list, and some roseates, new too since I missed them this summer in Norfolk. They bring the tern species I’ve seen this year to eighteen.

In the gilded light of evening we stroll through the spiny dunes. Subdesert brush warblers tick loudly all around and buttonquail scurry past. A spiny-backed chameleon treads deliberately across our path and pressed flat against the railings of Claude’s cabin is a short-headed day gecko. This is one of the least flashy of the Phelsuma geckos – the others we’ve seen have all been psychedelically colourful – but it’s very restricted in range and not often seen. We’re happy to add it to my group’s list and to mine.

Tomorrow to Tulear by boat and to Tana by plane. Thence, the day after, to Berenty in the island’s south east. White-footed sportive lemur and giant coua here I come.



New today around Anakao and Nosy Ve

Birds

943
white-fronted plover
Charadrius marginatus
944
littoral rock thrush
Monticola imerinus
945
red-tailed tropicbird
Phaethon rubricaudus
946
crab plover
Dromas ardeola
947
lesser crested tern
Sterna bengalensis
948
roseate tern
Sterna dougallii
949
subdesert brush warbler
Nesillas lantzii

Reptiles

45
short-headed day gecko
Phelsuma breviceps

2012 Totals
Mammals: 99
Birds: 949
Reptiles: 45
Amphibians: 15
Fish: 11

Voronjaza sy toloranto


24th October

As I write, on a sun-seared sand dune in south Madagascar, a female magpie robin, a bee-eater and a crested drongo visit me. This has been a morning of birds. At dawn we were trudging through sand in the Reniala spiny forest reserve, past Adansonia rubrostipa baobabs, the chipping of common newtonias in our ears.  Among them a different song – short, rising, cheerful – from a newtonia with a reddish throat and breast. This was Archbold’s newtonia, one of the specialities of the spiny forest we had come to see.

A subdesert mesite clung to an Alluaudia octopus tree, hoping, despite the bright morning light and her own intricately beautiful plumage, that by freezing she would remain unseen (maybe not the best defence strategy against a group of birdwatchers). Our grail though was a subtle yet startling long-tailed ground-roller, gently walked to a spiny clearing by the forest’s spotters; this disturbance to the bird’s routine a price well worth paying for the preservation of a too-rare patch of its dusty habitat. Without tourists paying to see these birds the forest, as everywhere around the reserve, would already have been lost.

A Lafresnaye’s vanga chimed, five sickle-billed vangas mewed, and at the reserve’s gates a scarce Antimena chameleon trundled through a bush. We padded home, through the sand and the mounting heat, content.

At lunchtime today my vertebrate list stands at a satisfying 1111 species. Ninety-nine of these have been mammals. What will be the hundredth? My money is on white-footed sportive lemur in Berenty, though I can’t rule out a humpback whale offshore today or a lesser hedgehog tenrec in the spiny forest tonight (either would be most welcome). For almost ten months we’ve been at this list, you kindly reading and a marsh tit watching vertebrates and recording them here. It’s been a rich and happy experience and I’m looking forward to that hundredth mammal, to the race to a thousand bird species, and to whatever else crosses my wildlife-watching path before the year and with it my list come to their end.



New at dawn in Reniala spiny forest

Birds

931
stripe-throated jery
Neomixis striatigula
932
running coua
Coua cursor
933
Archbold’s newtonia
Newtonia archboldi
934
subdesert mesite
Monias benschi
935
lesser vasa parrot
Coracopsis nigra
936
long-tailed ground-roller
Uratelornis chimaera
937
Madagascar harrier-hawk
Polyboroides radiatus
938
Lafresnaye’s vanga
Xenopirostris xenopirostris
939
sickle-billed vanga
Falculea palliata
940
Madagascar spine-tailed swift
Zoonavena grandidieri

Reptiles

44
Antimena chameleon
Furcifer antimena


New this afternoon in a sandstorm

Birds

941
three-banded plover
Charadrius tricollaris
942
Madagascar plover
Charadrius thoracicus

2012 Totals
Mammals: 99
Birds: 942
Reptiles: 44
Amphibians: 15
Fish: 11

To the spiny forest


23rd October

Every day with two new primates on my list is a good day. Today was long. Today was hot. Today was exhausting. But today was good. Early this morning we reached Zombitse, a deciduous forest national park marooned in a horizonless landscape of anthropogenic grasslands. We missed our avian target here, Appert’s tetraka which may be found nowhere else, but saw our mammalian target, a snoozing Hubbard’s sportive lemur, which likewise lives nowhere else. (For the taxonomically minded, however, it’s worth knowing that recent genetic research indicates that, unlike the Microcebus mouse lemurs which are bona fide species, the many newly described Lepilemur sportive lemurs are probably regional forms of very few species. The same, incidentally, is true of the Avahi woolly lemurs of which we saw the form currently known as Peyrieras’ in Ranomafana.)

Our second new primate was grey-brown mouse lemur. These spiny forest favourites were dozing at the arboretum outside Tulear: hunkering in the hollow of a snapped tree, curled in a fluffy ball in a spiky Euphorbia, and nestling in the folded leaf of a Bismarckia palm. A green-capped coua trotted through the sandy undergrowth and in the dust sat a Madagascar nightjar, protecting her eggs from the shocking heat of the afternoon.

As we bumped along the unmade road to Ifaty a Kittlitz’s plover stood by a brackish pool, two curlew sandpipers (last seen by my eyes at Cley) probed the seaside mud, and a pair of Madagascar buttonquail trundled across the road, rounding their backs, lowering their heads, and hoping that a bus full of naturalists would not spot them.



New this morning in Zombitse

Mammals

98
Hubbard’s sportive lemur
Lepilemur hubbardorum

Birds

918
Madagascar green pigeon
Treron australis
919
crested coua
Coua cristata
920
alpine swift
Apus melba
921
white-browed owl
Ninox superciliaris
922
Frances’s sparrowhawk
Accipiter francesiae
923
Coquerel’s coua
Coua coquereli
924
rufous vanga
Schetba rufa
925
Madagascar cuckoo-hawk
Aviceda madagascariensis

Reptiles

39
Standing’s day gecko
Phelsuma standingi
40
three-eyed lizard
Chalerodon madagascariensis


New this afternoon in the Tulear arboretum and in marshes near Ifaty

Mammals

99
grey-brown mouse lemur
Microcebus griseorufus

Birds

926
Sakalava weaver
Ploceus sakalava
927
Madagascar nightjar
Caprimulgus madagascariensis
928
green-capped coua
Coua olivaceiceps
929
Kittlitz’s plover
Charadrius pecuarius
930
Madagascar buttonquail
Turnix nigricollis

Reptiles

41

Tracheloptychus petersi
42
spiny-backed chameleon
Furcifer verrucosus
43

Trachylepis aureopunctata

2012 Totals
Mammals: 99
Birds: 930
Reptiles: 43
Amphibians: 15
Fish: 11