Birds and beasties (Mark Wilson, Teaching fellow 8th February - 15th March)

Tuesday 19^th February

I woke up this morning just before dawn and my alarm clock. The room was still dark enough that the green lights playing up and down the side of the internet router on the shelf in front of me cast a faint greenish hue for a few metres around them. I was just determining to get a couple more minutes kip when I thought I saw a light flicker on and off in the middle of the ceiling. Thinking I might have imagined it, I watched and waited until it came again, a small but distinct pulse of warm light that came and went, quite literally, in a flash. It was too reddish and in the wrong place to be my light bulb, but this was a possibility that I scarcely considered. What I thought right away was "Firefly"! I watched several more flashes, and came to the conclusion that they were spaced at fairly regular intervals. I turned my phone to stopwatch mode, and pressed start on the next flash. The subsequent flash came at 47s. The one after that came at 1 minute 34s, and the next one at 2 minutes 21s. As I waited expectantly for the 3 minute 8s flash, which came exactly on time, it occurred to me that these intervals were rather precise for an insect. Nothing against inverts, mind, but I'd never heard of one you could set your clock by. So I turned on the light to have a look at it, hoping it wouldn't fly off. It didn't. Smoke alarms usually don't.

Amurum The small reserve in which APLORI is situated, comprised of a mix of gallery forest, open savannah and rocky outcrops.

So, I've not seen any fireflies here, though the MSc students assure me that they occur here during the wet season. I have, however, seen lots of beautiful butterflies, some very scary-looking ichneumon type things that make a noise like an electric razor when they fly close to your head and are alledgedly harmeless (unless you're one of the unfortunate beasties it parasitizes) some even scarier wasps clustered around their nest that I thought at first was a fruit (SO glad I didn't touch it, see photo for details), and other cool stuff like praying mantis, damselflies, camel spiders, termites… ants, ants and more ants, cockroaches, mosquitos and ants. Not quite the haven for invertebrate diversity that a tropical rainforest is, but there's considerably more going on than in northern Europe. The continuous hum of buzzing, churring, and chirping during the night is a deeply comforting and restful sound.

Wasp Nest I think these look particularly evil – they make normal wasps look quite cheerful. Manu and I found this on a point count. The conversation went something like this: Me: [Peering into bush] "What's this? It looks like some kind of weird fruit!" Manu: "It's a wasp nest." Me: Inarticulate noise, accompanied by a hasty step backwards. Manu: "Yeah!"

Sunday 24^th February

Today is to be a day of writing, in an attempt to make up for the first half of the weekend, when we were mostly devoid of power. Apparently this happens quite often in Nigeria, and even in APLORI where we are doubly buffered from such events by a stack of mammoth solar-powered 200Ah batteries (the inverter broke) and a petrol-powered generator (the petrol ran out), we are not immune. Of course this can be frustrating, but there is also something liberating about being in a situation where you can't access your computer. Forced to read and help Emma try and resight some of her colour-ringed Whinchats. What a hard life!

This week's teaching activities will consist of practice transects surveys and geolocator fitting demonstrations (courtesy of Emma, ably assisted by various Whinchats), reviewing various different approaches to conservation, bringing on a few longer-term assignments (including the students' MSc project proposals and some mini-projects using bird and habitat data they collected in the reserve, and demonstration and discussion of sampling methodologies (particularly sampling of insects and habitat). I'm hoping we can arrange for a moth-trapping session to liven up the latter teaching element. There is so little light-pollution here that, on a still and cloudy night, even a simple light-bulb hung above a sheet would attract numerous weird and wonderful species. The challenging bit would be identifying them, as there is no handy field guide to West African moths. I've got in touch with someone at the Natural History Museum in London to see how they would recommend we go about identifying our catch. If we can start to build up a photo database of the species found here, it could act as the nucleus for a useful identification resource for the reserve and surrounding area.

This entry has become distressingly skewed towards invertebrates, so I'll try to redress the balance with a few more birdy pics!

Lesser Blue-eared Starling The starlings in Africa are considerably more glamorous than those we have back home, all of them much bigger, and typically sporting glossy blue, green or purple plumage and brightly coloured eyes. Ironically, they are a lot harder to identify, as there are 4 or 5 species around APLORI, all of which are equally striking!

Red-cheeked Cordon Bleu These little finches look like they've been painted by an imaginative child, or are taking part in a ritualised syle of Asian theatre. They are one of the commonest birds around the guest house, but I still love to watch them, and am hoping to see one in the hand before I leave!

Mocking Cliff Chat Centrepiece of the APLORI logo (which you can see at the bottom of the photo, on the door of the truck), and one of the most attractive birds we see regularly around the guesthouse.

Settling in (Mark Wilson, teaching fellow 8th Feb - 15th March)

17th February 2013 (Honest! It's just taken a week to get the entry onto the blog!)

I've been in Nigeria for just over a week now, and though I am without a doubt still a Nigeria newbie, I am already a fan. Especially of the wildlife, but also of the people, who have been sufficiently friendly and welcoming that I have been made to feel wonderfully at home, despite the fact that I am anything but!

Croaking Cisticola Before coming here, I decided to learn at least one bird call by changing the ring tone on my phone to sound like a Nigerian bird. I chose Croaking Cisticola, so was surprised when the second bird I ringed here was of the same species (it isn't even very common). I haven't seen or heard it since!

Temperatures here are surprisingly comfortable, there being only a few hours in the middle of the day when the sun punishes anyone foolish enough to venture out of the shade by bludgeoning them with unreasonable heat. Jos (and the nearby A. P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute where I am based) is in Plateau State, so named because most of the state is situated at a much higher altitude than that of the surrounding States. I am currently at 1320m, not much more than 100m shy of Ben Nevis, which is the tallest mountain in Scotland! This helps to keep the heat down at manageable levels.

APLORI A near-aerial view of the institute taken early this morning from the top of the rocky outcrop to the west, which I climbed with two of the students.

Special mentions have to go to the two groups of people I have spent most time with since coming here. Firstly the students, who have endured my hastily prepared lectures stoically, participated gamely in discussions relating to various aspects of conservation practice and theory, and acquitted themselves admirably well in the few practical exercises I have set them (DISTANCE analysis, point counts and GPS navigation being the main ones, so far). Their friendliness, enthusiasm and good humour have made the teaching a pleasure. The second group of people consists mainly of PhD student Emma Blackburn, with notable appearances by her crew of field assistants. I share the guest house in APLORI with Emma, and she's been uncommonly good company, as well as a welcome touch point to home (Emma is from Preston in Lancashire). Her PhD project, supervised by Will Cresswell at St Andrews, involves studying the behaviour of Whinchats on their breeding grounds and, starting last week, fitting 50 of them with geolocator tags to better understand when, where, and via what migratory route Whinchats here go to breed. I've been privileged to get out into the field to help and observe the catching and tagging efforts, and it's been fascinating to watch the tiny remote tracking devices being fitted onto birds that are roughly the same size as sparrows. I've also enjoyed getting to know Arrin, John and Emma's other field assistants who expertly operate the nets to catch the birds, and have been generous with their knowledge of Nigeria's wildlife.

Vervet Monkey  This young male could see me, but wasn't particularly concerned as long as I stayed on the veranda. When they are climbing (or walking along the barbed wire fence around the house) their prehensile tail acts like a fifth limb, twitching back and forth to keep them balanced.

Much of this wildlife can be seen from the comfort of the guest house porch. We are regularly visited by Vervet monkeys in the APLORI compound, which are sufficiently confiding that it may only be a matter of time before one of them ends up in the guest house! As I write, Rock Hyraxes are screaming piteously from the rocks opposite the guest house. For one of the elephant's closest extant relatives, hyraxes don't look much like pachyderms. More like cliff-beavers, or an amiable-looking version of the ROUS (Princess Bride reference). For fans of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, the sound they make is like a prudish Nazgul that someone has walked in on unexpectedly while it was getting dressed. Otherwordly distress, leavened with comedy melodrama.

Rock Hyraxes Rodents of Unusual Size? Or mini-elephants? You decide.

But it's the birds that have been the real highlight of my trip so far. Shamefully, I haven't been keeping a tally of all the species I've seen, but I can say that during fourteen 10 minute point counts carried out at random locations within the reserve, Manu (the tremendously able and friendly director of the Institute) and I saw and heard 61 species. I'd guess that this is roughly half of the species that I have seen so far, which include several that are outrageously coloured and patterned. With each of my blog entries I'll include a few photos of some of the choicest birds I've seen (note that not all the photos are as choice as their subjects), in the hope of striking envy into the heart of birders (who will wish they were here) and non-birders (who will wish they were birders) alike!

Red-throated Bee-eater A jewel of a bird that landed on a tree in front of us as we came this morning on the way back down from the outcrop.

When I started writing the sun was high in the sky, but already falling fast. Now it's dark and crickets are doing their best to sing me to sleep. 'Setting' is too gradual and deliberate a word to describe the disappearance of the sun here – 'plummeting' would be better. The same thing seems to be happening with my time here – it's hard to believe that a week is gone already. I'd hoped to be writing entries on the blog more frequently than this, but if I manage one entry a week I'll be doing well, I think!

So, thanks for reading, and I'll leave you with a few photos.

Senegal Coucal Extracted yesterday when trying to catch Whinchats. Not nearly as fierce as he looks (though apparently they often decapitate smaller birds caught in the net)!

Whinchat with geolocator First tagged bird of yesterday. All birds flew well, but Emma will be relieved when she comes in September and starts retrapping birds to get the loggers off them.

 

Fieldwork frustrations

Bad rain this week has meant that we have been without internet for a while, hence the late post... This week’s task has been to try and catch some of the returning birds from last year. Along with presenting a good opportunity to test my Whinchat ageing and sexing skills and see how individuals have changed since last year, the main reason is to make sure that I will be able to catch returning birds with geolocators next field season. Fitting the geolocators is one thing, but to download the data I will need to have them back. So yesterday I chose two of the returned birds and made the decision that I would do whatever I needed to do to catch them. This is much easier said than done! The experience of being caught once using bait, playback and traps is enough to make them wary and rather un-responsive of playback, and so the traps don't work. Yesterday I tried a long line of nets by each of the birds but was well and truely outsmarted. I think I was trying too much at one time with two birds. This morning I tried just one of them and added more nets to the set up to make a big giant C shape. The theory is that at some point there will be enough net to cross the whole territory and catch the bird, even if it sees the net. I spent the morning running around waving my arms and looking like an idiot at the same time, but it was worth it as I managed to catch one bird from last year. Irritatingly this was not the originaly bird I was after! So I have mixed feelings about our sucess. The original target has taken to flying over the top of the net, so I think the only way to catch this bird will be to set a further line of high nets in front or behind the first line. It's a lot of work for one bird and not entirely urgent right now, so next time I will swap to the other bird I tried yesterday and give this one a rest. I may need more people with me to run around waving their arms to persuade it to fly in the right direction. It sounds a little mad but now the birds know what I am up to I need all the help I can get!

Gotcha! One of last year's birds, Blue-Blue-Red, now fitted with a brand new red ring to replace the bleached one

Some exciting news is that earlier in the week I saw a colour-ringed Whitethroat at my site ‘John’s Farm’ whist catching whinchats. This is brilliant. It means that the Whitethroats have also come back to last year’s wintering grounds. I am working in quite a small area of a large site that is quite good for Whitethroat, so it is very promising that this bird was very close to the territory it held last year. The Whitethroats present quite a problem when trying to determine territoriality and residency over the winter period. They are very ‘skulky’ birds that move quickly and quietly in dense bush and it is very hard to read any colour ring combinations if you spot one. Sometimes I feel like I have put colour rings on mice, and mice with wings for that matter. I have tried quite a few methods of re-righting colour-ringed birds effectively, but even with playback and a spotting scope you can never be sure they are there, and if they are that you will see them. I have had to lower my ambitions and work with determining site fidelity and residency over the winter rather than territory size like I am doing for Whinchats. I am doing this by placing mist nets with playback throughout the site to catch and colour-ring whitethroats and then repeating this several times over the winter. Next week I will begin netting for a week throughout my two sites, and I will then repeat this after Christmas. I will colour-ring all the Whitethroats I catch. Any resident birds are likely to be re-caught the second time, along with any birds that I colour-ringed last year that have returned. I am really excited about netting the first time as I think there is likely to be more birds from last year. This site also has some great species that we don’t often catch at APLORI, such as Emin’s Shrike and Yellow-fronted Canary, so maybe I will have some added treats. This morning we worked hard setting up nets ready to start catching on Monday.

We are still having some rain and were treated to a heavy downpour yesterday morning right as we got out of the car. The night before there was a big storm with dramatic lightning and extremely loud thunder that had me quivering under my mosquito net int he early hours. There have been bad floods throughout Nigeria and it does seem like a lot of rain for this time of the year. I hope things cal down soon, although I am not looking forward to when it is as dry as a bone and I come back from the field covered with a layer dust.

This weekend I climbed the big rocky hill in front of the house to get a view of the Reserve. Last time I did this was in late March after the bush fires and there has been quite a transformation with the rains. It’s a brilliant place to watch the sun going down with a whiskey (if you have any) and a good book. Just don’t forget the head torch or the climb down gets interesting. This time a family of Rock-loving Cisticolas came to investigate me, much to my amusement. Their call is exactly like a squeaky dog toy and is quite hilarious when you are surrounded by about 10 of them.

Amurum Forest Reserve from the top of the hill

Keep posted for news next week on how many Whitethroats have made it back this year and into my nets.

Emma

Onwards and upwards

I have been making good, steady progress with fieldwork all this week. The successful catching at the Bridge site continued over the next few days, and there are now 19 newly ringed birds at this site. If I can, I will visit there again tomorrow morning to mop up a few more birds and clarify whether there has been another re-sighting from last year. I have been catching at the other sub-site known as 'John's Farm' too, and have caught a further 10 birds here. Both of these smaller sites had only 5 ringed birds last year. John's Farm is quite a bit smaller than the others with not as much potential to expand until perhaps when the corn fields are harvested. I have noticed that there are quite a few birds hanging out in the corn, and if last year is anything to go by then these birds will maintain their territories even when the corn is gone. They will be far easier to catch when there are places to put the traps.

I am really pleased that we have managed to expand the Bridge site. Last February I found very few birds in the spot where I have now caught 14 birds, which makes me wonder if Whinchats do shift territories over the winter. If they do then I should find out. Ringing all or most of the birds in a contiguous area not only makes re-sighting more productive, but gives a much clearer picture of what is going on between territories. Knowing who the neighbours are may shed more light on why some birds may have smaller or larger territories than others, for example.

The weather has been pretty bad over the past few days. Wednesday evening felt very looming and stormy when I was re-sighting. The next morning I was transported back to Scotland as we started fieldwork in steady rain that stopped and started all morning. Conditions during catching really make a big difference, and unsurprisingly we had a bad day in the field. No birds! We left with our pride a little dented and wishing we had traded a soaking for sleeping in. Yesterday evening saw very heavy rain that continued throughout the night. It is a blessing in disguise that I scheduled today for catching up with data entry and organising equipment, as I doubt I would have made it to the sites after such a downpour. Plus I left my shoes outside... The ground had just started to dry up so I hope the tracks have not gone back to the treacherous state they were in when I arrived.

A misty and soggy morning at John's Farm

Spirits are still high as the total of newly ringed birds is now 40 this season. This is the same as last year - so far - and I still plan to catch more birds to include in the territory study. I will also fit geolocators to 40 more birds at another site within Plateau. Perhaps by the end of the winter I will have ringed 100 Whinchats. In fact that sounds like a nice round number, so let's make it the target for the season!

More exciting news is that the total number of returned birds so far is now 15, with 11 of these at the main APLORI site. I think I am getting close to finding most of them, but I am sure one or two will crop up during the following months when I focus on re-sighting.

11 of the 15 returning birds are at the main APLORI site.
All in the same territories they held last year.

The most intriguing aspect of all this is the fact that birds are returning to the same territories as last year. This has got me thinking about how these birds ended up here again. Did they arrive before the others? What if a bird was already there? Did the returning bird eject a resident bird from the territory, and if it did, does this suggest that returning birds are the ones that are more dominant? What happened if a bird came back to find its old territory already occupied by a more dominant bird? Did it move on to another area altogether, or have these birds just reshaped their old territories to accommodate another individual? Perhaps next year I will aim to answer these questions and plan to be here to see the birds arrive. We will see. The plot thickens!

Next week I will focus on trying to re-catch returning birds so that I can plan for fitting geolocators later in the season. Re-catching birds that come back with their geolocators is essential, as we need to have the device in hand to access the data. I anticipate a challenging and most likely a very frustrating week ahead! Good news that John's Farm was full of Whitethroats and so I can think about that aspect of the work soon.

Emma

An eventful week

The past week has certainly been busy. The CES finished on Tuesday, with a final total of 156 new birds captured of 53 species, plus a further 52 birds that were re-traps. A nice treat for the last day was a Tree Pipit - another Palearctic migrant. The next CES will be at the end of November/early December before I take a break for Christmas. I have some ideas for refining data collection during the CES so there is plenty to work on between now and then.

 

A juvenile Tree Pipit ringed during the CES

 

This week I have been able to visit my Whinchat sites again to look for more colour-ringed birds from last year. The total is now 13 birds, all in the same territories as last year, which is very exciting stuff. 10 of these are from the APLORI site where I ringed 30 birds last year, meaning that at least 33% of the birds have returned. I think that’s brilliant. One of these birds was another individual that vanished after ringing last year and I am happy to see again. Because of the boggy ground I have been parking the car further away from the site, and I re-sighted it a little outside of the study area. I think it was around all of last winter but I missed it on the way in. Usually we manage to catch birds within or very close to their territories, so it looks like this one was trespassing when we caught it last year. Expanding the site with new captures is one of this season’s objectives, and already the APLORI site is growing. This will increase the chances of re-sighting individuals like this one next year, along with adding more new birds to the pool of colour-ringed birds.

I have been catching and colour-ring new birds this week. There are now 11 new birds at the APLORI site. This morning I went out to the ‘Bridge Site’, about 2km away, where I caught 5 birds last year. This morning went better than expected and we caught 7 new birds, almost 8. A great spirit-raising morning, unfortunately tied with the ‘most birds in a day’ record of 7 in a morning (although to be fair this time it was just me and Arin my field assistant instead of 3 of us). Credit goes to Arin for 5 of today’s birds. We often joke about who gets the most birds in a morning and we seem to have started a little competition between us for this season. So far it’s me in the lead with 10 and Arin close behind with 8. Sometimes a little extra incentive is needed to keep going on long mornings when the sun gets hot and lunch and a cold drink is far more appetising than willing Whinchats into the traps.

 

A beautiful African morning out in the field

 

I am really pleased how trapping is going, especially after this morning. As I have already let on, it has been a bit tricky with so little bare ground and the whinchats constantly squabbling with each other. There are still turf wars going on and playing calls gets everybody quite furious. I think the boundaries between territories are still being deliberated. Yesterday at the APLORI site I was catching on the edge of 3 territories and the morning was a chorus of ticking whinchats. I got two of the birds within 30 minutes, but the other one was far less gullible and took a great deal of coaxing to get into the traps. The first 2 birds were males, which are often easier to catch as they respond more aggressively to playback (and of course we all know that females are known for being the more intelligent of the sexes!). After 2 frustrating hours I had 8 traps right under the bush that the whinchat was perching on. Finally, after 20 minutes of it staring at the traps (during which I could clearly see the personal battle it was having with itself as to what to do about the situation), it went for the bait and was caught. Luckily for me in the end it just couldn’t overcome millions of years of evolution telling it to eat the wiggly bug.

 

A male Whinchat with his black wing coverts and bright white flashes.

Soon the Whitethroats will be here in large enough numbers and I will switch focus to netting. I hope some of my birds from last year will come back to their territories like the Whinchats have. Tomorrow I will return to the Bridge site to hopefully add to the number of ringed birds there. It will be a busy morning, mainly as the road to the site is impassable after a point (which I found out from personal experience last year...) meaning that we take the kit into the bush and set up there. I have to been even more on top of how long traps are left for now that the weather is hotter and we have to move further to find new birds. Sunday morning is reserved for sleep and breakfast in bed :)

Emma