Sunday 28 January 2018

Ghana 2018, Kakum National Park

What a fantastic week in Ghana thanks to Isaac, Charles and Junior from Birding Tour Adventures, a local based company to go direct to for tailor made trips for the best prices, best guides and biggest impact for local conservation. WEBSITE HERE. If wanting to join a group tour then none better than WISE BIRDING who work in partnership with Birding Tour Adventures and a percentage of the trip cost is donated to conservation too.

The purpose of my trip was to looking into setting up a regular winter rain forest project out there, so we did a tour of some of the key forest sites trying to get more familiar with the forest species, get to grips with the calls and also making a start on getting to know some of the butterfly species (there are 950 different species in Ghana).

We looked at several areas  and honed in on a couple of forest areas near Kumasi- the famous Bobiri Butterfly Sanctuary and an upland area where I used to work 20 years ago (in gold exploration) at Manso Nkwanta- seems like a relatively easily accessible area with plenty to explore and there is also little information currently available on the Manso Nkwanto area so a good place to focus some exploration effort.

We also visited the famous Kakum National Park and the relatively recently opened up Ankasa Forest. There was little internet access available so rather than a day to day account I'll just do some blog posts on the areas we visited starting off with Kakum National Park, famous for it's canopy walkway and great birds.

KAKUM NATIONAL PARK



View from the canopy walkway over the rain forest 
Green Turaco 
Yellowbill 
White-throated Bee-eater 
Velvet-mantled Drongo 
Honeyguide Greenbul 
Slender-billed Greenbul 
Little Grey Flycatcher 
Green Hylia 
Blue Cuckooshrike
Blue-headed Wood Dove 
Hairy-breasted Barbet 
Osprey over the canopy walkway- presumably not a common forest bird but a migratory individual?
Lesser Spot-nosed Monkey. Both this species and Black-and-white Colobus were present from the walkway 
Slender-tailed Squirrel 
 Brown Nightjar calling- there were at least three birds calling but frustratingly we didn't see them


Honeyguide Greenbul calling- a distinctive call of the Ghana forests 


Isaac Ntakor and myself on the canopy walkway- a must visit birding destination. 

6 comments:

Ed said...

Kakum high on the agenda for a hoped November visit. Look forward to reading more.

Peter Alfrey said...

Hi Ed,
Ghana is simply epic (and as safe as you can get for West Africa and much more diversity than Gambia)

Here's our previous trip reports that might be useful for planning a trip :

http://www.wisebirding.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/GHANA-NOV-2013.pdf

http://www.wisebirding.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GHANA-FINAL-Jan-2017.pdf

Cheers

Chris Townend (Jaffa) said...

Hi Pete - Sounds like another good trip and love those sound recordings, particularly the Brown Nightjar - Guessing that was recorded from the walkway? I am very much looking forward to getting back in November as just a few places left now. Thanks for the link. Hope to catch up properly soon. In the meantime, I look forward to the next blog posts!

Peter Alfrey said...

Yes recorded on the walkway.

The best blog post coming is the Ghana Cuisine one- I ate local for every meal- might change the name of this blog to Cane Rat Birding

Chris Townend (Jaffa) said...

You have my full attention!

Alia parker said...

Kakum National Park is an amazing park i know. Because there are many things which are very attractive to the tourist. I know this from a local tour guide who work in that area.