Ghana (Part 2) - Mole National Park and Egyptian Plovers

January 2019: A Few Days in the Dry Habitats of Northern Ghana

Wednesday, January 2 - White Volta River, Central Ghana

With Picathartes in the bag, my second big target for this trip was the fabled EGYPTIAN PLOVER otherwise known as the Crocodile Plover.  As a kid I had read about this bird and it's life-risking habit of walking inside the mouths of basking Nile Crocodiles to pick scraps from between their teeth.  This 'fact' had been taught to generations of British school children and was firmly welded in my imagination as one of the most quintessential of African nature phenomena.  I'd wanted to see this bird since I was a small child.  Even finding out that the crocodile story was completely untrue hadn't dampened my enthusiasm for seeing this species.  So today was largely devoted to a very long, and very dusty drive to look for the plovers.

Distant scope views

Our target was a river crossing on the White Volta River, and despite the bridge being long collapsed, the scruffy settlement that surrounded what was now a canoe crossing did seem to be a hive of activity.  The plovers were supposed to frequent a sand bank in the river and when we arrived my heart sank as the sand bank was crowded with villagers and their laundry.  Surely the plovers wouldn't be there but we walked out anyway and scanned the surrounding rocky shores with the scope hoping for, and getting, distant views of the plover upstream.

My best photo of the Egyptian Plover

Now that we'd seen the birds and relaxed, their birds seemed to realize that they'd been spotted and so gave up on hiding and flew directly towards us, landing on the sand bank close enough for decent photos.  A truly special bird, and worth the long drive on terrible roads, and the pounds of dust that I breathed in during the day.  The happy memory carried me forward through another long and dusty drive on equally bad roads in the afternoon until we reached our final destination in Ghana, Mole National Park.

Thursday, January 3 to Saturday, January 5 - Mole National Park

When I booked this trip I had a vague recollection of the folks at Rockjumper offering me a choice of accommodation at Mole NP.  There was either a budget "motel", or a much more expensive "lodge", and feeling flush in the moment I opted for a little luxury and booked the lodge.  I still had fairly low expectations however so when we arrived at Zaina Lodge I was in for a big surprise.  Zaina is a full-on luxury game lodge of the type more typically found in East Africa or South Africa.  In fact it's first and the only lodge of it's type in West Africa.  It was a really very, very nice place to stay - superb accommodations, great food, and beautifully situated - and put us right in the middle of the birds and other wildlife.  I couldn't have been happier with my choice after that long and dusty driving day.

The entrance to Zaina and the pool / bar.

My "tent" at Zaina came complete with a real bathroom and room-sized shower (with hot water)

For the next three days we birded the various trails and tracks around the lodge and ventured further afield into the park.  Mole consists largely of dry "miombo" woodland which looks a lot like the classic TV nature show version of Africa and indeed I had a hard time distinguishing it from the habitat I'd birded in Kenya or South Africa.  It all looked very familiar, with the exception of course of the birds, and I had a ton on new birds.

Senegal Thick-knee and Gray Kestrel

Mole is far from a pristine wilderness, and has suffered some severe hunting pressure.  The park used to be famous for a very tame pride of Lions which fell victim to poaching some years ago, and other predators, Leopards, Hyenas and the like are all very scarce.  Nevertheless, we were required to take an armed scout with us if we wanted to get out of the car, Elephants are still present and can still create some risk for birders.  

Swamp Flycatcher and Gray-headed Kingfisher

Among the star birds that we looked for at Mole were some that specialized in dry, rocky plains that we criss-crossed in the lodge's Toyota Landcruisers until we bumped into them.  Sun Larks were easy to find but it took us many hours before we finally tacked down FORBES'S PLOVER, a very odd looking shorebird.

Forbes's Plover and Chestnut-backed Sparrow-Lark

Night birding was also very productive with numerous Long-tailed Nightjars and a Grayish Eagle-Owls along the tracks after dark.  Dusk also produced a bird that I had long wanted to see when I noticed what seemed to be a nightjar hawking over the grasslands with two small birds mobbing it (?).  That didn't make sense, small birds don't mob nightjars so bins up and it turns out to be a hawking STANDARD-WINGED NIGHTJAR, a truly amazing looking creature with outsized ornamental flight feathers almost as large as the bird itself.  I leapt out of the car for photos and was almost immediately overwhelmed by swarms of large and super aggressive biting flies.  It was literally impossible to stay long enough even to take a single photo and we ran straight back to the car.  Fifteen minutes later when the sun set, the files had vanished, but by then so had the nightjar, so you'll just have to imagine how awesome it was.

Long-tailed Nightjar and Dusky Eagle-Owl

There were also some other special birds that popped up, like my first SPOTTED CREEPER, Stone Partridges, the scarce WHITE-THROATED FRANCOLIN and the local GOSLING'S BUNTING.

Spotted Creeper and White-throated Francolin

There were mammals too of course, although not in the variety that you might see in East or South Africa.  There were Uganda Kob, Bushbuck, Waterbuck, Warthogs, and Olive Baboons.  There were also some smaller things that were memorable, like a group of Gambian Fruit-Bats that we flushed accidentally from some thorn trees one morning.  Then of course there was the star of the park, the African Bush Elephant, and while we only saw one, it was good to know that they were still there.

Uganda Kob and Waterbuck

African Bush Elephant

And finally of course there were a few reptiles, what trip to Africa is complete without a crocodile?  We saw a few crocodiles and I assumed they were Nile Crocodiles until I got home and realized that Slender-snouted and Dwarf Crocodiles can also be found at Mole.  So I have to leave them as crocodile sp. and wish I'd taken the time to take some photos.  The last interesting animal of the visit though was crossing the road as we were leaving on the last morning, a chameleon that I helped onto a stick and moved safely to some roadside bushes.  iNaturalist later identified it as Senegal Chameleon, a lifer for me obviously and a great way to end the trip.

Senegal Chameleon

West Africa, I'll be back.