Breakfast at 5 AM which
I ate lightly, but felt much better. We were off at 5:30 for a short
drive to the Bobiri Forest Reserve which is about 5000 acres in size and
contains lovely original forest of huge trees, lots of birds and especially
many species of butterflies. It has a research station surrounded by
flowering plants and we were dazzled with the variety of shapes and
colors. 
We walked along the reserve road birding and saw great swarms of
various butterflies clustered over bits of damp sand and also over different
animal scat. Andrew, our assistant guide, is a butterfly expert and
helped identify many of the species. I’m afraid that this park, like most
others, is being nibbled away by illegal loggers but for the moment it’s a
wonderful place.
We left at 11 and Andrew
handed around a menu from a restaurant we were driving to and we initialed the
dishes we wanted and he called them in. We arrived at the Linda Dor
Restaurant had a good lunch after sorting out the various errors in identifying
the dishes. Bob had garlic fish and I had chicken and veggies with two
enormous heaps of rice!
We drove on a couple more hours and entered
Atewa Range Forest Preserve and walked through agricultural lands and
encountered several groups of very jolly children sitting near some piles of
harvested chilies. Bob saw his 200th life bird - this was his goal for
the trip, something he doesn’t often achieve – but this tour has been so
grueling that I’m glad he made it. We saw a Purple-throated Cuckoo Shrike
- a lovely velvety dark bird about the size of a robin.
As we were returning to the bus, a group of rough men passed us with dogs and rifles and burlap sacks of bush meat - illegal but tolerated - even advertised on some restaurant boards.
 |
| A Very Weary Birder! |
We drove on until 6 PM,
turning into quite a snazzy hotel where we have a working shower!
Yeaaah! After five days! Also excellent wi-fi - we’re obviously
getting closer to civilization. We had dinner at 7: fish soup, fried
plantains, rice and some delicious mangos that James had purchased from a lady
carrying them on top of her head a few days ago. Tomorrow’s our
last day on this birding trip - one more slog through the humid heat, clean up
and off to the airport and Amsterdam!
No comments:
Post a Comment