To the Picathartes in the Gola Forest

The odd looking yellow headed picathartes. Picture from here.

I’ve been getting into birding lately, and it’s been sent up a few notches since Katie and I were given a bird book by a kind-hearted Dutch birder called Barend. It’s awesome when you meet great people like that; we had only met him once before he sent us the bird book from Holland. Last weekend was probably the best weekend of birding I’ve had yet. Katie and I went to the Gola forest to see a yellow headed picathartes.

Awhile ago we went on a mission to the Guma Valley near Freetown to try and see a picathartes. It is a rare, strange looking bird that hops on rocks and doesn’t fly much. Our bird book says that it is “mostly silent… secretive but not shy”, they don’t mention annoying. In Guma we trekked to the base of a rocky overhang in the forest, sat there staring at their mud nests on the rock face, and saw nothing. Ever since then we’ve had a bit of a grudge against the pica-frikin-thartes, especially Katie, who had been twice unlucky.

However, our trusty guide Kenneth had told us that we would be sure to see the picathartes in Kenema or in the Gola forest. We really wanted to get to the Gola forest anyway, which is a big stretch of conserved land in the South East of Sierra Leone, right on the border with Liberia. So, for Katie’s birthday, which happened to fall on the long weekend that marks Sierra Leone’s independents day anniversary, 27^th April, I tried to organise us some picathartes in the Gola forest.

Our able guide, Kenneth.

I organized the trip to Gola through Kenneth, who took care of just about everything. Kenneth comes highly recommended from me as a both a bird guide and host. We not only learnt a lot from him about birding, but we were looked after and fed excellently. Having Kenneth to haggle for us with the okada drivers and others expecting payment gave a tangible sense of relief. It's kind of similar to how holidays were more fun when mom and dad did all of the organising. You can contact Kenneth by phone (+23276520122) or email (factsfinding@yahoo.com). His business is called "Fact Finding Tours".

In some preliminary research done before the expedition, I came across a YouTube clip of a picathartes, that features a clip from David Attenborough's first ever filmed appearance back in 1955 when he was 28!!! Even better, his expedition led him to the same area that we were going to in Sierra Leone.

We left Freetown for Kenema straight after work on Thursday, and then left Kenema for the Gola forest by okada early on Friday morning. We were joined by another guy keen to see some birds called "the Gooseboy", a Peace Corps Volunteer that had also made contact with Kenneth. The birding started on the road. We saw white necked bee-eaters, palm nut vultures, a lizard buzzard, a red-necked buzzard and a pair of Hartluab’s ducks. After about an hour and half of traveling we reached Lalehun village, right on the edge of Gola North, and picked up a community guide called Moses and a porter for all of Kenneth’s pots and pans that he would use to grill us fish, cook up some relish, and fry us banana pancakes. We didn’t lack much

Kenneth preparing us some lunch on the trail: Grilled fish, potatoes and relish.

Moses, our character filled community guide that I really enjoyed walking with. Here he is with a great blue turaco's feather in his hair.

 We followed an old logging trail, which speaks to the relief that the area is now conserved. All but the deep interior of the forest was logged quite heavily in the last century, before things slowed down in the lead up to the rebel war. The graded sides of the trail showed that it had once been a road, and in places there were large rusted cables that had been used to load massive trees onto trucks. As a result, the forest around us was not pristine. However, it was visibly recovering, with large trees, less than 50 years old, taking over the road with their big, buttressing roots. We heard a rifle fire while we were walking; a poacher collecting ‘beef’. The forest had also been a refuge for the RUF during the war, and a safe passage for rebels coming from Liberia.

Katie, Kenneth and me at the foot of some big buttressing roots, of a cotton tree I think.

The bridges that we used in the forest were built by Moses, completely out of branches and vines.

We walked and sweated our way to a stream in the forest, which had some small rock pools that were cool and obliging. About 30 meters up the other bank of the gulley, hidden behind the trees, was the picathartes nesting colony. Kenneth said that the picathartes became more active at about 5pm. It was also apparently the breeding season, so they were expected to be hanging around in pairs. So, at 4:30pm we headed up to the colony of mud nests for the evening matinee in honour of Katie’s birthday. We sat on the forest floor, waiting silently, staring up the hill at a rocky overhang, which was spotted with empty mud nests. Not a picathartes in sight. We waited, more or less motionless, except for the occasional mandatory bum shift and Kenneth, who was being attacked mercilessly by some bugs. He was frequently flailing his sandal at them, and making a big noise to my chagrin. We waited for two and half hours. As light was fading and I was preparing myself for Katie to declare war on all picathartes, a dark shouldered, white breasted, yellow headed bird with big black eyes and a big black beak flitted onto the rock in front of us. It's head looked like it had a tight yellow Mexican wrestling mask pulled over it. It hopped forwards twice, back again, paused, and then was gone. Soon after, Kenneth pointed out a pair of picathartes perched on a low branch 15 meters away, peering at us through the forest.

It was a brief sighting, but, in the words of David Attenborough when he saw the yellow headed picathartes, “it was enormous excitement”. In the words of Murray Bridgman, it was a “picathartic catharsis”. It was a successful expedition.

A yellow headed picathartes, peering through the forest. Picture from here.

Katie beneath the picathartes nests, victoriously holding a picathartes' feather in her teeth.

 After calming down, we camped in the forest nearby the stream, contented. The forest was alive with the sounds of frogs, owls asnd crickets by night, all good noises. Apparently some scientists had camped in our same campsite recently, studying trees and tree frogs.

We headed back to Lalehun village the next day. Interestingly, the variety of the birds we saw was much better around the village, where the land had been cleared more, giving greater visibility. Trees and leaves really make forest birding tricky. Unless a bird makes a noise, you won't know it's there until you get really close. The birding highlights around Lalehun were a beautiful pair of great blue turacos, a black bee-eater and the broad-billed rollers. Here is a list of all the birds that we managed to see and identify in and around the Gola forest during the whole trip:

·         Hartlaub’s Duck

·         Palm-nut Vulture

·         African Harrier Hawk

·         Lizard Buzzard

·         Red-necked Buzzard

·         Latham’s Forest Francolin

·         Tambourine Dove

·         Great Blue Turaco

·         Yellowbill

·         Senegal Coucal

·         Black Bee-Eater

·         White-throated Bee-Eater

·         Broad-billed Roller

·         Red-billed Dwarf Hornbill

·         African Pied Hornbill

·         Yellow-Casqued Hornbill

·         Brown-Cheeked Hornbill

·         Buff-Spotted Woodpecker

·         Yellow-Throated Longclaw

·         Greenbul (not 100% sure which one)

·         White-Tailed Alethe

·         Chestnut Wattle-Eye

·         Western Black-Headed Oriole

·         Shining Drongo

·         Red-Vented Malimbe

·         Grey-headed Negrofinch

·         Bronze Mannikin

·         And… Yellow-Headed Picathartes!

Dew on a grass roof in Lalehun village on the edge of the Gola North forest reserve, early on Sunday morning.