Not finding animals around Trondheim, Norway

May 9, 2022

Recently I was spending a week in Trondheim, Norway, and tried desperately to find interesting animals. It should have been pretty straightforward; there are some really good spots for animals in the area. However, April is not the ideal time of year, things are far too frozen, and I mostly failed to find my target species. I did get some good local knowledge, though, so I thought I’d post what I heard - and what I did manage to find.

Muskox

The train station where you get off to look for musk ox.

The main draw in the area, for me at least, are the world’s most accessible wild muskox. Reintroduced to the alpine plateau of Dovrefjell, they can been seen relatively easily according to this website. Just hop on a train in Trondheim, hop off at Kongsvoll, and hike 3ish km! That is amazingly accessible for the world’s most remote northernly hoofed mammal.

However, note that all the pictures on that website appear to be taken in summer. In April, the place is snow covered and bleak. The train station is a the bottom of a gorge through the mountains, in mid-April I found it snowy but sunny and pleasant with a temperature around zero. That is not where the muskox live, however. They live on the plateau east of the gorge.

I took this picture standing at the train station at the bottom of the gorge, looking east. These buildings (which were locked up) mark the start of the muskox trail, which leads up the ridge behind the buildings and up onto the plateau beyond, where the musk ox live.

The first couple km of the muskox trail lead up the eastern wall of the gorge and over the ridge - not an easy stroll, especially in knee-deep snow. And once I got over the ridge, the temperature plummeted. This itself was not a big problem - I was dressed for this - but it does make the experience significantly less comfortable.

A view of the beech forest that covers the sides of the gorge that I hiked up. After this point my phone got too cold and stopped working, so there are no more pictures. The plateau looked the same as this, but without the trees.

I hiked along the Muskox trail towards the Høgsnyta lookout. Though muskox can be found anywhere along the trail, they are most commonly seen from the lookout (apparently). As I walked towards the lookout the wind picked up, and with it, snow squalls blocked my view to the point where, a few times, I had to stop and wait for them to die down because I couldn’t seen the ground through all the white and couldn’t tell if I was walking on flat ground or about to go over a cliff! So I never made it to the lookout, and I didn’t see any muskox.

Rock Ptarmigan

Here’s one I saw: I flushed on at the edge of the tree line while walking back to the train after my failed attempt to see the musk ox.

Mountain Hare

These are present in the forest that grows along the sides of the gorge. I saw three between my trips up and down the gorge. Other people also report seeing them, so it seems they’re pretty common at the site.

Reindeer

They exist in large herds in Dovrefjell but the movement of the herds is apparently unpredictable. Very hard to see.

Red Deer

Apparently common on Hitra Island, in particular around Sandstad. Unfortunately I didn’t make it to the island.

Roe Deer

Apparently also common on Hitra Island. I didn’t see them near Trondheim but I did see them hiking north of Sognsvann subway station in Oslo, on the hiking trail that runs along the eastern side of Sognsvann Lake.

Eurasian Beaver

The dam where you can see beavers was completely frozen over. I couldn’t even find any openings where the beavers might be coming up for air. It was just way too early in the season to be looking for them.

There is a well-known spot for beaver in Trondheim - several people pointed me to the same place. Theisendammen, on the western edge of the city, has a family of beavers, and apparently the best place to wait for them to appear is from the lookout platform at 63.420690, 10.344516. Again, however, I would recommend looking for them later than April, because the whole dam was still solidly covered with ice (and snow) when I visited. In Canada I’m used to looking for beavers in gaps in the ice of frozen ponds and lakes, but here there were no gaps, just solid ice.

Eurasian Otter

Otters are regular along the ocean shoreline in Trondheim, there were sightings while I was there. However, there don’t appear to be regular spots, you just have to luck upon one, and I never did.

Black Grouse & Western Capercaillie

Both are apparently common in Bymarka Nature Reserve, the hill to the east of Trondheim. I also heard a rumour that there is a population of Siberian Jays here. I took the tram to Lian Station and walked uphill, but didn’t luck upon any of these three.

Adder

I’ve seen pictures online from Norway and Sweden of adders out basking on snow in the spring, and I found them to be such a strange juxtaposition. I was hoping to see this phenomenon in person as someone gave me the location he’d seen an adder just a week before I arrived. Unfortunately there had been a lot of snowfall in the intervening week, and the site, 63.376644,10.285963, was not accessible without snowshoes (which I did not have).

White-throated Dipper

Let’s end on a happy note. This is one target animal I did manage to find in Trondheim. I’m not sure how common dippers are in urban environments, but I found this one at 63.431136, 10.363289, smack in the city night next to a construction site.

Finding Animals in Newfoundland

December 28, 2021

Newfoundland is a spectacularly beautiful (in a harsh, windswept sort-of a way) island off the northeast coast of North America. I spent late 2021 there at Memorial University in St. John's, and, as is my natural habit, I set out to find as many animals as I could in my spare time. I was there only in the fall, so keep that in mind with respect to my comments on where and how to find things. I'll also include any advice I got from people who seemed to know what they were talking about.

Mammals

Woodland Caribou

There are small numbers scattered all over the island, including on the Avalon Peninsula, but the only place I saw them was along Highway 430, the highway that goes up the Great Northern Peninsula to St. Anthony. I heard that the area around Port-au-Choix is a particular hotspot for them, but I didn't go there. I saw two herds just from the highway, one around Portland Creek and the other near Green Island Cove.

Red Fox

There's a habituated family on the road to Cape Spear, right where the asphalt road turns into gravel. They approach cars like they're used to being fed, so drive carefully!

Canadian Beaver

Newfoundland is pock-marked with ponds and lakes, and you drive by them constantly on the highways. Many, many of these ponds have active-looking beaver dams and staking one out for a while would probably yield successful beaver sightings. I didn't do this, and I didn't see any beavers just with quick glances at the lakes as I wizzed by at 100km/hr. The only beaver I saw was in a pond on the hike to Gros Morne Mountain.

Ermine

The only small weasel present on the island, they're found all over the island but aren't easy to see. The only place I saw one was at the picnic area by the pond at the Memorial University Botanical Gardens. It was foraging around like it was used to being fed.

River Otter

Once again, the only one I saw acted like it was used to being fed. It was in the farm pond on the Skerwink Train and swam over to us as we approached the pond. We stood there watching it, as it swam back and forth, periscoping and watching us.

Meadow Vole

There seem to be lots of these on the Great Northern Peninsula but I didn’t see an evidence of them anywhere else. On the Great Northern Peninsula, I saw them at both Cape Norman and Flower's Cove.

Mystery Vole

I saw a vole with a distinctly yellowish head running between boulders at the base of Gros Morne, where the climb up the gully starts. If I were on the mainland, I would have confidently said it was a rock vole, but apparently those don't occur on the island. And because the place I saw it is so accessible, and is part of a national park, I suspect it has been thoroughly sampled. If a population of rock voles lived there, it would be known. So I've just chalked this one up as unidentifiable.

Atlantic White-sided Dolphin

These seem to be relatively common. We went on a boat tour from the Bonavista Peninsula at the end of October and we found a super-pod of hundreds of them. The water all around the boat was boiling with them, it was an amazing sight. Apparently these super-pods are a fall occurrence, they are seen in smaller groups in the summer and can be hard to find in the spring.

I also saw a small pod of them looking out from my cabin near Carbonear, one of the Mad Rock Cabins. And I found a dead one washed up near St. Anthony.

White-beaked Dolphin

The Sea of Whales tour operator, who took us to see the white-sided dolphins, told us that spring is the time to see these around Bonavista, and he doesn't see them in the summer or fall.

I saw them only from the Cape Norman lighthouse on the Great Northern Peninsula, a well-known whale-watching spot. Their dorsal fins are so big that at a distance I had trouble telling them from (female) orcas!

Minke Whale

I saw these surface-feeding from the Cape Norman lighthouse, in association with the white-beaked dolphins. It was very neat to watch their huge mouths come out of the water and go along the surface.

Harbour Seals

Apparently they very common, but I noticed a distinct lack of seals the entire time I was in Newfoundland. People there absolutely hate seals; they get a lot of blame for keeping the cod stocks from recovering, and I suspect seals are harassed in a lot of places. This was particularly apparent when I took the ferry to St Pierre and immediately spotted seals hauled out around the harbour there.

On Newfoundland itself, just about the only place I found seals is around the southern end of the Avalon Peninsula, in particular in the harbours along the Irish Loop.

Hooded Seals

These were the only seals I found that were not habour seals. I saw a few of these hauled out with some harbour seals at the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, at the first point where the trail to Watern Cove looks out over the shoreline. I’m not sure if they’re regular there, I was there after a big storm and they might have just been resting up. Also, this is a famous location for Ediacaran fossils, unfortunately the places they are visible are only accessible on guided tour.

Birds

There are too many birds to list and discuss. My full list for Newfoundland can be found on my eBird profile here. It's lacking the most famous bird for the area - Atlantic puffin - as they move offshore outside the breeding season.

Newfoundland gets lots of vagrants. There were several warblers, some rare even for Canada, hanging around into December. I didn't chase them down, but if you're into that sort of thing it'd be worth checking out eBird, the Newfoundland Birders Google Group, and Jared Clarke's Twitter to see what's around.

Bald Eagle

Common soaring around the coast and over the highways, even a long way inland (probably because of all the ponds and lakes), but definitely not as easy to find as on the coast of British Columbia or Alaska. The whale watching tour out of Bonavista (Sea of Whales) took us to an active nest.

Rock Ptarmigan

Just about the only place you can find them is on the peaks of the Long Range Mountains in western Newfoundland, and just about the only accessible peak is Gros Morne. I was pleasantly surprised to see lots of them - upwards of 20 - while walking across the plateau. Not sure if that's normal or if its been a particularly good year for them.

Boreal Chickadee

I rarely see these elsewhere in Canada, so it was a pleasure to discover that they are probably the most common forest bird on the Avalon Peninsula, where the black-capped chickadee is rare. Further west on the island the black-capped gets progressively more common and the boreal harder to see.

White-winged Crossbill

Common across the island wherever there are conifers. A rare treat for me elsewhere in Canada, it was great to see them so frequently.

Northern Fulmar

Hard to see. I saw them once from shore after a big storm, and once from the ferry to St Pierre.

Dovekie

Easy to see from shore in the late fall and winter. Very hard otherwise.

Reptiles

What reptiles? I didn't see a single reptile my entire time there, because there are almost none in Newfoundland. However, according to Sea of Whales, leatherback turtles seem to be getting more regular, to the point where it might just be possible to target them on a trip.

Amphibians

There aren't any amphibians native to Newfoundland, and the introduced ones are suprisingly hard to come across, despite the abundance of fresh water. I only saw green frogs and American toads once - driving along Route 73 at night during a rainstorm.

Other

Strombolites!

There are only a small handful of places in the world where strombolites exist. I had no idea that western Newfoundland was one of those places until I drove past a small, unassuming sign for a "strombolite walk" at Flower's Cove. These have to be the least promoted strombolites in the world. If you have the time, check them out! They are rare, weird, and totally underappreciated.

Some comments on stuff I didn't see

Orca - Sea of Whales tour operator out of Bonavista targets these in the fall, after the migratory whales have gone. But he still only sees them about once in every four trips. Gotta get lucky!

Seals - I was hoping to see bearded, harp, and ringed seals during my time on Newfoundland, but given how hard harbour seals were to find, I didn't maintain much hope. Apparently harp seals regularly haul up at some harbours (I was told Holyrood is a good spot) during the dead of winter. They are also regular in early spring on the ice that flows down from Labrador along the north shore. Bearded seals are uncommon and erratic but turn up regularly, apparently. Ringed seals are either very rare or are overlooked because they look so much like harbour seals.

Muskrat - Apparently there's been a steep decline in their population recently, and it's currently unknown why. They used to be very common but are now almost impossible to see.

Arctic Hare - Present only on the most barren tundra-like spots. I looked for them on top of Gros Mourne and at Burnt Cape Ecological Reserve but wasn't lucky enough to see one.

Willow Ptarmigan - Present all over the island but hard to see. Their population follows boom-and-bust cycles and I think I was there at a low ebb. I looked in several known spots and couldn't come up with one.

Leatherback Turtle - I was surprised to see pictures of these featured prominently on the websites of whale watching companies. It seems they are becoming a regular thing, which is very neat. The Sea of Whales boat tour out of Bonavista said he sees them mostly August-October and will see about one a week during that time. Not great odds, but a lot better than I was expecting! A biologist I talked to in Terra Nova National Parks also said he thinks they're becoming more regular in Newfoundland waters and suspects global warming may be responsible.

Anyone up for a camera trap mystery?

August 9, 2021

A camera trap at my parent’s property near Burks Falls, Ontario captured this series of images:

The first three images show a large, dark animal moving through the trees, the fourth is a picture with no animals for comparison. Here they are as a gif:

After staring at this gif for way too long, I’m pretty sure I know what animal this is. Anyone else want to hazard a guess?

Update Oct. 2021: It’s a moose.

Backyard Birdwatching

April 24, 2020

One of my passions in life is animal-watching, and most of my travels involve some amount of searching for birds, mammals, or herps (reptiles & amphibians). I was very much looking forward to this spring, my first in Toronto since graduating high school, so that I could try to find some of the amazing birds that pass through this area during migration. Unfortunately, I’ve had to put most of those plans on hold due to the viral pandemic that’s got the entire world shut down for the moment.

My work-from-home set-up, perfect for being distracted from work by birds. The pictures below are taken through these windows.

Given our collective circumstances, I’m fortunate to be isolated with an excellent work-from-home set-up where I face a wall of windows behind my computer screens, perfect for working and birdwatching simultaneously. I’m also lucky to be living at a place with a large backyard that has a lot of vegetation, including some huge old oak trees. So now, with the great wave of migratory birds about to arrive, I thought I’d start my list of birds that I’ve seen while birding from home. I’m going to keep adding to it as long as the pandemic keeps us locked up. We’ve all got to keep busy somehow!

Update #2: It’s now May 2021 and not only is the pandemic ongoing, but here in Ontario we’re back in a lockdown just like this time last year. So I guess I should update this list. This year wasn’t nearly as good for backyard birding as last year, but so far I’ve seen three species this year that I didn’t see in my yard last year:

62-Willow Flycatcher

61-Baltimore Oriole

60-Canada Goose
Honestly it’s inexplicable that I didn’t see any last year from my hard. This year several migrating flocks flew over the yard.

Update: It’s the end of June and Toronto is into Phase 2 of its reopening. I’m back at the office for 12 strictly-controlled hours a week, which means quarantine is over, I guess? Anyway, it’s time to end this list. One last bird to add that I saw today and then I’m done at the very unsatisfying 59 bird species in my yard during quarantine. Oh why couldn’t I have seen some Canada geese flyover???

59-Cedar Waxwing
I’ve been hearing them for a while, but I finally managed to see three of them feeding.

58-Great Crested Flycatcher
It’s June now and things have settled down, but the occasional new bird still pops up!

57-Mourning Dove
Flyover

56-Cliff Swallow
Flyover

55-Northern Grackle
Flyover, and not one I was expecting to take so long to show up!

54-Red-eyed Vireo

53-Canada Warbler

52-Common Nighthawk
Flyover

51-Cape May Warbler

50-Red-headed Woodpecker
What a spectacular and rare bird for my fiftieth species!

49-Red-tailed Hawk

48-Tennessee Warbler

47-Swainson’s Thrush

46-Chimney Swift

45-Least Flycatcher

44-Magnolia Warbler

43-Black-throated Blue Warbler

42-American Redstart
The last seven species were all first observed on the same day!

41-American Goldfinch

40-Lincoln’s Sparrow

39-Veery

38-Chipping Sparrow

37-Rose-breasted Grosbeak

36-Ovenbird

35-Brown Thrasher

34-Blue-headed Vireo

33-Brown-headed Cowbird

32-Blackburnian Warbler

31-Blue-grey Gnatcatcher

30-Palm Warbler

29-Black-throated Green Warbler

28-Philedelphia Vireo

27-Black-and-white Warbler
May’s started and the birding is ramping up!

26-Red-winged Blackbird
Flyover

25-Nashville Warbler

24-Yellow-rumped Warbler
First warbler! Seen the last days of April

23-White-throated Sparrow
A flock of at least 30 descended on my backyard one afternoon, seemingly out of nowhere. Spectacular!

22-Mallard Duck
Flyover

21-Ring-billed Gull
Flyover

20-Brown Creeper
This was the last of the widespread Ontario birds for me to finally tick off my lifelist, so it was a real pleasure to look up from my computer and notice one creeping up a tree about 3m from where I was sitting.

19-Northern Flicker

18-Ruby-crowned Kinglet

17-Golden-crowned Kinglet
My garden seemed to be filled with these for a couple days mid-April; they were even hopping around quite close to the ground. Very beautiful little birds.

16-Eastern Phoebe

15-Double-crested Cormorant
A strange backyard birding tick since there’s no water in my yard, they were a fly-over.

14-Hermit Thrush

13-Blue Jay

12-American Crow
Surprisingly rare in my yard, considering how common they are in Toronto in general. I’ve only seen them once this spring, mobbing a Cooper’s hawk.

11-Cooper’s Hawk

10-Turkey Vulture
Flyover

9-White-breasted Nuthatch

8-Red-breasted Nuthatch
Seen for the first time ever in my yard early this spring, when there was still plenty of snow on the ground. Not seen since.

7-Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

6-Hairy Woodpecker

5-Downy Woodpecker

4-Dark-eyed Junco

3-Northern Cardinal

2-Black-capped Chickadee

1-American Robin

I also have a list of mammals seen from my backyard since the start of the pandemic, but it’s pretty pathetic:

4-Eastern Chipmunk

3-Raccoon

2-American Grey Squirrel

1-Eastern Striped Skunk

An excellent account of the wild mammals of Toronto is here. I’m hoping a few more of these are around my yard, like Virginia Opossum and White-footed Mouse.

The Central African Republic, part 2

October 28, 2018

The Central African Republic, part 1 dealt with my preparation for the trip and my time in Bangui at the start of my trip. This part deals with the main attraction: my time at Sangha Lodge in the country’s southwest.

The morning after my trip to Boali Falls, William and Nestor picked me up and we drove to the airport to catch a puddle-jumper flight to Sangha Lodge, in the southwest corner of CAR. William immediately disappeared into the airport to do his fixing for two arriving clients, while I waited in the parking lot with Nestor. Me being me, I asked Nestor if I could pull out my binoculars and look for birds. Nestor approved, and I started trying to figure out what was perched on the fences and light posts around the airport. Many fences and lights surround the airport because it is one of the most strategically important and heavily fortified places in CAR. That means it’s also crawling with heavily armed UN soldiers and at least three tanks. The sight of a guy using a pair of high-powered binoculars to look at them (well, at the finch perched on the fence just to their left) did not please these soldiers, and Nestor quickly came running up to me to tell me he was sorry but I couldn’t do that. Binoculars and heavily armed soldiers just don’t mix.

In the pilot’s seat of our little plane was a twenty-something South African man. His gave a casually self-assured delivery of the safety briefing and we were off flying over Bangui and then the rainforest. I was seated directly behind him, and - a nervous flyer at the best of times - my sense of alarm rose significantly during the flight when I saw him take out the extremely thick airplane manual and place it, open and face-up, in the space between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats. In order to reassure myself (surely he was just looking up something innocuous) I leaned forward and read the title of the page he had opened to: it was the page explaining how to restart the plane in the air following the failure of both engines. Alarmed, I spent the rest of the flight keenly listening to the sounds the plane was making*. Despite my apprehensions we landed safely in Baganga, the village at the entrance to Dzanga-Sangha National Park and close to Sangha Lodge.

The entrance to Dzanga-Sangha National Park

The owner of Sangha Lodge is a man named Rod Cassidy, and he was there to meet us at the airstrip along with his staff and many locals. Rod’s advice to me was to start birding right away, as the wildlife around the airstrip tends to be unique because the airstrip is a unique grassy area in the middle of a massive rainforest. There were no armed soldiers in sight, so I entertained myself trying to identify swifts (no easy task) while administrative issues were dealt with around me. I was initially hesitant when Rod told me to hand my passport over to a local official, but in the end I decided against wasting my day going with the official as he processed my entry into the region, and handed over the document. Common travel advice for Africa is to never, ever part with your passport. However, I find that this advice is almost impossible to follow. I had also handed my passport over to William upon arrival in Bangui, and he had then promptly disappeared into the bowels of the airport. Previous experiences with other fixers at African ports of entry have taught me that this is normal. My advice is to carry several certified copies of your passport; these will do in a pinch should your passport fail to be returned.

Rod Cassidy (L), owner of Sangha Lodge, and me at the Bayanga airstrip.

I was blown away by Sangha Lodge. The lodge is perched over the Sangha River, and on the first night we were treated to a river cruise. Big trees hung over the banks, monkeys occasionally causing a ruckus in the canopy. Parrots and hornbills flew overhead, presumably back to their evening roosts, and Rod regaled us with the story of the lodge and his past. He spent many years traveling across Africa as a birding guide, which was music to my ears!

Sunset over the Sangha River from deck at Sangha Lodge.

The lodge itself looks exactly like what you might expect - gorgeous but run-down in just the way a remote jungle lodge should be. The buildings were all distressed wood and blooming with moss and epiphytes. Flowering trees were starting to encroach on the lodge grounds. The main building had a comfy indoor common area decorated with local art and a bookshelf of books describing the local environment and culture. Attached was a gorgeous patio overlooking the river. Each “room” was its own little bungalow with a private bathroom (including a shower overlooking the river) and brand-new furniture.

The main building’s common area at Sangha Lodge.

The lodge used to be a hunter’s camp, as Dzanga-Sangha National Park is surrounded by hunting allotments. By purchasing the hunting allotment just north of the park, Rod and his partner Tamir have stopped all legal sport hunting in addition to creating a tourist attraction. Illegal poaching is an ongoing problem; a European hunting guide still sometimes takes his rich clients into the allotment, lying to the clients about exactly where they are. One evening I was there rifle shots range out from across the river; Rod immediately called rangers from the national park who came in a speedboat to investigate.

The Sangha tour I was on included five activities (one per day). The first activity was a full-day visit to Dzanga Bai: the reason I have heard of this national park. As a child I remember staring at photos from Dzanga in my Dad’s National Geographic magazines. Dzanga is one of a collection of bais (small rainforest clearings) scattered through the rainforest in the region where CAR, Cameroon, and the Republic of Congo meet. Bais are special because they provide the best opportunities to see animals that usually stay hidden in the dense rainforest. For whatever reason, each Bai seems to attract a slightly different suite of animals, and Dzanga is famous for its elephants. After a fifteen minute walk through the rainforest I, the other Sangha guests, and our guides emerged at the base of a wooden observation platform about three stories tall. Our guides were very clear that we had to be extremely quiet - another reminder that we were in a remote location, visited only by a very lucky few. You can see elephants, albeit not the same species, easily on the plains and bushland of eastern and southern Africa, and there’s no need for quiet. Those elephants get so many safari trucks rumbling by that they are completely habituated to human noises. These elephants see very few tourists and are not at all habituated to human presence.

Dzanga Bai from the top of the observation platform.

The view at the top of the observation platform took my breathe away. Elephants – dozens of them – scattered around a clearing, doing various elephant things. Some had their entire faces submerged in the mud, others used their trunks to delicately transfer the mud to their mouths. Huge males congregated around the deepest mud pit, where their long tusks could scrape up the best mud. Young elephants ran around, flaring up their ears and trunks in mock aggression: sometimes at each other, sometimes at an unlucky heron, and sometimes at nothing in particular. Baby elephants stuck close to their mothers, venturing only short distances to play before high-tailing it back to safety under mom’s massive torso.

A newborn (still pink) baby elephant finds safety and comfort under her mother’s massive body.

The thing I enjoyed the most about the bai was watching new elephants arrive. Despite their huge size, elephants emerged from the incredibly dense rainforest seemingly by magic. One second there was nothing, and the next there was an elephant, without even the slightest sound or shake of a tree. Once the elephant emerged, other elephants would turn towards the newcomer and raise their trunks, seemingly sniffing the air to see who had arrived. The new elephant would amble forward, sometimes trumpeting or flaring its ears and trunk. Often it would amble towards what I perceived to be a friend, the two elephants would touch and entwine trunks, and then eat mud side-by-side. At the end of the day we left, creeping quietly down the stairs into the rainforest, where there was absolutely no indication that there were any elephants around, let alone the highest density of elephants in central Africa. The rainforest just swallows up the world’s largest land animal without a trace.

Driving on muddy roads through the park, we had one last fantastic encounter: a big silverback gorilla on the road. As our driver slammed on the breaks the gorilla arched his back, flexed his massive muscles, and then disappeared into the forest. We saw him for maybe a second, but it was an incredible moment: I was in a place where gorillas are still common enough that you can happen upon them accidentally on your commute.

The roads through Dzanga-Sangha National Park. Imagine this view but with a huge male gorilla blocking the road and flexing at you.

Gorilla tourism, where you can visit a habituated gorilla group with professional gorilla trackers, is now relatively easy – if you can afford it. Uganda and Rwanda have really popularized this activity, and the habituated groups of mountain gorillas living in those countries are visited by tourists daily. Western lowland gorillas, despite being the most common of the gorillas, are by comparison much more difficult to see. Dzanga-Sangha National Park has two habituated western lowland gorilla groups that tourists are allowed to visit, and our second day’s activity was to visit one of these groups. Visiting wild gorillas is quite the experience: I was walking through the forest, turned a corner, and there was this huge, vaguely human, insanely muscular, hairy black beast sitting in front of me, maybe 50m away. Then I heard a crash to my left, a rustle behind me, and was surrounded by gorillas. These gorillas were not as habituated as the mountain gorillas. They snorted at us, gave us a lot of side-eye, and moved quickly through the forest. Spending an hour with them was unbelievably wild.

The silverback of the habituated gorilla group we visited.

The third day’s activity was a hike to a waterfall to see some animals that, while not as well known, are weird central African specialties: anomalures, picathartes, and porcupines. Anomalures are flying squirrel-like creatures endemic to Africa. There are only four species, three of which are found at Sangha. Rod has found a very old, very big hollow tree near the waterfall that is home to these weird critters. The tree is big enough that you can stand up inside it!

Standing inside a huge, hollow tree, staring up at bats and anomalures.

The waterfall itself was beautiful in that way that rainforest waterfalls are beautiful (and Boali Falls was not), but I wasn’t there for the scenery. The limestone rocks behind the waterfall are home to brush-tailed porcupines and grey-necked picathartes. There are only two species of picathartes, rare birds that are restricted to the central and west African rainforest. They also look completely bonkers, like the bird version of a rodeo clown. The porcupines were home, but only our guide got a glimpse of them as they ran deep into the limestone rocks. The picathartes were not home, unfortunately, though we did get to see some of their (unoccupied) mud nests. Rod had warned us that our chances of picathartes were small: a poacher had recently camped at the base of the waterfall, scaring the birds away. Hopefully they return next season!

Unoccupied mud nests of grey-necked picathartes.

The fourth day’s activity was hanging out with the local Ba’aka. Ba’aka are the indigenous peoples of the area, and are are often referred to as pygmies because they are very short. Traditionally discriminated against by governments and other local peoples, the Ba’aka are poor even by Central African standards. Nonetheless, they are renowned for their knowledge of the forest, and much of the staff and guides at Sangha Lodge are Ba’aka. Whenever we ventured into the rainforest, it was a Ba’aka guide who would lead the way and keep us safe (elephants were a particular danger).

Usually this tour involves going hunting with the Ba’aka but I, and the other guest with me, were not super keen on this activity. Instead we got to hang out with some Ba’aka women, learning how houses are built from forest materials, and which plants are used for food and medicine. The most fun part for me, though, was the sheer joy these women exuded at behind asked to show off their skills. They sang songs the whole time, had huge smiles on their faces, and taught us to sing along as best we could. I often find anthropological tourism rather depressing and exploitative, and I generally avoid it. However, in this case I felt that these women were overjoyed to be earning some money showing off the skills they’d developed throughout their lives. I had so much fun, and I think they did too.

Singing with Ba’aka women inside a newly-built hut.

The last pre-planned activity was a walk through Bai Hokou. Like Dzanga Bai, Bai Hokou is a small clearing (actually a series of clearings) in the rainforest. Unlike Dzanga, however, Bai Hokou doesn’t have the special mud that attracts elephants, and so it is much safer to walk around. Nonetheless, elephants do regularly pass through Bai Hokou and we had, as always, a Ba’aka guide with us to keep us safe. Bai Hokou was beautiful, and our guides showed us interesting things like birds and an elephant skeleton. We also spotted a mother and fawn sitatunga: a rare marsh antelope with webbed hooves. Sitatunga do not visit Dzanga Bai, so Bai Hokou was our only chance to see them. Even here, though, they are not common, so we were very lucky.

Wading with bare feet through the creek in Bai Hokou. This is not a recommended activity, next time I would bring water shoes or sandals.

Me with what I think is an elephant hip-bone.

The last full day didn’t have a pre-planned activity, so I decided to go back to Dzanga Bai. Again the elephants were the central draw (at Dzanga Bai the elephants are reliable) but the ungulates are a case of luck, and this time I was luckier with the ungulates, My first day at Dzanga the the only ungulate we saw was a single forest buffalo (but we did well on primates: black-and-white colobus at the bai plus mangabeys and moustached monkeys on the walk in). This time I did much better. There were many buffalo in the bai, and some giant forest hogs (the largest pigs in the world) showed up in the afternoon. But right at 4pm, just as we had to leave, one of our guides pointed and whispered “bongo!” The bongo the largest Tragelaphusantelope, and considered among the most difficult of the African megafauna to see. It is also among the most beautiful ungulates in the world. Bongo inhabit only dense rainforest, and don’t generally come out into the open. Dzanga Bai is the best place in the world to see wild bongo, and yet even here they are only an occasional visitor. Seeing fifty bongo emerge single-file from the forest – from huge males with spectacular spiral horns, to cute little calves – was a spectacular sight. We watched them graze and intermingle with the elephants until we just couldn’t delay leaving any longer. Once the sun goes down the prospect of surprising an elephant in the dark makes walking back from the bai much more dangerous.

One of the most spectacular animal encounters of my life: elephant and bongo intermingling in Dzanga Bai.

Between all the activities I did have some free time at Sangha Lodge. The area around the lodge is dense rainforest and Rod has set up a network of trails for visitors to explore. I was eager to get back to the lodge early after each day’s activity so that I could wander these trails. There are many animals to see around the lodge, the most enticing being the habituated pangolins. Rod employs pangolin trackers to monitor them from sunrise to sunset, and we got to hang out with the pangolins a few times. Pangolins are spectacular animals, and being scaled mammals are particularly enticing to a herper. It was immediately obvious why they are so hard to see in the wild, though, as even standing right under one, with an expert pangolin tracker indicating its exact location in the forest canopy, it was still very difficult to locate them. And it’s not like koala-finding; these things are constantly on the move, foraging for arboreal ant nests to rip apart. I do not envy the trackers’ job.

A black-bellied pangolin foraging for arboreal ants in the rainforest.

The rest of my free time I spent wandering the trails on my own, trying to find as many animals as possible. During the day, it was mostly birds and monkeys, though my most memorable experience was watching a huge swarm of army ants march across the forest floor, preceded by a flood of terrified (and usually doomed) insects, and followed by a flock of birds gorging on the ants. I continually had to monitor my own situation to make sure the ants were not surrounding me.

I also wandered around at night. I treasured my nighttime walks because the wildlife, and even the atmosphere in the rainforest, changes completely. The easiest mammals to find were the night monkeys: bushbabies with their giant saucer eyes and swivelly, owl-like necks; and pottos, which look and act like right-side-up sloths. In terms of insects and other invertebrates, the night-time rainforest revealed a wealth of crazy colours, shapes, and sizes. Frogs were quite abundant, their eyeshine making them easy to find. And the occasional rare treat made each night special: an owl one night, a crocodile or a snake another. It was a challenge to drag my tired self to bed each night so I could get up early enough the following morning to go birding.

We had six full days at Sangha Lodge. On the seventh day our plane was late getting in, and I spent the extra time wandering around looking for last-minute critters. I was rewarded handsomely: searching the river’s edge produced a gorgeous baby ornate water monitor, and the alarm calls of a squirrel pointed me to a two-metre-long, bright yellow western green mamba basking in a patch of sun on the forest floor. Sometimes, delayed flights are the best!

I had two nights back in Bangui, during which time Nestor, William and I explored the university, the parliament, and headed back to the Lac-des-Crocodiles road for more birding. I also visited the craft market for some souvenirs, and the diversity and quality of handicrafts available, in particular masks and other wood carvings, was just incredible. It was like visiting a museum where every artifact had a price tag. Visiting CAR as a tourist is not common – a UN employee told me, apparently sincerely, that some people might suspect I was CIA – but it is an immense privilege.

The Faculty of Sciences at the University of Bangui. I got to have some interesting, if brief chats with some biology and anthropology professors here.

*Later, back in Bangui after the trip, I was invited to a party hosted by the pilot’s girlfriend and I got to ask him why he opened the manual to that page. He told me he’s used to flying over the vast grasslands of eastern and northern CAR, where if you have a problem you can land the plane just about anywhere and deal with it on the ground. However, we had been flying over continuous, unbroken rainforest and there was nowhere to land. Out of an abundance of caution, he wanted the steps to restarting the engines in the air available at a moment’s notice. Flying over the central African rainforest is truly spectacular. Deep green canopy spreads out as far as you can see in all directions, broken only by the occasional river. I just wish I had spent less of the flight blinded by panic!