Abuja, Nigeria
11 December 2004.

 

At about 1200′ above sea-level, Abuja officially replaced Lagos as the capital of Nigeria in December 1991 after 15 years of planning and construction.
The city is located in a scenic valley of rolling grasslands in a relatively [sic] undeveloped, ethnically neutral area. Thus, planners hoped to create a national city where none of Nigeria’s social and religious groups would be dominant.
Government agencies began moving into the new capital in the early 1980s, as residential neighborhoods were being developed in outlying areas.

   
Based at: Nicon Hilton, Abuja (view from hotel room above)
Local time: GMT +1
Approx noon temp: 35C
Weather: Sunny with cloudless skies both days

 

It’s a very long day when the day you started early yesterday is now the next day and you’re still up and have had just 35 minutes sleep all night…but a new(-ish) destination will always cause the birding blood to stir…

Not that the 40 minute drive from the airport to the hotel had done much to halt the puddling of blood ocurring in my lower extremities - a few straggling lines of Cattle Egrets flying over the road looking for cattle in the scrub, the odd Yellow-billed Kite quartering blindly through the dense smoke settled over a township, Laughing Doves and Pied Crows - nothing out of the ordinary, but you just never know…

And talking of “not knowing” why is that if you wish English hotel staff a “Good morning” they look at you sideways hoping that you’ll go away or wonder what the Hell you want, their American counterparts revert to a special insincerity that they seem to take in with their mother’s milk, but the Nigerians will flash you the broadest of smiles and the whitest of teeth and ask you how you are…and they’re the ones we’re supposed to be on our guard against? How come we - or I anyway - feel free to wander more or less at will around the US or the UK but feel very nervous about leaving the hotel grounds in a massive and generally friendly place like Africa…

Information about potential birding sites in Abuja had been hard to find before I left the UK, so it’s heartening that at first sight the hotel grounds look pretty good - plenty of trees, a bit of water, great big fence to keep the poor away from the rich…a fair few Nigerian staff flashing each other big smiles…

Hence the long day, the mild stirring of blood referred to above…

By the time I’ve got to my room and changed out of uniform I can barely stay awake, but there are African Palm and Little Swifts flying past the window, a Fork-tailed Drongo and Common Bulbuls in a line of trees opposite…and something calling that I can’t identify…I can sleep later…

Fortunately the better parts of the gardens are more than 20 feet from the swimming-pool and the early morning swimmers and are consequently people-free and full of birds. A Northern Puff-back, a couple of Red-eyed Doves and Variable Sunbirds, two African Thrushes, and a Grey-backed Camaroptera flick in and out of the trees. A Red-chested (African) Goshawk flies across the lawn and over the wall.

But it’s the lizards that catch the attention next - there are hundreds of the things - and, for someone in the early throes of a metabolic crash, they seem to have heads coloured like chocolate lime sweets…you can almost inhale the sugar…

 

Looking over the hotel wall to see where the Goshawk has gone, a pair of Double-spurred Francolin flush out of some pretty interesting-looking habitat.

What the correct term for this habitat would be - ruined, bulldozed, secondary, outside toilet, degraded onetime mesic forest? - is hard to tell, but there are Northern Grey-headed Sparrows on a telephone wire, two Senegal Parrots, a Senegal Coucal in some long grass in the distance, and right in front of me a Melodious Warbler slipping through a thicket of branches and out of sight….very encouraging…

More “European” birds appear: a Spotted Flycatcher and a singing Willow Warbler. It’s good to see a “friendly-face” - something easily recognised - when you’re tired.

Funny to think that these birds come all the way to the dreary UK to spend a damp summer in a churchyard or looking for a patch of woodland not overrun with feral cats when this place is so sunny and full of insects…particularly ants I notice…such a long way for such small birds…and there really are a lot of bloody ants…

Spotted Flycatcher (left) and Willow Warbler (right)

 

The next clump of vines and bushes (hard to see where one ends and the other begins actually) holds some cracking birds: a quick pish brings a pair of Brown-throated Wattle-eyes into view, a beautiful Snowy-crowned Robin Chat, and a male African Paradise Flycatcher dropping in to see what’s going on. Great stuff…

Snowy-crowned Robin-chat

Following a path that tracks along the wall towards the gardens at the front of the hotel seems to be the best bet. Climbing over walls into unknown scrub just doesn’t right now - who knows what might be out there: gangs of armed Nigerians waiting for idiot birders with expensive birding gear to scale the hotel fence and stumble in a comatose state towards them, snakes, turds, pot-holes, mosquitoes, unknown diseases and opportunistic viruses just looking for a fresh host to latch onto - and there’s always tomorrow morning…

 

About 100 yards further on the path opens up into an area of vegetable plots, small plantain trees, and a narrow stream dribbling with water stained the colour of rust. Well-watered vegetable gardens can be quite good. Nigerian Bronze Mannikins apparently like them. Bulbuls, Drongos, and sunbirds like them too…

Yellow-fronted Tinkerbird

Excellent views of a pair of Yellow-fronted Tinkerbirds popping in and out of a tiny hole in a tree make the swelling heat bearable, but good views of what looks like some sort of bush-shrike I just can’t figure out - actually my first muddled thought was that it was something I’d seen in Venezuala ten years ago - make me realise that it’s quite possibly time for bed…and there’s always tomorrow morning…

 

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The degraded habitat/outside toilet/scrub with the hotel garden wall and hotel garden to the right.

 

“Tomorrow morning” arrives way earlier than I’d have liked, but it’s sunny, clear, and warm again (unlike at home in the UK where - according to Jo - it’ll be cold, wet, and dark until April) and there are very few people around as I wander back into the hotel gardens (right). Plenty of birds though: a Grey Woodpecker, a Yellow-throated Greenbul, Fork-tailed Drongos, both Village and Spectacled Weavers in the trees, swarms of swifts overhead, and that potentially good habitat over the wall…

“Over the wall”: seems like a bit of sleep has stiffened the sinews, firmed my resolve etc. I am no longer seriously considering that there will be a band of muggers hiding out waiting just in case some dumb tourist dares to go more than 100′ from their hotel. Besides, it really does look promising…and I want to see what’s out there…

Almost straight away things look good. A small party of Blue Coucal dart through some cane-grass, followed by a couple of stunning Common Gonoleks - an inappropriately dull name surely for a large bush-shrike with such staggeringly bright crimson underparts…

 

Stopping to sit for a while on an old termite-mound, a good look at what looked like a patch of mangrove trees with a small stream wandering through the middle of it reveals an African Pygmy Kingfisher, a party of Senegal Eromomelas skittering through the branches, a heavily-worn Pied Flycatcher escaping the European winter, a Tawny-flanked Prinia, and African White-eyes. A group of noisy Brown Babblers work their way through and disppear. In a weedy patch nearby there’s a Singing Cisticola, a preening Black-billed Wood Dove, more Bronze Mannikins and - what I take to be a family of - Red-cheeked Cordon-bleus flicking on and off the ground grabbing tiny seeds off bent grass stems…

Red-cheeked Cordon-bleus (male, left, and females/imms)

 

About 200 yards to the right is the patch of vines where I saw the Wattle-eyes et al, and it’s there I head next.

A Willow Warbler is singing, and what sounds like a Nightingale - but with the song of Snowy-crowned Robin- chat described as “fast, fluty, thrush-like…with some mimicry” I’m not going to claim it without a decent view (which, as I’m only in Africa for two days, isn’t very likely as “any fule kno”)…

A brief but good view of the evocatively-named Oriole Warbler responding to some pishing is followed by what I’m pretty sure is my first “tick” of the trip (so many name- and taxonomic-changes I’d have to travel with a library to keep up): ironically - considering I’m in the middle of Nigeria - it’s a European-breeding migrant - a Western Olivaceous Warbler, clambering intently through a tangle of thin branches.

Western Olivaceous Warbler. Photos © Charlie Moores

Fortunately it sticks around long enough for me to get a couple of photographs. Even without them there’d be no doubt in my mind about the ID: long, strong legs, a heavy, broad bill, very plain plumage, and not a single tail-dip to be seen (the three (vagrant) Eastern Olivaceous Warblers I’ve seen in the UK tail-dipped continuously, and oddly enough the fact that it held its tail still was one of the first things I noticed about this bird). Interestingly, too, it didn’t call. A common enough non-breeder here in winter, but great to see…

The next bird to respond has caused me some ID problems - and any advice would be gratefully received.

Evidently - as the photo right shows - it’s a Paradise Flycatcher: it fits the description of Red-vented Paradise Flycatcher but central Nigeria is some way to the north of its mapped range.

Confusingly several books state that some colour morphs of African Paradise Flycatcher are almost identical to Red-vented - but don’t go into details. If anyone out there knows could you let me know please…

Anyway, with the temperature rising - and that slightly bewildered feeling I always get when faced by difficult IDs after a poor night’s sleep in a hot country when I’ve skipped breakfast - the hotel beckons again…

 

Oh and so far the only locals I’ve seen have been two teenage boys armed with a small and hugely-inaccurate catapult - and even they smiled sheepishly and wished me “Happy Sunday” when I waved at them: how unlike the lovable lads laden down with belt-fulls of dead warblers and thrushes I once encountered in southern Europe who pointed their air-rifles at me and told me to f*** off…

 

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As ever it all goes completely quiet around lunch-time…you have to wonder just where all these birds disappear to: some bar somewhere in the shade where they can relax and talk about the way the neighbourhood has deteriorated so much in the last few years? Some quiet spot where they can sit and laugh at a disorientated birder wandering past with increasingly heavy steps and increasingly heavy camera and lens?

Immature Piapiac

By mid-afternoon though we’re all rested, and back out in the field (outside toilet/wasteground/onetime mesic forest…you get the picture). A group of very noisy Piapiac have invaded the hotel garden from somewhere. Sort of familiar-looking - grackle- or starling-like perhaps. The two immatures in the group have the most distinctive beautiful, rosy pink bills though that mean they’re anything but ordinary-looking…

Scrambling over walls laden with expensive equipment just seems like too much effort this time round, so I head off round the path back to the far part of the gardens with its thrushes and drongos…

I’m quietly relieved to see the Yellow-fronted Tinkerbirds I tripped over yesterday are still peering out of the little hole I photographed them at…

The species, and probably individuals, are pretty much the same - though a second Pied Flycatcher - a male already starting to moult in to a patchy version of its breeding plumage - and a single Red-billed Firefinch are new. A couple of Red-vented Malimbe in the canopy of some very tall trees are new too…though the non-breeding male I picked up on first would have probably remained unidentified if it hadn’t been joined by another in a more advanced plumage…

It all begins to feel a bit like yesterday when I was totally flummoxed by the “Venezualan” bird (in fact a female Northern Puff-back I realised when I caught up with it a second time) and as the shadows grow longer, and a long couple of days start to catch up - and with the return flight to London at some ridiculously early hour tomorrow morning - it’s time to call it a day.

 

The verdict? I don’t imagine anyone will bring a bird tour here, but for a first visit…not too bad at all!

And the “unknown diseases and opportunistic viruses”: been home a week or two, and so far so good…!

 

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Laughing Dove

 

 
Immature Green-backed Heron; Senegal Parrot

 
Snowy-crowned Robin-chat; Brown Babbler

 
African Thrush; male Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu

 
Yellow-billed Shrike; Common Bulbul

 

Trip List:
(English and scientific names mainly from “Birds of Africa south of the Sahara”, Sinclair I. and Ryan P., Struik, 2003:
Green-backed Heron Butorides striata 1; Cattle Egret Bubulcus ibis +; Black-shouldered Kite Elanus caerulus 1; Yellow-billed Kite Milvus aegyptius 10; Hooded Vulture Necrosyrtes monachus 1; Red-chested (African) Goshawk Accipiter toussenelii (1 or 2); Shikra Accipiter badius 1; Common Kestrel Falco tinnunculus several; Double-spurred Francolin Pternistes bicalcaratus 2; Red-eyed Dove Streptopelia semitorquata +; Laughing Dove Streptopelia senegalensis +; Black- billed Wood Dove Turtur abyssinicus 1; Senegal Parrot Poicephalus senegalus 2; Western Grey Plantain-eater Crinifer piscator 4; Blue Coucal Ceuthmochares aereus 4; Senegal Coucal Centropus senegalensis 2; African Palm Swift Cypsiurus parvus +;Little Swift Apus affinis +; African Pygmy-Kingfisher Ispidina picta 1; Yellow-fronted Tinkerbird Pogoniulus chrysoconus 2; Grey Woodpecker Dendropicos goertae 1; [??Mosque Swallow?? 1 small flock overhead]; Common House Martin Delichon urbicum 2 or 3; Rock Martin Hirundo fuligula 4; Fork-tailed Drongo Dicrurus ludwigii +; Piapiac Ptilostomus afer 5; Pied Crow Corvus alba fairly common; Brown Babbler Turdoides plebejus 8; Common Bulbul Pycnonotus barbatus +; Yellow-throated Greenbul Chlorocichla flavicollis 1; African Thrush Turdus pelios +; Snowy-crowned Robin-chat Cossypha niveicapilla 2; Melodious Warbler Hippolais polyglotta 1; Western Olivaceous Warbler Hippolais pallida 1; Willow Warbler Phylloscopus trochilus 2; Singing Cisticola Cisticola cantans 1; Tawny-flanked Prinia Prinia subflava 1; Oriole Warbler Hypergerus atriceps 1; Northern Crombec Sylvietta brachyura 1; Grey-backed Camaroptera Camaroptera brevicaudata +; Senegal Eromomela Eromomela pusilla 3 or 4; Spotted Flycatcher Muscicapa striata 1; Pied Flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca 2; African Paradise Flycatcher Terpsiphone viridis 3; Brown-throated (Scarlet-spectacled) Wattle-eye Platysteira cyanea m and f; Northern Puff-back Dryoscopus gambensis m and f; Yellow-billed Shrike Corvinella corvina 2; Common Gonolek Laniarius barbarus 2; Scarlet-chested Sunbird Chalcomitra senegalensis 2 or 3; Green-headed Sunbird Cyanomitra verticalis 2; Variable Sunbird Cinnyris venustus +; Splendid Sunbird Cinnyris coccinigastrus 2; African Yellow White-eye Zosterops senegalensis 4; Northern Grey-headed Sparrow Passer griseus 10; Village Weaver Ploceus cucullatus +; Spectacled Weaver Ploceus ocularis +; Red-vented Malimbe Malimbus malimbicus 3; Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu +; Red- billed Firefinch Lagonosticta senegala 1; Bronze Mannikin Spermestes cucullata +)

 

All Photos © Charlie Moores