10,000 Birds

Lagos, Nigeria
29 February 2004.

Lagos is the largest city in Nigeria and, with its population of 13.4 million (2000), one of the largest in Africa (second only to Cairo, Egypt) - the population is expected to reach 24 million people by 2020, which would make it the third largest city in the world. Lagos was the capital of Nigeria until 1991 when the capital was moved to Abuja. Lagos remains the commercial capital of Nigeria.

Transport links within Lagos are congested, due both to the geography of the city, its explosive population growth, bad roads and bad driving habits. A chain of salt-water lagoons runs west to Badagri and also east toward Ogun State.

A quick trip - only one full day available - but on the plus side hardly any time-change from the UK, good light, and generally pretty good weather. We don’t come here very often and official airline advice is “BE CAREFUL”! Lagos really is one of those destinations that potentially must be good - it’s coastal, many European-breeding birds winter throughout western Africa, and a good number of the local species are tolerant of scrub and messed-up habitats - if only there was more bird-information available, and if only this middle-class Englishman wasn’t quite so nervous of losing his binoculars to a cash-strapped local…

Actually even if I was feeling a little braver, as it is I’m just not in the mood for ’setting forth into the unknown’ this trip, and so the hotel gardens will have to do. Last time I came here I remember they weren’t too bad: a swampy, unkempt rough area that looked pretty good, a very tall bare tree that held a number of dove species and my first ever Red-vented Malimbe, a fair-size lawn and a few trees - who needs to go anywhere else?

Oh. Surprise, surprise…the rest of the world has developed fast in the last decade, so imagining that the garden in a top hotel in Nigeria’s largest city would still be “swampy, unkempt, and rough” is impossibly naive…

The tall tree and the Malimbes have long gone, and the swampy area is now a double tennis court. The lawn, at least, is still there and being stalked by the ubiquitous Cattle Egrets and Laughing Doves that are such a feature of Africa. There’s a little herb garden too (which more of later), a few trees, and a bit of a track following the vegetation along the boundary wall: oh well, needs must, as the saying goes…

Pre-breeding Cattle Egret

Having lost so much potentially interesting habtat within the hotel walls, it’s noticeable here that the habitat right outside the hotel looks pretty good though. Perched on one edge of a small valley, the hotel looks over some rough dirt-ground that holds a couple of belligerent-looking goats and then sweeps down into - what from a distance - looks like the origin of the swampy ground that once must have reached further up the hill. A green swathe of short trees, tangled shrubs, creepers and climbers…Worth a look later on? For sure…

But first a good look around the garden…

Hmm, it’s not going to take too long to describe the less-than abundant avifauna unfortunately. A couple of African Thrushes disappear like scalded cats into the densest vegetation whenever I appear, a Fork-tailed Drongo or two swooping from their perches at flying insects, Little Swifts chasing some even littler insects across the sky, a Shikra hurtling through the garden, two wary (and accurately-named) Splendid Glossy Starlings investigating a small rubbish dump, and a handful of Yellow-billed Kite spiralling lethargically out over the valley, their yellow bills, dark plumage, and strongly-forked tails separating them from any migrant Black Kites that conceivably could be here too.

Yellow-billed Kite

Splendid Glossy Starling

The herb garden is only small, but is well-watered and tended by an ex-patriot German working at the hotel who - thankfully - has some interest in birds and tells me that the male Shikra that I saw earlier often perches in a tree opposite his suite on the fourth floor. Would I like to come and photograph it? Let me think about that…more Cattle Egrets in the now sweltering heat, or a reasonably close Shikra from the cool of an air-conditioned room? The Shikra (and the air-conditioning) wins…

Shikra Accipiter badius

Two things I didn’t know about Shikras:

1. When they’re sat in a tree they don’t move all that much
2. When they decide to leave the tree they move really, really fast…

Oh well, they may not be the best photos ever taken of the species, but the room was cool and I get some good info…the swampy bit over the wall is apparently full of snakes. Just full of them. Big ones. I’ve only brought a pair of trainers with me, and as I’m pretty sure that this is not ideal footwear for wandering round a snake-infested swamp in I need to change my plans. My new kamerad tells me that there’s a ‘beach’ a few miles away, but that he has no idea whether there are birds there or not (it’s likely really that this close to the city it’ll be very crowded and noisy). Which is not really enough to make a plan on. He also says that are never any birds in the garden in the middle of the day and that if I want to see more I should maybe wait a while and go out again when it cools down. I nod wisely and wonder why he thinks I wouldn’t know this - but then I get his point…it’s time to go back to my room and stop asking him questions hat he can’t answer…fair enough!

Nigerians are pretty much soccer-crazy: during the football-season a match from the UK is always on one or other of the satellite channels and by the time I go outside again the shadows are lengthening, the Common Bulbuls are chattering loudly, and my German friend is back tending the herb garden.

I wander over and he looks up. “Snails”, he says in a disgusted tone, “are eating all my herbs”. I nod wisely again, and follow him around as he shows me the snail traps he’s set-up, the big box full of snails he keeps to fatten up and sell on to the hotel staff, and the denuded vine stems looping up out of the herb-garden and back over the wall. He shakes his head, and gives me a look that clearly says that he really is not a big fan of voracious herb- and vine-eating wildlife. I nod wisely again, and move off to look for birds, as he wanders thoughtfully and somewhat dispiritedly back into the hotel…

I only mention all this because as soon as he is out of sight I notice a movement near the wall - and an oddly-shaped head appearing from the depths of a bush. Like a scout signalling the advance of a sorty, a Western Grey Plantain-eater appears on the gate to the herb-garden and gives a bubbling call. Out of absolutely nowhere another three appear, swooping into the garden like well-drilled corsairs, and - with what I’d swear are huge grins - strip the remaining leaves from those well-tended vines inside three minutes and then disappear quickly back over the wall and out of sight again. I decide that this is probably not information that I should pass on…

Western Grey Plantain-eaters Crinifer piscator: “Don’t tell the gardener!”

Oh, and one more thing - the next time you’re looking for a vagrant Cattle Egret in the UK and someone says that it flew “somewhere towards the farmhouse” or “disappeared near the reception centre”, just look for the nearest pile of rubbish, and there it’ll be - grubbing around in the detritus that the human race seems determined to leave everywhere. Makes you so proud to be a human, eh…

 

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Western Grey Plantain-eater; Cattle Egret;
African Thrush; Gecko sp