Lekki Conservation Center, Lagos, Nigeria
18 June 2005.

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. Built on the mainland and the series of islands surrounding Lagos Lagoon, Lagos was originally a small village, known as Eko, but its position as one of the few natural harbours on the Atlantic coast made it a principal site for European contact and its subsequent growth. Lagos was the capital of Nigeria until 1991, when the capital was moved to Abuja, but it 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.”(Quotation from the Wikipedia entry for Lagos.)

Based at: Lagos Sheraton Hotel
Local time: GMT +1
Approx noon temp: 32C
Weather: Sunny with light, scattered clouds in the morning, heavy rain from 16:00.

Lekki Conservation Centre (LCC)

The last time I came to Lagos I stayed put in the hotel and contented myself with a few photos of Cattle Egrets and some obliging Western Grey Plantain-eaters (see Lagos: 29 Feb), firstly because I didn’t know where to go that might be better - and secondly because every time I’ve been to Lagos over the years the advice BA crew have always received is to, well, “stay put in the hotel”.

This visit though - following an RFI on the Yahoo African Birding Group that was responded to by a personable-sounding ex-pat living in the city - and, despite the same “official” advice, I planned to get out to the Lekki Conservation Centre (LCC), a fenced (ie safe), 78-hectare mixed swamp/savannah reserve opposite the ChevronTexaco Building on the Lekki Peninsula/Lekki-Epe Expressway about an hour from the hotel.

It sounded like an interesting place from the small amount of data I could find on the web - species mentioned, for example, included Carmelite and Green-headed Sunbirds and Swamp (Palm) Greenbul/Bulbul (all of which would be lifers), entrance according to the Centre’s website was free, and according to the RFI response the Centre opened early giving me a chance to get stuck into the first bird movements of the day…

Well, that was the good news - the bad news is that unless you’re staying next door to the LCC you’re going to have to cross Lagos to get there. And to do that, you’re probably going to have to use either public transport or a taxi. Rich tourists (”rich” to most Nigerians being anyone who can afford eg three meals a day) using public transport in Lagos either have no wish to arrive anywhere in one piece, or have been diagnosed with a fatal disease and really don’t care anymore: it’s just not safe, not wise, not clever, and definitely not advisable. That leaves taxis: either the battered sort that tout for trade on street-corners, or the sort-of official ones that operate from hotels. The former are very cheap, the latter are not. It’s your choice, but as my driver said when I queried the price he was charging, “Ah, yes, but what is worth more to you - saving your money or saving your life?” It’s not a question that you normally expect to hear from, say, one of London’s cabbies as you hand over a day’s pay for a five-minute trip round the airport, so full-marks for shutting me up anyway…

Having said that, I’m going to let the malcontent within me really off the leash. I’ll apologise now to any Nigerians who might stumble across this blog because as much as I genuinely like almost every Nigerian I’ve ever met Lagos is a desperate and unpleasant place. It’s a city spilling from any constraints that should be imposed by geography or a sensible population size. Travelling across it is plain unnerving. Running the gauntlet of drivers who probably bought their licences from bored officials for a $5 bill stuck to a can of beer is dangerous. The despair in the eyes of a street hawker who has to sell something - anything - just to survive is numbing. And as the father of an eleven-year old girl, having a child wink at you through the car window as she attempts to sell the only thing that she has available to sell on a regular basis is heart-breaking…

This is a city that should shine. It is the commercial capital of one of Africa’s most resource-rich countries. Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa and the eleventh largest in the world. The country has also had astounding amounts of foreign aid handed to it. That aid should have flowed to every one of its citizens. Instead the country’s vast wealth is dammed in the secret bank accounts of a corrupt and vicious few. The facts are startling:

1. Between 1960 and 1999 Nigeria’s rulers squandered GBP220 billion of western aid.
2. The military dictator Gen Sani Abacha is thought to have stolen between 1 billion and 3 billion pounds sterling during his five-year rule between 1993 and 1988 - of which only 500millionGBP has been recovered.
3. After this mass theft, two thirds of the country’s 130 million people - one in seven of the total African population - live in abject poverty, a third is illiterate and 40 per cent have no safe water supply.

If there really is a caring God - and not the phony one the hundreds of evangelical “preachers” in Lagos sell at a huge price to those who can least afford it (according to one website, Echoes of Service “it is estimated that over 1,000 people are professing Christ every day in Lagos”) - then he/she should be made to come and face up to the mess they’ve created for their “children” to live in, and they should have the guts to apologise publicly to every single one of them…

Okay, I’ve gone and said my piece, and as it’s only an opinion hopefully I won’t get sued at the point of a rifle (or even WITH the point of a rifle) next time I’m in West Africa…much more constructive would be a mail telling me how I’m just a middle-class Brit who hasn’t a clue and explaining to me that what I really saw from the cab was a happy and contented populace making their way in the world. I won’t be holding my breath for it to arrive though…

Right, back to the Lekki Conservation Centre (which, incidentally, took two hours to reach: if you want to be there at first light, start out the night before…)

Sponsored by ChevronTexaco, the LCC is a truly wonderful place - a bug-infested gem of a nature reserve. It’s a fragment of swamp/coastal forest and savannah that must have once been outside the city limits of Lagos but is now squeezed on all sides by rampant land-grabbing and housing developments which makes it increasingly valuable, both to the wildlife of course and to local people who might just want to have a glimpse of the heritage that is being lost before it is bought and sold off forever…

As I mentioned above, from a birding point of view it is really two distinct habitats with their own species: a swamp, and a savannah.

The Swamp:

Immediately behind the buildings of the Centre itself is a short trail. This leads onto a gently-decaying, weathered boardwalk that loops in a loose circle through a dark, fetid place buzzing with mosquitoes and crawling with ants. Heat and humidity sucks the sweat out of every pore. Birding is almost impossible the spiny vegetation is so dense. In fact for about thirty minutes I was fairly convinced that there were no birds in here at all, and if there were they were staying well out of sight. It was tough going, and should’ve been an unpleasant, uncomfortable experience, but after modern Lagos it was like stepping back in time to a world that, frankly, I felt far more suited to. It appealed to me instinctively. Despite the discomfort, I loved it….

It took quite a while to adjust to the gloom and start picking out the birds, but they were there - not in huge numbers, but finally getting enough of a look at a rather mobile shadow to identify it as a White-browed Forest Flycatcher was a triumphant moment! Other shadows resolved into Little Greenbuls, a Grey-headed Bristlebill, and a single White-tailed Rufous Thrush silently foraging through the leaf litter in a drier area close to the end of the boardwalk. About the only birds in here that were relatively easy to see was a group of Swamp Grey Bulbuls - large “greenbuls” with white tail-tips that chatter like babblers as they race through the mid-level strata of the forest. It’s an almost alien and difficult place to bird, but - hell - it’s worth the effort…

White-browed Forest Flycatcher

Grey Swamp Bulbul

Grey-headed Bristlebill

Of course, I’m aware that it’s easy to romanticise like this when the reality was that I could go back to an air-conditioned hotel, dab calamine on the insect bites and wash off the sweat, but after the brutal poverty of the city I found it a haven. And the feeling was real. After a year that has already seen me in many degradation “hotspots” (Nigeria’s capital Abuja, for example, Nairobi in Kenya, Mexico City, Luanda in Angola, Sao Paulo in Brazil), Lagos still affected me deeply. Finding somewhere to get away - even for a morning - was a joy.

Still, before I get too carried away, it’s perhaps worth pointing out that corruption in Lagos operates absolutely everywhere. Entrance to this magic place isn’t, as the websites imply, free - or perhaps it is if you’re naked and not carrying a camera. If you want to take in a rucksack, a camera (”Is that digital? There’s a higher fee for digital…”), a lens, the clothes on your back etc then you’d better be prepared to hand over a chunk of cash to the “guards” lolling around outside the centre. It might sound pious, but I don’t usually mind paying something for my conservation-based experience. Sites like these need to be seen to have a “value” above what they’d fetch as real-estate. They need staff to look after them (many who are paid a pitiable government wage). But I do object to being scammed by a greedy little sod who changes the “fee” in accordance with how polite the sucker standing in front of him is…

Perhaps I should keep this focussed on the birds…

The savannah:

The boundary between the swamp/forest and the savannah is suprisingly well-differentiated. At a clearly-marked exit from the boardwalk a narrow band of thickly vegetated but drier land (where I saw the Forest Flycatcher) abruptly changes into dry grassland as you step through the last of the trees.

This broad rectangle of land is bounded by a brick wall that delineates the reserve from the encroaching housing. It’s a little like being in a large, overgrown garden in fact, and the neighbours are noisy!

After the feeling of solitude engendered by the close, quiet atmosphere inside the forest, emerging into the grassland and being reminded that you are in reality still in Lagos is a little deflating. Having said that, the birds are of course much easier to see - and there seem to be more of them. At least in grassland habitat you can be fairly confident that there will be some birds present that typically perch out in the open - and within the first twenty minutes I’d seen (and photographed) a family group of Rufous-breasted Swallows, an obliging Yellow-throated Longclaw, and a family group of four Little Bee-eaters (note in the photo below that even from the rear the dark throat of the adult bee-eater can be clearly seen).

Immature Rufous-breasted Swallows

Yellow-throated Longclaw

Little Bee-eater (immature, upper and adult, lower)

Whilst not as visible as the birds listed above, a number of other species were pretty much unmissable: Piping Hornbills crossing from the forest to stands of isolated trees just outside the reserve area, for example, Red-eyed Doves scattering out of the shrubs and thickets as I walked up, a couple of Mottled Swifts hurtling over the grassland, Tawny-flanked Prinias scolding me from the edge of a low acacia, and an adult Green Crombec being pursued by a persistent and very vocal juvenile (just visible at the top left of the photograph below).

Tawny-flanked Prinia

Green Crombec

Not everything’s so easy here though. I made the mistake of thinking, “West Africa? I’ve been here before, how hard can it be?” and found out fairly quickly when an assortment of sunbirds hurtled through the low bushes and managed to look nothing at all like the plates in the field-guide. That’s not a criticism of the guide at all - more a “note to self” not to get cocky, and to remember how an irridescent plumage alters when the light and the angle of view changes, and that throughout the year sunbirds moult into seemingly different species!

I definitely saw two widespread and common species, Green-headed and Collared (including a female Collared nest-building), and might have seen a Bates’s - though Phil Hall, based in Lagos and the African Bird Club representative there, has informed me that though Bates’s does occur to retrospectively ID one when there are so many small, immature sunbirds also present is nigh on impossible - I’m sure he’s right…

Female Collared Sunbird

The species I most wanted to see was Carmelite Sunbird - a sunbird with a restricted range in mainly coastal thickets, mangroves, and riverine habitats in West Africa to Zaire and Angola. Unusually for African sunbirds this is a dull-plumaged bird - the male is predominantly chocolate-brown and was presumably named after the colour of the scapulars worn by Carmelite nuns. The only reason I can think of why I wanted to see it so much was a) I’d never heard of it before I read about it on the web, b) because knowing it was there and NOT seeing it would rankle badly.

I needn’t have worried - the species is found throughout the savannah area (I probably saw 2 or 3 pairs) and is conspicuous. In fact - as the photos below show - one pair were involved in feeding young. Now before anyone mails in about “disturbing nesting birds” I’d just like to say that I spent no more than thirty seconds photographing these birds and the images here are heavily cropped - I kept my distance. The adults below are not the nesting pair and were photographed in a different part of the savannah. Alternatively if anyone else mails in saying I missed a great opportunity to get some unusual shots of nestling Carmelite Sunbirds - well, I’d rather miss the photo and leave the birds alone than risk the parents abandoning them. Some things are just more important than a photograph…

Carmelite Sunbirds

Another thing more important than a photograph is not missing my flight home. With the rain closing in and heeding the warnings of my taxi-driver who said that on a Friday evening it could take four hours to get back to the hotel, I very reluctantly headed back to the Centre - via the boardwalk of course.
A last surprise here was views, in near darkness unfortunately, of one of the swamp’s more flamboyant occupants - a Mona Guenon (Monkey) Cercopithecus mona.

Mona Guenon

This beautiful primate can be found in the tropical mangrove forests of West Africa from Ghana to Cameroon, and apparently is able to adapt to secondary habitats. To survive it’s going to have to: Nigeria has already lost 90% of its forest habitat and logging and habitat clearance shows no signs of slowing down. Whether such a splendid animal can survive in such fragmented habitat is debatable, but the decline of one primate because of the rampant spread of another will be nothing new on Planet Earth as this century progresses…

And, sadly, that sense of inevitable loss was the overwhelming feeling I left the LCC with. How is anything going to survive in a city that looks to be so hell-bent on its own destruction? What value is a tiny patch of swamp going to have in the future when there is a huge, hungry population desperate for land and food - and a rich upper echelon who can afford to buy the place for what they probably consider to be small-change?

I guess we’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope?

Though you could consider joining the African Bird Club as well…

(Many thanks to Dr Phillip Hall of the African Bird Club for his offer of help on future trips to Nigeria and for commenting on the identification and status of Mottled Swift, Grey-headed Bristlebill, and Bates’s Sunbird. At the same time I would like to make it clear that any comments/opinions regarding Lagos are my own and are based solely on my personal experiences.)

Giant African Skipper Pyrrochalcia iphis: many thanks to John Barker for the identification

Trip List:
English and scientific names mainly from “Birds of Africa south of the Sahara”, Sinclair I. and Ryan P., Struik, 2003:
(Cattle Egret Bubulcus ibis 10+ from taxi); (Yellow-billed Kite Milvus aegyptius 2-3 from taxi); Red-chested Goshawk Accipiter toussenelii 1; Common Kestrel Falco tinnunculus 1; Red-eyed Dove Streptopelia semitorquata 10+; Blue-spotted Wood Dove Turtur afer 1; (Western Grey Plantain-eater Crinifer piscator 4 from taxi); Little Swift Apus affinis 30+, Lagos Airport; Mottled Spinetail Telacanthura ussheri 2; Little Bee-eater Merops pusillus 4; Piping Hornbill Bycanistes fistulator 3; Buff-spotted Woodpecker Campethera nivosa 1; Red-breasted Swallow Hirundo semirufa 5; Yellow-throated Longclaw Macronyx croceus 1; Common Bulbul Pycnonotus barbatus +; Little Greenbul Andropadus virens c)10; Grey-headed Bristle-bill Bleda canicapillus 1; Swamp Palm Bulbul Thescelocichla leucopleura 4; White-tailed Rufous Thrush Neocossyphus poensis 1; Tawny-flanked Prinia Prinia subflava 2; Green Crombec Sylvietta virens 2 (ad + juv); Grey-backed Camaroptera Camaroptera brevicaudata 1; White-browed Forest Flycatcher Fraseria cinarescens 1; Carmelite Sunbird Chalcomitra fuliginosa 5-6; Green-headed Sunbird Cyanomitra verticalis 4; Collared Sunbird Hedydipna collaris 2-3; Red-vented Malimbe Malimbus scutatus 3; Bronze Mannikin Spermestes cucullata small flock.

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores