In which I am a better naturalist than David Attenborough

I am sure you have all been waited with breath that is bated to hear whether or not Grant was able to produce a Picathartes for me on my birthday.  I am reluctant to prolong this suspense more than is strictly necessary, but to get to the point immediately would be a severe break from the past on this blog and therefore best not attempted.

 

Some background, therefore:  Borrow and Demey’s seminal “Birds of West Africa” provides the following description of the Picathartes:

 

“Strange-looking, slender forest birds with bare head and long, strong legs.  Fast and agile, progressing long springing hops.  Dependent on caves or overhanging rocks for breeding.  Nest is a bowl of mud plastered to rock face.  Secretive but not shy.”

 

There are two different species, of which the ‘Yellow Headed Picathartes” (native to Sierra Leone) is by far the most charismatic.  Borrow and Demey describe it in the following deeply enigmatic terms:

 

“Joins mixed-species flocks; attends ant-swarms.  Endemic.  Mostly silent.”

 

If we lay aside the misused semi-colon for a second (difficult, I know) this description delights me.  There is something glorious condescending about ‘attends ant-swarms’, and I have been entirely intrigued by ‘mostly silent’.  Mostly silent?  This merely made me DESPERATE to know what weird and wonderful things they might say when the urge finally took them.  Our bird guide Kenneth claims that no-one has ever heard the Picathartes make a noise, but after several hours combing the internet I have found an obscure page claiming that they occasionally make a “shhhhshi” or “tok” call (This was a minor disappointment, I confess.  ‘Tok’ seems to me to be a particularly stupid noise, and not at all the sort that would be made by a bird of high principles and intellect.).

 

These are not the only notable features of the Picathartes.  The following are also noteworthy:

• They are revered by many local groups as ‘forest guardians’.
• Scientists remain undecided about how to classify the bird; it has been, at different times, classed with crows, warblers and babblers.  The debate continues, with many ornithologists now claiming that it is the final surviving member of a long dead class of avians.
• They look like they are made of plasticine and designed as children’s toys (http://www.birdquest-tours.com/gallery.cfm?TourTitle=SIERRA%20LEONE).
• They have been an early and major target of major naturalists from Gerald Durrell to David Attenborough (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqRHq_NgnrM).

 

The Gola Forest, where we headed last weekend, is the largest remaining area of forest in Sierra Leone (which was  70% covered in forest in the not too distant past, but now only has 5% woodland cover – for a pretty comprehensive analysis of the fascinating flora and fauna of the country see top result:  http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=usaid+biodiversity+in+sierra+leone+.  Sorry for all these bulky link by the way; I have no idea how to do that neat hyperlinked ‘here’ that others manage).  It sits on the Liberia border, about a 7 hour drive from Freetown, the capital.  We left town after work on Thursday, and our snail-like progress across rush-hour town combined with a terribly slow journey in an enormous rusting hulk of a bus meant that it was the wee hours of the morning before we found ourselves in Kenema.  We were delighted (not) to discover on our arrival that our hostel appeared to be hosting some sort of rave…

 

The next morning (my birthday!) we met our guide (the wonderful Kenneth ,THE go to man for birding in Sierra Leone – (+232) 7652 0122), who had sorted our permits etc for us, as well as bikes to take us the hour or so to Lailehun, a tiny village on the forest edge.  There we picked up a rather silent porter (Kenneth’s catering for the trip was EPIC in its thoroughness and complexity – we feasted like kings and I would therefore advise even those who are not really interested in birds to take Kenneth along on any Salone adventure.  Banana pancakes, irish potatoes or grilled fish with sweet potato chips and onion gravy anyone?), and the wonderful Moses (who, at 55, showed no sign of giving in to any of the ravages of age and had the most wonderfully expressive face.  He even got me to run at one stage, which is no mean feat – I think this is the first time I have moved my legs faster than a brisk walk since 2005, when I left the world of compulsory sport).

 

The forest was intensely thick and hot; I spent most of the next few days covered in a delightful ‘sheen’ of sweat, which was not in the least attractive (though has left a welcome legacy of peachy-soft skin).  Over the course of the next few days we saw many wonderful birds.  Most, admittedly, were sighted on entry and exit from the forest (where the thick feathered-friend concealing foliage was replaced by open spaces and isolated tress).  Both Grant and I are comparatively new to birding as something that ‘we’ do, rather than something we follow our fathers while they are doing; it actually felt great to be taking my first wobbly steps in an ornithological direction, even if I think that forest birding is still a little beyond me – I am many many lifetimes from being able to see a momentary flash of wing and confidently pronounced that it was a lesser-spotted blue-nosed womble (or whatever).  I begin to suspect that, like driving, this is all a confidence trick; if you convince yourself that you can do these sorts of things then you often find that you actually can (or at least that others believe that you can).  If you are currently extremely concerned about my driving abilities then you are a wise, wise reader.

 

Did we see a Picathartes?  Well, we headed up to the nest sight as silently as we could on the evening of my birthday.  We arrived there at about 4:30pm and there was clear evidence of 3 nests, though none looked particularly fresh.  No birds.  We had been told that 5pm-6pm was their most likely moment.  5pm arrived and past.  6pm arrived at past.  We all began to despair.  Also, it turned out that Kenneth (our guide) had considerable faith in the birdbook’s pronouncement that the Picatharates is not shy (or that he has the attention span of a beetle), and within about 20 minutes he seemed to have lost interest in gazing at the rock.  He had instead removed one flip-flop and seemed to be on a one man mission to kill all invertebrates in the forest – about every 30 seconds he would bring his slipper down with a large FLOP on some trunk or body part and then sit and admire whatever smudge he had created underneath with a thoroughly self-satisfied expression.  I could feel Grant getting crosser and crosser (as the noise reverberated around the forest and there was, surprise surprise, still no Picathartes).  Eventually he took the flip flop and gave Kenneth a small leafy branch in its stead.  Kenneth looked surprised, and then delighted.  He tied it in such a way that when he proceeded to launch his next attack with it made an ENORMOUSLY loud (much louder than the flip flop) sort of whipping WHOMP.  Grant livid. 

 

At 7pm, just as we were about to call it a night, I suddenly saw Kenneth stiffen and point to a spot just underneath the boulder (about 30ft in front of us).  There, sure enough, was  A PICATHARTES!  It was entirely unmistakeable, with its yellow head bobbing in what was left of the evening light.  It proceeded to behave just as a Picathartes should – it hopped all around the rock cocking its head hither and thither, before flopping off the end of the rock and disappearing off into the gathering night.  It then returned to sit with its mate on a branch about 60 feet away.  Hooray!  They really are remarkably peculiar looking birds and I entirely sympathise with father’s impression that they are not real/made of wax.  We returned to the camp delighted.  It really felt very special to have been able to see these things in their element… WHAT a birthday present!  (We were also forced to admit that our doubt of Kenneth’s methods was misguided.  Perhaps Picathartes are actually attracted by piles of squashed flies that he creates…).

 

We headed back to Lailehun village on Saturday night, and decided to go for an evening walk along the paths in the semi-cultivated areas to look for more birdlife.   Anyway, this particularly evening stroll was not a success is birding terms; no sooner had we left the ‘safety’ of the village than we were hit by the sort of sudden blinding rainstorm that is only going to become more common in the next few months.  We were quickly soaked to the skin, and stopped to wait the end of the rains in the next village (where we were forcefed ‘fruit wine’ – “Just like wine from portugal” apparently.  Um.  No.).  We then meandered back through a rather spectacular sunset – the rain had brought out lots of little flies (and some glow worms) and everything was very new and clean and fresh.  Glorious!

 

The next morning (yesterday morning) we had more success…  We meandered in the direction of Kenema for a few hours until our bike boys came to collect us, and this was when we saw some of the most spectacular things – we saw a Black Bee-eater, a Broad-Billed Roller and the Great Blue Turaco (which resembles a large bright blue and lime green turkey).  I continue to harbour the suspicion that my taste is birds is terribly plebeian.  The creatures that give me the most pleasure tend to be plucky, cheeky and common species like the Roller, Tern or Robin, rather than the disdainfully enigmatic (and rather superior) ‘rare’ species.  (The Picathartes is clearly an exception here; it will forever have a special place in my heart!) It was a really lovely morning walk interspersed with mangos and even perfect avocadoes, peeled and then eaten off the stone.   All birds thoroughly obliging, sitting and preening for enough time for even I to identify them. 

 

Grant has an obsession with picking up feathers and storing them in the page of the bird he thinks they came from, which is all very well.  But he then gets ever-so-slightly cross when I enthusiastically flick through, scattering feathers everywhere in manner of school pillow fight.   My excuse is that I think he secretly enjoys spending half an hour carefully putting them all back in.  I like to keep him busy.  We found several Picathartes feathers, including some lovely downy ones, which I then managed to scatter all over my room as we were having a bird debrief on our return to Freetown.  It was not altogether easy to distinguish these from the feathers that my lovely John Lewis pillow occasionally emits, so it is now more than possible that several of the feathers loving stored in the Picathartes section of the book do, in fact, belong to the common duck… 

 

A thoroughly successful birthday weekend!  It strikes me as worth noting that, since I encountered the legendary Picathartes at the tender age of (just) 25, I am clearly a better bird-watcher than David Attenborough (who did not see one until he was 28).  I’m expecting a call from the BBC ANY MINUTE NOW.

In which I am a very lucky girl.

I have mentioned on these pages that what I want MORE THAN ANYTHING (MTA) is to see a Picathartes (a medium sized very rare bird that looks a bit like a very stupid pheasant).  If you do not remember this then I am not entirely surprised; I have probably mentioned about ten things of varying ridiculousness that I want MTA.  (Grant and I have actually worked out a system in which I am allowed to want something MTA once a day).  However, in the global scale of MTAs seeing a Picathartes ranks somewhere near the top.  And it’s right at the top of the Salone scale (after, potentially, a supermarket that sells French wine and ham and cheese  at Asda Prices).

Next weekend is my birthday and to celebrate my attaining my quarter century Grant has organised a little trip to the Gola Forest in the east of the country.  That one of the largest known colonies of Picathartes is said to dwell just three hours from the edge of this glorious jungle is not entirely coincidental.  I know what you’re thinking: “He must be the best boyfriend ever!  He is, for her birthday, exerting himself to make her* most cherished dreams come true!”  And in this you would not be far wrong; he is acceptable in some ways.  And I am moderately fond of him.

However, he is a great disappointment to me in a number of ways:

1. He persists in failing to notice that I am perfect.  He sometimes even has the temerity to say that I am wrong.
2. He has not proved to be the cards nemesis that I had hoped.  Our only bout of head to head card gaming ended in a 4-1 victory for me.  (That we were playing a game whose result is almost entirely determined by chance is strictly not relevant.  He has also asked me to point out that we were playing by my rules.  And?)
3. He has yet to fully grasp that in relation to 90% of the questions I ask him I do not want his opinion.  What I want is for him to tell me what I want to hear.  I am a woman, which complicates matters considerably as it means that what I want to hear is not always ‘yes’, but must be gleaned from the question or, more often, the tone in which the question is asked.  His progress in understanding this leaves something to be desired and I thought, therefore, that I should provide a helpful guide here.  Below are a sample list of statements followed by the appropriate response:

“Don’t you think So-And-So looked well?”

• If So-And-So is old or male or family: AGREE.
•  If So-And-So is female and young: DISAGREE, perhaps with elucidation: “I thought she had rather let herself go recently/had put on a bit of weight/looked like she got dressed in a dark room.”  [NB Don’t go too overboard on this; there’s such a thing as protesting too much…]

“Does my bum look bit in this?”

• DISAGREE, but see below caveat.
• Caveat: Occasionally I will be testing you.  I would lose faith in your “opinion” (ie ability to mirror my own hunch) if you always agree with me, and therefore you must sometimes tell me that what I am wearing is not your favourite.  This should be couched in positive terms, however.  I would suggest the following “That one looks fine, but I’d love you to wear that-red-dress-you-so-cleverly-bought-for-only-the-price-of-a-small-house.  You look especially gorgeous in that”.  It is key, of course, that you both manage to attain an air of complete and unmitigated sincerity, and, more importantly, that you do not adopt these tactics at any old moment.  Disagreement with my clothing options should be reserved for moments when I am giving you a look that tells you that I wish you to disagree with my clothing options ( in case you had not got this yet there is no room for flexibility, creativity or freedom of speech in this system).  Crystal clear?  Good.

“Would you like, this evening, to go to the pub for the rugby/have your favourite meal cooked for you/finally watch that blood and guts film that you’re been wanting to see for so long?”

• DISAGREE.  What I am trying to do here is to demonstrate how supportive I am of you.  This does not extend to actually doing the above mentioned things.
• Extension:  It is often good, after you have disagreed, to continue with a statement such as the following.  “You are much too good to me already.  Why don’t you just sit and relax while I go and procure a large tub of Ben & Jerry’s and the new Twilight movie.”

The above flaws rankle particularly because, you’ve guessed it, I am the perfect girlfriend:

1. I can make acceptable toast.  (Contrary to popular belief man can live by bread alone.  In the interests of full disclosure I should confess that we do not, in Sierra Leone, have a toaster, which does rather prevent the only ‘culinary exploit’ that I am confident to undertake.  See, I’m honest too!)
2. I am immensely practical.  I recently learnt (with some help from a very nice man at Scottish Water who I rang to complain that my morning shower was cold) that hot water is not delivered to my house in a pipe as cold water is.  Hot water is heated up within my house.  I am pretty sure that not too many people can know this or it would not have slipped under my radar for 23 years.  Perhaps a career as a plumber beckons if this development malarkey falls through?
3. I am very supportive.  Yesterday I went to witness his first TV appearance (which took the form of an interview about the new Innovate Salone ‘A de mek am’ competition – see previous post, which was aired on Sierra Leonean TV on the 19^th April and can be viewed online.  Link to follow.).  This was, admittedly, partly so that I could bask in his reflected glory, but also so that I could record his 15 minutes (it was actually more like 50.  FIFTY MINUTES.  Just SEE how supportive I am) of fame.  Which I did admirably.  I managed to capture all of the first minute of the show (in which he was not speaking) before his camera battery died.  This tragic occurrence may or may not have had something to do with the 20 minutes I had just spent zooming into 80% of our Guinea photos to see if I could discern any wrinkles in my soon-to-be-25 year old forehead.

Yup, he’s a lucky lucky man.

*I also feel it relevant to point out at this stage that this expedition organising is not QUITE as selfless and disinterested as you might currently be imagining; he wants to see this fine feathered friend as much as I do…

In which I find a new quest.

I’ve always liked the idea of having a quest.  I was an impressionable child, so the likes King Arthur, Lord of the Rings and Scooby Doo affected me deeply.  I longed for the old-fashioned values and morality of yesteryear, and idolised the purity and single-hearted dedication of St George or Sir Gawain or Don Quixote (!?).  I was also something of a tomboy, so that up until really remarkably recently I would much rather have been the Knight in Shining Armour than have been rescued by him.  I went to an all girls school right up to the age of 18 and was inclined to scorn those amongst my peers who displayed damsel-like tendencies; I thought them weak and silly, but most importantly I thought they were missing out on great adventures.  I was always just ever-so-slightly hazy about what exactly my future quests would involve (given that damsels were conclusively out of the picture, and I was fundamentally too realistic a child to believe in dragons), but I was entirely convinced that they would be epic; the stuff of legends.

 

As I have got older (and more boring) my quests have not ceased, but they have changed in nature; they no longer involve chainmail, or mighty steeds, or even Gandalf.  (OK, so they do sometimes still involve Gandalf-like figure; I’ve always had a thing for older men.  And beards.).  I can imagine what most of you are thinking at this point; you are assuming that I have given up the aforementioned delights for such mundanities as ‘the search for the perfect muffin’ (this would actually be a pointless quest here – it doesn’t exist, though Salvonne bakery goes some way to satiating baked-goods based cravings.  Alternatively, befriending the wonderful Allyson Barnett works too.), or ‘the search for the golden ratio of bicarbonate of soda and white wine as red wine stain remover’.  Not so!  I am neither (yet) so middle aged nor so domestic.  I have, in fact, swapped chivalry, folklore and legend for good old-fashioned expeditioning.  I hanker to spend hours, days or months grubbing around in jungles, climbing glaciers or traversing wide oceans in search of the world’s last true wildernesses or rarest species.

 

As such, I have had to relinquish Gandalf as my ideal man (he’d be a pretty nifty chap to have around if the Balrog reappeared, but even I can see that this is unlkely), and have substituted a glorious melange of Indiana Jones and David Attenborough in his place.  In so far as this perfect specimen of humanity takes actual human form I have always assumed that he’d be something like Gerald Durrell.  I actually have no idea what Gerald Durrell looked like (I’m resisting the urge to ask Google Images for fear that he does not resemble Adonis that I so hope for) but two circumstances have cemented him in my mind as the ideal companion of my future life.  Firstly, I happened to pick up a copy of ‘A Zoo in my Luggage’ (I have an irrational horror of  being without reading material on public transport, and therefore picked up this rather bizarre looking book in Oxfam while waiting for the Oxford Tube).  This is Durrell’s account of a trip to Cameroon in which his major aim was to capture a cross section of the wildlife in order to start a private zoo back in the UK.  It’s absolutely and entirely charming (once you get past the un-PC nature of the quest, which didn’t take me very long); he recounts, with modesty and humour, fundamentally unsuccessful attempts to coax a ten foot python out of a crack in a boulder, the antics of his incredibly badly behaved chimp Lucy and the time he was stalked by an irate three inch long mouse called Alphonse.  I’d recommend it to anyone seeking escapism on their London commute!  Secondly, I chanced across an interview with his wife Jackie (they later divorced due to his alcoholism and work obsession but let’s not dwell on that), in which she recounted stories of their life together; she talks of waking up to find three baby chimpanzees bouncing on their bed, of keeping baby dormice in her bra (my capacious cleavage renders me very suitable for such a task, though there’s a danger that I’d lose them; I’ve been known to misplace my large collection of keys down there) and of being (platonically) absorbed into the harem of the Fon of Bafut Achirimbi II, an autocratic West African chieftain, while her husband was planning future expeditions with him.  I was enchanted.

 

It’s taken me even longer than usual to get to the point, but we’re nearly there – one of my favourite passages from ‘A Zoo in My Luggage’ concerns Durrell’s search for the Picathartes, a very rare West African bird.  He sought the Central African Picathartes, but there is another equally hard to track sub-species which lives solely around Sierra Leone and Liberia.  I immediately determined that tracking down this particular feathered friend would be an eminently suitable expedition.  A bit of background: the Picathartes is about 25cm long, and resembles nothing so much as a particularly stupid pheasant, though it also has a broad red eye patch, giving it a pleasingly debonair devil-may-care appearance.  These birds build their nests on rock faces in thick forest, and require plentiful supplies of water.  This makes the Freetown Peninsula a peculiarly suitable nesting spot.   I first went in search of this creature when my parents were here in December; we left Freetown in the very early morning and climbed up an endless steep slope to a two nest colony.  There we say, barely daring to breath, and expecting to see a Picathartes at any moment.  Until, that is, my mother turned rather irately to my father and intimated that she couldn’t see the colony.  Which was about 2 metres away and consisted of two bright orange foot square nests on a black background.  After ten minutes of us all trying to help her in increasingly exasperated ‘whispers’ she admitted “Oh.  Just that?  I saw that right from the beginning.” And we admitted defeat; any bird in a hundred metre radius would long have gone into hiding.

 

Picathartes Take II happened just last weekend.  I managed to persuade a couple of rather long suffering friends to be ready at 6am on a Saturday morning (pastries from the aforementioned Salvonne were necessary as a bribe).  I finally arrived to pick them up about an hour later.  Olive, oh Olive!  I got her back last week after a three week extremely expensive stint at the mechanic, and Saturday was to be the first day of the rest of her life.  Except that the engine cut out about fifty times before we’d even got across town.  We had to abandon her and take to public transport.  Finally arriving at the trail, we commenced our ascent to the nest.  I do not move like a gazelle at the best of times, but was (even by my own exceptionally low standards) exceptionally clumsy that morning; every crinkly leap or brittle twig on the mountain seemed to find its way under my feet, every branch I grasped seemed to be covered in thorns and, worst of all, I was trying so hard to be quiet that I was gripped by hiccups.  The sharp-eared Picathartes doubtless detected my presence before I’d even got half way, and we were again unsuccessful.  Kenneth, our guide, was kind enough to say that lack of fresh faeces etc indicated that they hadn’t been there in a while, and we did find a feather and an egg fragment, but I was thoroughly disappointed.  This quest business is much harder and more sleep-depriving than I’d expected…

 

I’m seriously considering playing the damsel-in-distress card after all, and leaving the following advert on knight-errant.com:  “WANTED:  One Knight-in-Shining-Armour prepared to spend several days camped out under damp rock to capture not-particularly exciting looking and entirely harmless bird and convey it to averagely fair lady keen to view it from the comfort of her own home.”

 

(I’ve just looked pictures of Mr Durrell.  Alas!  He is less Adonis and more Toad of Toad Hall (and I have peculiar horror of toads).  He does have a beard though, so that’s something…)