The routine was wake up call, with tea, at 5am, breakfast at 0530 and off at 6.00am. Today we were off to do a forest walk in secondary rainforest about a 45 minute drive away. The Austrian couple had opted to do the walk in the bai that they had missed last night - relations remained strained!
As we were leaving with the American couple - Lee and Danielle who were both in their 70s - one of the cooks ran to say that there was an elephant in the staff quarters - he was a lone bull and had been there before but as we drove out we saw him emerging into the mist covered savannah behind the camp. The grass was tall, and he was a forest elephant, much smaller than his savannah cousins, so we had good views of his back, head and trunk i.e. the parts protruding above the grass. There was also a pygmy kingfisher sitting on the grass close to us.
The mist slowly cleared as the sun came up - a lovely red ball. Unusually in the dry season the weather is cloudy, no doubt the transpiration from the vegetation makes water vapour but not enough for showers whereas in the wet season there are blue skies alongside the short intense showers......not what I had expected - but it makes sense.
The walk in the secondary forest was really interesting we could hear, but not see, crowned and putty nosed monkeys, we saw black wattled casqued and white thighed hornbills.I photographed a range of really interesting plants and butterflies, of which there were lots of different species flying around. There was a great spikey fruit which we later found was called caloncoba welwitschii and the book said gorillas ate it....so we are in the right place! As we walked back to the jeep we saw a group of plummed guinea fowl squawking and flying through the undergrowth - this was closely followed by a grumpy gorilla noise - he was behind large marantaceae plants and obscured from view, the birds had probably woken him up! Congo has the highest density of lowland gorillas - approximately 125,000 in total and he was our number 1!
We saw more of the termite mounds which are built alongside the trunks of a trees by the easily remembered procobitermes termites!
The new birds on this walk, included sooty chat, red eyed dove, adult and juvenile palm nut vulture, blue spotted dove and grey parrots flying overhead. We also saw buffalo with yellow billed oxpeckers on board - these birds brush the buffalos coat rather than pecking, which is what the red billed do. Interestingly because they are gentler elephants will even tolerate them.
In the afternoon we were dropped off for a walk while Justine, one of the guides, took the Austrians off for a drive - we did however meet up for sundowners over the marsh at approx 5.45pm. We hoped to see monkeys on the forest edge, or sitatunga in the marshy area - but no luck albeit we did hear the moustached monkey but they remained inside the forest.
There were some new birds - yellow mantled and marsh widow birds, black backed cisticola, fawn breasted waxbill, fan tailed grass bird, compact weavers, black sawtail and banded martin. We also saw elephant and hyena tracks, evidence of a civet eating beetles, an aardvark hole, a colourful beetle and cathedral and mushroom termite mounds.
It was an interesting walk and we learnt more about this unique environment.
After dinner as we were about to head back to our room - we had one last surprise - a large green tree frog sitting on the boardwalk.
During the night the elephants visited the bai outside our room - it was lovely listening to them drinking and topping up on minerals.......it will be good when they become relaxed enough to visit during the day.
(Today's photo is one of the old male buffalo we frequently saw grazing along the edges of the tracks.)