Birds in Their Habitats

by Ian Fraser

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  2

  Rainforests

  Western Cameroon: lowland tropical rainforest

  Early April, the beginning of the rainy season in Korup National Park: a steaming dark rampantly green world, tangled with vines. Fungi sprouted everywhere, helping turn trees and butterflies to soil and back again to trees and butterflies. There were fungal copses of tiny white and orange buttons, crops of yellow corrugated cups on logs, mauve parasols, huge vermilion and tiny pearly white brackets, among so many others. Columnar termite mounds wore mossy domed caps, like slightly phallic gnomes. Korup has a long bird list, but they were remarkably inconspicuous. We could hear them but even seeing canopy movement, let alone identifying it, was a rare event. Every now and then the air would vibrate with the throbbing ‘whop’ of one of the great casqued hornbills flying over, but the canopy might as well have been a ceiling. Rainforest birding isn’t always that tough, but it can be.

  I had always wanted to see a tropical African rainforest and the mighty Korup is an extraordinary place. It adjoins Nigeria on the western border of Cameroon, which is in the corner of Africa, where the north-running west coast of the southern part of the continent suddenly swings at right angles to the west. Korup’s 125 000 ha of lowland forest is of world significance and in 1986 the Cameroon Government declared it the nation’s first national park (see Photo 5). We – a small international group of birdwatchers, the same ones you met briefly at Waza – had swayed across the enormous Mana River suspension bridge (in my case caught between a deep desire not to look down, and a need to do so to avoid gaps in the planks) and walked 8 km into our camp site. After a couple of minutes, we’d passed a sign advising that Prince Charles had ‘trekked’ to here in 1990.

  A rainforest requires, unsurprisingly, rain. In fact it requires a lot of rain (a minimum of 2500 mm a year, by most definitions) and moreover it has to be constant enough so that there is no really dry season. Tropical rainforests are characterised by a closed tree canopy and a desperate struggle for light, leading to towering trees and smaller plants, vines and epiphytes, which use the trees to get out of the understorey’s gloom. Many rainforest trees have buttresses, whose advantage to the tree is still debated, and such few plants as can grow on the dark forest floor have leaves of deepest green, packed with chlorophyll to enable photosynthesis down where only 1% of the light on the canopy penetrates. Up there it’s a different world: temperatures fluctuate from 40°C during the day to mid-20s at night, and humidity from 90% at night to 60% on a sunny day. Strong winds and wild storms are prevalent. Down where we are, there is no wind, the temperature and 90% humidity scarcely vary over 24 h. Tropical rainforests are found throughout the low latitudes – though clearing is progressing at a horrific rate – from sea level to high in the mountains, though there are different types of rainforest recognised in different situations.

  Late in the afternoon, we left our Korup camp to walk another couple of kilometres to a site that to me was literally the stuff of dreams. I don’t remember exactly when I first read about Picathartes (‘magpie vulture’), but it was well over 40 years ago and I suspect via either Gerald Durrell or David Attenborough, back in another world when ripping animals from the wild and incarcerating them in a faraway zoo seemed a reasonable thing to do. Nor do I remember why this bird had grabbed the attention of a boy who, though passionate about animals, was mostly obsessed by what my current guides would call ‘hairy and scary’.

  When birding is tough: Picathartes

  There are just two members of the family, both endemic to West Africa and also known as rockfowl. The White-necked Picathartes is found to the west, from Ghana to Guinea; ‘our’ species, the Grey-necked Picathartes, lives around the ‘elbow’ of Africa, in Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. Both are large passerines, about the weight of an Australian Magpie. Their relationship with other bird groups remains entirely unclear, and the birds are rarely encountered away from their nesting sites. These tend to be colonial, with big mud nests on cliffs that are angled at 70–80° so that they provide shelter from the rain. For reasons that are not understood, the birds visit the nests at dusk and dawn even out of breeding season and this is what we were relying on.

  We had intended to bird on the way, but the storm clouds were so stygian that it was hard to see our feet in the forest, let alone any putative birds. Korup has an average annual rainfall of over 5 m, and it didn’t disappoint. Curiously the light increased again as the rain started and it remained at the same slightly higher level until sunset. I must confess to feeling a bit negative about it all – it had been a gruelling trip and I was weary; we hadn’t seen many other birds in the forest, so why would we see this very difficult one, especially as it was going to be dark and wet? We sat down, in my case across a sharp ridge of granite, and were exhorted not to move. And then something wonderful happened. In the steady rain – at some stage it ceased falling from the clouds but continued unabated from the foliage, as is the way in rainforests – my physical discomfort receded as I took in the beautiful pale granite cliff face and absorbed what was happening. I was actually sitting in Korup and the giant swallow-like nests I was looking at belonged to Picathartes; how dare I be anything but awed at such a privilege? This was very special and suddenly it didn’t ma
tter if the bird came or not.

  But it did come. A swoop across the cliff face, a quick inspection of the nest and down to the ground, all a blur, then up onto a low rock ledge. Perfectly framed for me by two trees, this lanky grey bird with gleaming bare head, brilliant red crown and blue forehead, seemed to peer straight at me. For five seconds, ten? I have no idea; the real answer though is ‘forever’, for the image is still bright and sharp in my mind and will be so throughout my life. As a boy I never dreamt I would see a live Picathartes, or any of those wonderful animals that dwelt only in the magical world of the books introduced to me by my father. The only specific thought I can recall on the way back to camp was regret that I would not be able to tell him that this dream he’d triggered had come to life. Beyond that, I was just dripping wet and euphoric – and I knew that neither birding, nor much else that I could think of, got better than this.

  When birding is tough: Mt Kupé Bushshrike

  Rainforest birding, however, is not always euphoria-inducing. The village of Nyasoso in mountainous western Cameroon is reached via a ferocious drive from Tombel (home of the modest little office of the National Association of Snail Farmers of Cameroon) over potholes with bits of road attached. We stayed at the Nyasoso Women’s Collective rooms: mine was a basic concrete cell with a metal single bed, but it did surprisingly have an en suite (cold) shower and toilet. Unfortunately, the shower drain hole blocked up and after a shower my bed stood ankle deep in a large pool of water, which had nowhere else to go. Remarkably, my bag happened to be on the high part of the floor!

  Our target was one of the rarest and most threatened birds in the world, the Mount Kupé Bushshrike, with a population of perhaps only 50 pairs in its Bakossi Mountains stronghold. It was believed until recently to be restricted to here, though there are known now also to be some in neighbouring south-eastern Nigeria.

  We began the day with a 3.45 am breakfast consisting of dry cereal on a flat plate, white bread and tea. At 4 am 10 of us piled into a short wheel base Toyota; four of us were in the ‘back back’, two each along the sides, facing each other on 20 cm wide metal benches, vaguely padded with a strip of rotten foam. Our knees were jammed against those of the person sitting opposite. It was a long 90 minutes to the village at the end of the road, on a very rudimentary steep bush track.

  In the pre-dawn, we were greeted individually by Chief Abwé, a slight old man in a wooden shack only a little larger than those of his neighbours. It was too dark to see the nature of the photos in the newspaper clippings on the walls. Mercifully we were spared the traditional beer-drinking ceremony, though I’m not sure that our guides were.

  We had barely set out when, at a creek crossing where three women already washing clothes accepted our intrusion very graciously, we had an unpleasant interruption. A small group of agitated and angry young men overtook us and blocked our way. Their leader, apparently badly affected by alcohol or drugs, was bizarrely still using a pink tooth-brush, which somehow increased the sense of menace. A crowd materialised, with most concurring with the chap who told the angry ones, ‘If you are wise, my friends, you will leave’. Unfortunately, they weren’t and didn’t. In the end it was all very tawdry, and came down to more money, which they felt their chief was not distributing properly; clearly the tradition of respect for the chief was eroding. They didn’t want the cash for the benefit of the village though – they were quite open in explaining that it was for cheap whisky, and the extra 40 000 Central African Francs (about A$100) they eventually received would have bought them a lot of it. It would also have paid for a lot of food or school books.

  It is always stimulating to be in primary rainforest, but when you are focussed on a particular target the birds can seem very sparse – I saw 14 species all day. A steep climb was the precursor to a hideous descent on a scarcely present track, evil-slippery with mud and leaves. Without trackside saplings, it would have been very dangerous indeed. We spent an hour listening and intermittently tape-playing its call up on the next plateau, but nothing. We scrambled, already wearily, down the other side, where someone thought they heard it along the valley so we hauled back up again and repeated the exercise, for the same result. Leaving even the rudimentary track, we then descended into the valley and battled up the other side – and then back again. My notes simply say ‘this was bad’. I’ve done my share of bush-bashing, and was at about the median age of the group, but I recorded that ‘I felt I was at my limits’. In the last hour of the final descent, on already perilously greasy slopes, the inevitable rain exacerbated the conditions.

  We never did see the bird, not that day, nor the next, despite a brutal ascent (and descent!) of nearby Mount Kupé, which looms over Nyasoso. By then I was too sore to care much. My state may be judged by my reaction to a somewhat surreal encounter on my way down Mount Kupé, in late afternoon with thunder building. Most of the group had gone down earlier; I’d stayed with the hard core, but when, during the eventual and reluctant descent, they yet again turned back up-slope in response to a note that may have emanated from a bush-shrike I called it a day and continued down. The group leader wanted to make sure I was OK and sent Albert, our local guide, down after me. I discovered this only when I suddenly became aware of a figure bounding down the track towards me, brandishing a machete and yelling, ‘I am coming for you!’. My reaction, recorded that night, was just, ‘this will be interesting’.

  Part of the essence of birding is the uncertainty, and my life has continued quite happily without a Mount Kupé Bushshrike ever being part of it. I have no yen to return to the Bakossi Mountains, but I certainly don’t regret having been there. If the sole point had been finding the bird (as it was for at least a couple of my companions), then as it turned out there would have been no point. But the older I get, the more I am sure that the most important thing, in birding as in life, is looking for: looking at is just a bonus, never to be presumed.

  Julatten, north Queensland: a magnet for birders

  Traditionally it is deserts that are reputed to set us thinking, but I’ve caught some worthwhile trains of thought from a rainforest platform too. I was camping once at the incomparable Kingfisher Park near Julatten on the tablelands above Cairns in tropical Queensland. This property contains remnant rainforest, an extensive tropical orchard and accommodation specifically geared towards birdwatchers. I was woken with a shock in the dark small hours by a quavering nearby scream of ‘he.e.e.elp’ and was initially frozen rigid. My muscles gradually unlocked as I realised it was one of the more or less uniformly bizarre calls of the Orange-footed Scrubfowl: small incubating-mound builders of the rainforests and monsoon forests of Australia, New Guinea and associated islands. Doubtless my nightmarish awakening was fuelled by the murder mystery I’d been reading before going to sleep.

  Mount Kinabalu, Sabah

  The rich primary rainforest at Sepilok in eastern Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, is where orphaned Bornean Orangutans are rehabilitated and taught how to live in the wild. Not far from Sepilok is mighty Mount Kinabalu, surely one of the world’s most imposing mountains. From a distance, it sprawls across the skyline with a mass of jagged granite teeth snapping at the clouds. The highest point is 4100 m above sea level. Most of the slopes are cloaked in dark green rainforest (except where the landslips that followed the totally unexpected earthquake of 2015 have ripped long pale gashes through it). I’ve never climbed to the top – I have no desire to climb for the sake of it – but have spent memorable time in the lower to mid forests.

  Birds and death

  We have long embroiled birds in our own complex belief systems surrounding death. Any sentence that contains ‘humans’, ‘birds’ and ‘death’ is more likely to be an unhappy one for the birds than us but, even when the subject of it is human death, we have often managed to hold the poor birds responsible for it! Unusual bird calls in the night are always likely to engender responses based on fear and ignorance, and doubtless the grim reputations often associated with owls are related to th
at as well, especially considering the hoarse scream of the Barn Owl. (Living in church towers, being basically white and hunting over cemeteries would have helped there too.) Surprisingly, it seems that this association of owls with death is near universal. Even now, they are believed to presage death and illness in parts of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, Argentina, Arab cultures, China, the Mediterranean, south, north and west Africa and Madagascar (Marks et al. 2016). Whether we can join Finnish owl expert Heimo Mikkola in asserting that this is because such beliefs came out of Africa with our ancestors is another question (Mikkola 2014). It seems to me that the forward-facing eyes of owls, enabling binocular vision, which is denied to most other birds, have been recognised as giving a human-like visage, bringing associations with both wisdom and evil. It’s a fair assessment of us, but a bit rough on the owl.

  Lapwings, migrating geese, curlews and whimbrels all call as they fly overhead at night in Europe, and some of their calls are very evocative indeed. It is no coincidence that these birds are intricately part of one of the most fearsome of English myths, the Seven Whistlers, which fly calling at night. Hearing six is bad news and death will follow, but if the six ever meet the seventh, the world will end. They are sometimes regarded as synonymous with the Gabriel Hounds (i.e. ‘corpse hounds’ apparently), or the Wild Hunt, which probably originated in Norse mythology and which go by many names in Britain and doubtless elsewhere. Along the way, they segued neatly into Christian folklore and added the Devil as hunt-master, without breaking formation. All agree that to hear them is very bad, but to see them is death (e.g. Simpson and Roud 2003).