With so much natural forest left on the sides of the roads, so much exploring can be done without spending any money. We stocked up on groceries and then hid ourselves away in the jungle. For over an entire week we birded patches of forest along various roads and set up our tent wherever we could. All for free. The forest looked amazing in so many places it seemed silly to only go where other people go. Or only go into the national parks. Why not bird elsewhere? Why not explore? Why drive by perfectly good habitat? Why not see what lurks inside some of these pristine patches of thick jungle in random areas along the road?
So that’s exactly how we spent the middle portion of our trip to Gabon — birding a forest patch untouched by other birders. Exploring. It was amazing. Gabon was fast becoming my favorite place I’d visited in all of Africa. It was truly wild. It many ways it didn’t feel like Africa at all!
On our drive towards Makokou, a small town in Northeastern Gabon, we came to what seemed like near-pristine forest. Pristine except for the fact that the road we drove in on had recently been expanded, with carcasses of trees scattered around each side and the occasional logging track off into the jungle. Ross knew this particular road would be nice because tours, the few that do run to Gabon, always reference driving through amazing habitat but having no time to stop.
We didn’t have a set itinerary so we had the time to stop. We Initially planned to visit Ipassa Reserve, but information on this reserve was extremely sparse and although we knew we’d be able to sort it out when we arrived, we also knew they’d end up charging us an incredibly high price. (Ross attempted to get in contact with the people at Ipassa Reserve at least six different ways and couldn’t. For a country that wants to reap the benefits of eco-tourism they sure make it incredibly difficult! With no response from anyone in the office, wild camping was looking better and better.) We were debating what we should do as we saw a drongo fly across the road. I’m not sure why, but the drongo made us want to stop our car and get out. After an amazing flock with Rufous-bellied Helmetshrikes, Red-bellied Malimbes, Red-headed Malimbe, and Preuss’s Weaver, our decision became a no-brainer and we ended up spending FIVE NIGHTS along this road and skipping Ipassa altogether. We found an old logging road off of the main logging road and set up camp there. Each night we would pack up and move to another location along the main road. Having the freedom to stop whenever we wanted, sleep wherever we wanted, skip meals and not worry about feeding a driver, and simply bird hard were the major perks of having a rental car! It was expensive to have this car, but we leveraged that cost with money saved elsewhere (i.e. in the form of not paying for hotel rooms or national parks!)
We did not expect to love this road so much and none of us thought we would spend so long here, but after three days of rationing food and living off of nothing more than a few cans of tuna, ramen noodles, and pieces of bread, we ran out of goods. Oops. We needed to drive into town for more supplies. It was unfortunate to waste so much time (3 hours each way) driving, but it was necessary. We stocked up on a few more cans of sardines, loaves of bread, packages of cookies, and headed back. Cooking healthy meals with vegetables isn’t exactly an option under these conditions, but I was sure to stock up on whatever raw fruits and vegetables I could find to eat as snacks! We were sure to grab a nice meal in the form of street chicken and/or fish while back in town! And if there’s one thing the French did while settling Gabon, it was teach everyone how to make the perfect baguette.
“Balinga Road” north of town, another forest patch that the tours do actually stop in, was nearly two hours closer so Ross decided we should check it out and maybe we wouldn’t have to drive all the way back to our old logging track. The forest was nice and Sjostedt’s Owlets seemed common (although impossible to see) and the Nkulengu Rails calling were a nice surprise, (again impossible to see due to the steep terrain) but the forest was partially degraded and not nearly as pristine as where we had been and we had no great place to set up our tent, so after only one night sleeping in a tent along the main road, we decided to drive back to the old logging track with plans to pitch our tents and spend three more days in the forest despite there being plenty of evidence that elephants were in the area as well.
Have I mentioned yet that I just love that Gabon is so wild?? I never thought I would be sleeping on the ground with elephants so close, that was after all the whole reason we had a rooftop tent on our truck for the previous 9 months in Africa, (to stay off of the ground and stay safe) but here we were. It was exhilarating and felt authentic to have to sleep with one eye open.
During our time meandering along this road we had many successes, we even heard Plumed Guineafowl on two separate occasions, both times with the bird mere meters from us. Unfortunately we missed seeing this incredibly secretive bird because it was a single bird as opposed to an entire group and thus snuck off without a trace. It’s also probably hunted in this area and extra wary of humans. (We did see a few vacant hunting camps set up.) Despite this one failure, we managed a full malimbe “sweep” with excellent views of Red-bellied, Crested, Cassin’s, Blue-billed, Red-crowned, and the prettiest of all, Rachel’s Malimbes. We had multiple flocks and scanned through each of them in search of targets. The flocks were so much fun to pick though.
The bird that gave us the biggest runaround though, was Yellow-capped Weaver. We managed to have three sightings of weavers during our time along this road and Ross spent hours trying to figure out exactly what we had. These weavers are rare and poorly known, and the photos and text in our guide book did not fully align with what we saw. Thankfully Ross wanted to document as much about these birds as possible and managed passable photos despite poor conditions. In the end, after scouring the photos and assessing our field views, we concluded we had both Preuss’ Weavers and Yellow-capped Weavers! The female plumages of these birds seem to be a bit more variable than originally expected. The male Yellow-capped definitely has a much wider black stripe on the side of the neck and the foraging behavior (working the other branches) is much different than the nuthatch feeding behavior of the Preuss’s Weavers. We found behavior to be one of the most important ways to distinguish between the two weavers. Other interesting birds we managed to track down included Gabon Woodpecker, Dusky Tit, Spotted Honeyguide, Forest White-eye, Bare-cheeked Trogon, West African Batis, Woodhouse’s Antpecker, Black Dwarf-Hornbill, Gosling’s Apalis, Verreaux’s Batis, and Brown Nightjar.
Gabon was exceeding all of my expectations. The weather was absolutely perfect: overcast and cloudy. The temperature was pleasant and comfortable. Our independence was exhilarating. The birding was sublime. On cloudy days bird activity stays high all day long, but on sunny days in a hot, humid climate on the equator, there is a window in the early morning and late evening where temperatures are comfortable and bird activity is high. We were blessed with cloudy day after cloudy day to the point where Ross, Jason, and I began to wonder about just how lucky we were to be experiencing comfortable day-long temps like this!
A few ebird lists from while we were camping Sept 7th, Sept 8th, Sept 9th
This birding occurred September 3rd-9th, 2021
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Jason Horn may kill me for this one, but remember in the newspapers that game you could play where you try to spot 15 differences between two otherwise similar photos? I feel like we could play that game right now: Enjoy.
