14 Dec 2019: Bom Successo

Even after nearly a year of birding throughout Africa it remained a daunting experience to find birds in a strange country where one doesn’t speak the language (Portuguese). I was experiencing extreme pressure to attain my target of 1500 birds on the Clements list and for that I had to navigate my way some 30 km up a volcanic mountain to look for the endemic birds. Sunrise found me birding the shoreline of São Tomé Town. The views over the bay were spectacular but it was strange not to see a single shore bird on the coastline. While walking down a tree-lined avenue near an old fort I found the usual urban suspects as well as a strange looking weaver that I could not immediately identify. Rob de Rover later identified it as a female São Tomé Weaver after I sent him some photos – my defence is that it only has a slight similarity to the illustration in my guide book.

Sao Tome Weaver, Sao Tome

Most of the endemic species on the island can be found while visiting the central São Tomé highlands at Lagoa Amelia. The road from the town of São Tomé winds its way up the mountain and once out of the populated areas, it passes through montane forests before it becomes a muddy dirt road up to the Obo National Park. A very expensive taxi dropped me off at the botanical research centre at Bom Successo, which is also the starting point of the trail into the Obo National Park. Here I was very fortunate to meet up with Leonel, an educational officer at the botanical gardens, who was to be my birding guide for the next two days.

Newton's Sunbird, Sao Tome

Hiking up the slope of a nearby mountain trail the endemics soon started to fly in. The first special to show itself was a São Tomé Speirops with its black cap and white eye-ring. This turned out to be my 1500th bird on the IOC List – quite a milestone achievement! After about the tenth sighting of the Speirops I came to realise that this was one of the commonest endemics on the island. The next endemic that made an appearance was Newton’s Sunbird. Its violet-blue throat and upper breast contrasted beautifully with its bright yellow underparts in the dark recesses of the forest. We soon tracked down various São Tomé Prinias. These conspicuous warblers with their long, graduated tails were easy to find as they were quite noisy as they gleaned insects in the undergrowth. A pair of Principe Seedeaters – more common on São Tomé than on Principe – were foraging in the trees while a group of São Tomé White-eyes flitted through the forest canopy enclosing the trail. A glossy blue-black male São Tomé Paradise-flycatcher provided an interesting change to the more common rufous and black colouring of the African Paradise-flycatcher found on the mainland. On our way back down the trail I had good views of the São Tomé Thrush, as well as a male São Tomé Weaver building a nest in a patch of bamboo. A ten kilometre walk down the mountain to the tar road followed and along the way I saw numerous São Tomé Spinetails hawking insects in an open forest glade. While waiting for a “collective taxi” to take me back to São Tomé Town I heard the muffled coos of a São Tomé Olive Pigeon in a tree above my head. It took a further ten minutes of searching before I finally saw it hopping from one branch to another. This brought today’s total of São Tomé endemics to ten – not a bad start to this part of the island adventure…