Day 7 - Wednesday 09/09/2015: Ranomafana
Today we walked in a different part of the Ranomafana forest at Vohiparara. The calls of Madagascar Flufftail were all around, but these miniscule forest rails are hard to see even when very close. I managed a brief glimpse of a whole male bird, but no-one else in the group saw it on this occasion – better views were obtained on two later occasions at Perinet. Rufous-headed Ground-roller was also heard well but was not seen. This is a scarce species but it used to be found close to the forest trails and responded to tape lures – it has now receded from the paths and no longer responds to tape – almost certainly due to successive bird tours attempting to see the same individual birds. The small but spectacular and very rare Yellow-bellied Sunbird-asity was seen well as were Dark Newtonia, Cryptic Warbler and Grey-crowned Tetraka. Brown Emutail is a small, dark terrestrial warbler that runs very fast along the forest floor and is almost impossible to get good views of. That didn’t stop us trying for at least an hour to do so – glimpses were obtained, just about sufficient to tick it. We also added Grey Bamboo Lemur and Red-bellied Lemur. Today we had a picnic lunch in the forest.
In the afternoon we visited a swamp area, mainly to try and flush Madagascar Snipe – in which effort we were unsuccessful – but also to see Madagascar Swamp Warbler and Grey Emutail – both of which we saw well. Despite having the same common surname the Grey Emutail is a different genus (Amphilais) and is much more showy than its aforementioned forest-dwelling cousin (Brown Emutail, which is currently placed in Bradypterus, but unlike any Bradypterus I have seen before). Sam and Phil had not joined us at the swamp – when we returned to the bus we found them surrounded by local children who had been singing around them for an hour and a half – much to their pleasure.
Later we did a night walk and as usual on these walks found several species of lizard and frog.