It's been a while since I have had anything useful to contribute, and I now find myself in northeastern Guinea, about 80km south of the Mali border in a town called Siguiri. I've been up here going on 3 weeks now and seen very little in the way of herps, but that has been compensated for by some fantastic birdlife.
Environment here is much like you would find in the dry northwest of SA, around Pilanesberg, very scrubby thornveld.
Last night inside the mining village one of the guys caught (in a plastic bottle) and brought to me a "nightadder". This stunner about 85cm long turned out to be West African Brown Spitting Cobra, Naja katiensis
I did not have a lot of time this morning to get really decent pictures of it, I did manage to get a DNA sample for WW, here are the best of the pics I did take, in it's bottle, on the floor of my office and in the glove. It was very innoffensive, never raised a hood, tried it's best to get away from me all the time instead of staying to fight, and spat only once when inside the container, although it did gape a few times. When it was in the glove it did start chewing on my index finger, and spread a surprising amount of venom for such a small guy. Not a bite I would like to experience.