Siguiri - Guinea

Accounts and photos of non-captive reptiles in their natural habitat outside of South Africa. Try to record with your account details such as time of day/night, temperature, weather conditions, lunar cycle, sex, rough age of reptile, and so on.

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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby s'mee » Fri Feb 15, 2013 9:04 pm

The second title is only just out - the first run was released around August/September last year so it should be available.
Have you tried Stevensimpsonbooks.com? It is listed in their current catologue.

Alternatively, if you are flying in via Dakar like we used to, and have a few hours, you can always pop into the IRD bookshop there - they should have it.
If ignorance is bliss, there must be a lot of happy people out there...
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Sico » Fri Feb 15, 2013 9:54 pm

Yeah I do go through Dakar, but at 6 in the morning... Will have a look anyway.
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Sico » Wed Mar 13, 2013 8:01 pm

Today one of the staff called me to the Mortuary saying there was a snake hiding on top of the fridge. When I went in, there was this 105cm Phylothamnus sp. Sitting on the lip of the door for the walk in fridge. I did not get any in-situ shots as I was on the way to a meeting, but I took a few later in the day when I let it go in a cluster of Mango trees. I got a DNA sample as well.
Any ideas as to the species? The body was uniform green, with the head fading to a very pale blue, mouth black, tongue blue, underbelly pale yellow.
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Sico » Sun Mar 17, 2013 3:48 pm

I went out last night to some of the watering holes and do a bit of road cruising to see what there is before I head back to SA on Tuesday.
There wasn’t much out but I did find 4 species of amphibs, still need to ID them, and an interesting centipede.
Toad
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A large green frog of which there were plenty
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Phrynobatrachus sp?
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?
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Centipede
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Westley Price » Sun Mar 17, 2013 4:58 pm

Very cool stuff Sico!

That Philo is amazing. The head and mid-body looks like two different snakes.

I'm not particularly familiar with reptiles from that par of the World, but if I had to guess, I would say the species could be P. irregularis.
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Sico » Tue Apr 09, 2013 9:02 am

OK, after finding an interesting amphibian ID tool, I think they are the following
Toad - Amietophrynus maculata
Green Frog - Hoplobatrachus occipitalis
Lumpy frog - Arthroleptis sp (maybe poecilonotus)
"grass" frog - Ptychadena sp (maybe arnei)
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Westley Price » Tue Apr 09, 2013 9:06 am

And how about sharing this "ID tool"....pretty please?
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Sico » Tue Apr 09, 2013 5:11 pm

It's an app I found on the Itunes app store (dunno if it is available on Android devices but I don't see why not,, if you find it...) One is called "Frog Finder" and the other "Amphibiaweb mobile"
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Westley Price » Tue Apr 09, 2013 5:25 pm

Baie Dankie
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Sico » Wed Dec 17, 2014 2:07 pm

I know this is an old post, but I only realised recently that I never added all the non-herp stuff on... Would anybody like me to do so, now that I have the time on my hands?
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Mitton » Wed Dec 17, 2014 2:17 pm

Sico wrote:Would anybody like me to do so, now that I have the time on my hands?

Of course, can't wait!
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Sico » Wed Dec 17, 2014 7:06 pm

In order to get to Siguiri, we had to fly JHB to Dakar, Senegal on the western edge of the continent (one of the hotels is right on this point and myself and one of the other guys walked up there the night we flew out, unfortunately it was too dark to take pictures, but the hotel looks like the Lost City… and that makes three of the four most “points” of Africa I’ve been on, just North to go now…)
Dakar has a very mixed heritage and influences, between Mediterranean and Arabic, as can be seen in the architecture. Although it is in the northern part of West Africa, and well into the Sahara zone it is very temperate, with the climate influenced by the Atlantic. Temps fluctuated in the low to mid twenties while we were there, and humidity is very low. It is one of the most pleasant places I have ever been, I’d certainly consider going there for a holiday, although the flight from JHB is a long one. The place is neat, clean, quiet… very un-African!
The first hotel I stayed in had a restaurant on the roof, and the views were 300 degrees and stunning.
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Now the sunrises and sunsets in this part of Africa are just indescribable… as you will see, I assume because of the desert dust in the air…
This was sunrise over Dakar on the morning before I flew to Guinea
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This was sunset the previous evening over the Atlantic
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The coastline in Dakar is very rocky, where we were anyway, and supplied a lot of rockpools for me to explore. Plenty of interesting fish and other aquatic invertebrates, unfortunately my camera doesn’t take such good shots of things under the water, and since I have plenty more to post, I’ll skip all those.
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Birdlife wasn’t huge, but on the shore I found a black headed heron and some Ruddy Turnstones looking for critters to eat.
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And there were plenty of Hooded vultures flying about, with of course numerous crows.
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As far as herps went, all I could see was a lot of these Agamids on the walls
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Right, off to Guinea… I requested an aisle seat, was instead given a window seat… Airlines these days are pretty unreliable!
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We can skip the images of the “airport” on the other end, Siguiri as a town is pretty much what you would expect. I missed a wonderful photo opportunity as we entered the town on one of the main roads, with a pair of hooded vultures feeding off a donkey carcass under a sign that said “Siguiri”. It pretty much summed up what the rest of the place was like…
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Fuel station
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The countryside as I mentioned earlier
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There were a lot of interesting termite mounds around the mine village, from around 30cm high to a metre or so
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Some shots from within the mine operational area
The Baobab trees on the site all pretty much looked like this, very different from ours, although they are the very same species (all Baobabs on the African continent – and the small handful on an island off Brazil – are the same species, the other 4-5 species being found only on Madagascar)
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Although very hot and very arid, there was a lot of water in the small waterways on the mine, these all feed into the Niger river, which runs through Siguiri town, unfortunately I did not get a chance to get there while I was here. Plenty of water lilies and a lot of the amphibs I showed previously were found in these.
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There are obviously a lot of fish in the waters, as the locals use their nuts from dugout canoes.
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The mine village had a lot of Mango trees (amongst others) which were chock-full of what I think were Wahlberg's epauletted fruit bat, Epomophorus wahlbergi, and they all started calling at about 16h30 every evening until well into the early hours of the morning. Not an unpleasant sound, but quite a cacophony when they all got started. They would beat their wings quite frenetically while they called.
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This area in particular was one of the areas quite significantly affected during the West African Ebola outbreak, although it started in the south of Guinea, and was transmitted via humans into this region, it would have been interesting to note whether these bats were carriers at all, especially as you couldn’t walk very far without passing under a bunch of them roosting.

On one of our early morning excursions (an early mountainbike ride to one of the outlying camps 32km away through the bush) I came across this interesting plant, I assume some kind of lily? I have yet to identify it. I t had no scent, I assume though that it is pollinated either by flies or moths.
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I think that’s enough for one day, will put up some more tomorrow.
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Ruan Stander » Wed Dec 17, 2014 10:12 pm

Very cool post, some really interesting things !
The bats are very cute :)
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Sico » Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:14 am

Transport in Siguiri is at a premium for some reason (not sure why, as there are plenty of unroadworthy vehicles to go around…)
To see a minivan with 30-35 people inside and another 10 or so hanging off the overloaded luggage on the roof was not uncommon. I was once overtaken by two of these racing each other in almost total “blackout” conditions on one of the dirt roads (from the dust which was awful). They overtook the two 4x4’s behind me, as well as a bus and a water tanker in front of me… Complete craziness!
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Apparently if you are prepared to sit on the outside of the vehicle, you only need to pay half price for the trip… needless to say the death toll from road accidents in this country is phenomenal. There were several fatalities whilst I was up there, these pictures were all taken on public roads that traverse the mine property… and the mine has no mandate to control this, yet they have to be responsible for any people injured on their property, whether they are staff or not, regardless of whether it was related to mining activities or stupid civilians. African politics…
Technically the world’s most pointless water tanker…
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The mine had a fleet of tankers that would just drive backwards and forwards 24/7 dumping water on the roads. As you can see in the previous pictures the dust was really bad, and these pics were taken when it was fairly clear. Most of the time you couldn’t see more than 50m in front of you (if there was a cross-wind blowing it clear), and you could see nothing behind you.

As I previously mentioned, I am sure that it contributed to the splendour of these… I have not touched up these images at all, only cropped and resized, so the colours are pretty accurate, still they don’t do justice…
Sunrises
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Sunset
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Re: Siguiri - Guinea

Postby Sico » Thu Dec 18, 2014 9:05 am

The last update, Birds for all you twitchers ;-)
I apologise before hand for some of the image quality. For some reason the avifauna here was extremely skittish, and it was an extreme test of patience to try and get close to any species, often without any success whatsoever, so a lot of the pics are taken on maximum zoom, which caused them to lose a little sharpness. Also the majority of the bird activity occurred around dawn and dusk – to avoid the searing temperatures - when the ambient light was pretty poor, I didn’t have much time in the mornings to spend chasing birds, and in the late afternoons when I knocked off, there was so much dust in the air… the combination of all these factors doesn’t lend itself to great photography. Despite the heat, and the apparent lack of insect life, although a lot of the trees were flowering and fruiting at the time, and the limited water supplies, the abundance and variety of birds here was quite spectacular. What I am posting here is a small sample of what I found (the best of the pictures, I have a ton more that just aren’t worth wasting forum space on, no matter how interesting they may be), I would say that his is probably the second best birding spot I have ever been in after Uganda. I presume they are attracted to the mine because of the permanent water courses, as well as the amount of fruiting and flowering trees that have been planted in the residential compound by the expat residents in their gardens etc.
I have grouped them similar to how you would find them in a bird guide.

Raptors (these plus 12 other species)
African white-backed vulture Gyps africanus
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Shikra Accipiter badius (with rodent)
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Water birds (4 kingfishers, various heronry, no ducks though)
African Jacana Actophilornis africana
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Western gray plantian-eater Crinifer piscator
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Bearded barbet Lybius dubius
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Senegal parrot Poicephalus senegalus
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Purple glossy starling Lamprotornis purpureus
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Long-tailed Glossy starling Lamprotornis caudatus
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African golden oriole Oriolus auratus
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Fine-spotted woodpecker Campathera punctuligera
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Grey woodpecker Dendropicos goerte
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Yellow white-eye Zosterops senegalensis
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Surprisingly the sunbirds were the least skittish of all the bird life, but they did not sit still for very long. There were at least 4 other species I did not manage to photograph at all.
Pygmy sunbird Hedydipna platura
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Beautiful sunbird Cinnyris pulchella
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Scarlet-chested sunbird Chalcomitra senegalensis
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Red-throated bee-eater Merops bullocki (I saw 3 other species that I could not photograph)
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Abyssinian roller Coracia abyssinica
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Yellow-billed shrike Corvinella corvina (very entertaining flocks of these would hunt insects together like a small pack of feathered, chirping wolves)
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Yellow-crowned Gonolek (Bush shrike), Laniarius barbarus. Really poor pictures from one of the most elusive birds you can find (as are the majority of bush shrikes, if any of you have tried to find one, you will know what I mean), but they are superb once you do manage to see them. They stay deep in hedgerows and thick bush, down where it is dark, and the male and female call to each other, the male produces the first part of the call and the female finishes it off without any pause in between, making it sound like one bird throwing its voice somewhere else.
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Seedeaters – there were just so very many of these as the grasses were all producing their seeds. I recorded maybe 40 different species of finch, weaver, mannekin, etc
Black-faced firefinch Lagonosticta larvata
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Red-billed firefinch Lagonosticta senegala
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Red-cheeked cordon bleu Uraeginthus bangalus
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Yellow-fronted Canary Serinus mozambicus
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Cinnamon-breasted bunting Emberiza tahapisi
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Lastly Helmeted Guineafowl Numida meleagris were very popular as a domestic poultry, I saw far more of these in the village areas than I did chickens, I suppose they are tougher and can withstand the harsh environment better. These were semi-domesticated and wandered around the mine village
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I was also lucky enough to get pics of things like the Voilet Turaco's, Various hornbills, Senegal coucals and many others.
There was not really a lot of insect life at the time I was up there, a few aquatic-associated things like dragonflies, but nothing of major interest that I haven't alreayd posted in a similar thread from a different place.
That wraps up that thread. All in all it was a fairly good trip to a new place.
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