Friday 26 October 2012

To the spiny forest


23rd October

Every day with two new primates on my list is a good day. Today was long. Today was hot. Today was exhausting. But today was good. Early this morning we reached Zombitse, a deciduous forest national park marooned in a horizonless landscape of anthropogenic grasslands. We missed our avian target here, Appert’s tetraka which may be found nowhere else, but saw our mammalian target, a snoozing Hubbard’s sportive lemur, which likewise lives nowhere else. (For the taxonomically minded, however, it’s worth knowing that recent genetic research indicates that, unlike the Microcebus mouse lemurs which are bona fide species, the many newly described Lepilemur sportive lemurs are probably regional forms of very few species. The same, incidentally, is true of the Avahi woolly lemurs of which we saw the form currently known as Peyrieras’ in Ranomafana.)

Our second new primate was grey-brown mouse lemur. These spiny forest favourites were dozing at the arboretum outside Tulear: hunkering in the hollow of a snapped tree, curled in a fluffy ball in a spiky Euphorbia, and nestling in the folded leaf of a Bismarckia palm. A green-capped coua trotted through the sandy undergrowth and in the dust sat a Madagascar nightjar, protecting her eggs from the shocking heat of the afternoon.

As we bumped along the unmade road to Ifaty a Kittlitz’s plover stood by a brackish pool, two curlew sandpipers (last seen by my eyes at Cley) probed the seaside mud, and a pair of Madagascar buttonquail trundled across the road, rounding their backs, lowering their heads, and hoping that a bus full of naturalists would not spot them.



New this morning in Zombitse

Mammals

98
Hubbard’s sportive lemur
Lepilemur hubbardorum

Birds

918
Madagascar green pigeon
Treron australis
919
crested coua
Coua cristata
920
alpine swift
Apus melba
921
white-browed owl
Ninox superciliaris
922
Frances’s sparrowhawk
Accipiter francesiae
923
Coquerel’s coua
Coua coquereli
924
rufous vanga
Schetba rufa
925
Madagascar cuckoo-hawk
Aviceda madagascariensis

Reptiles

39
Standing’s day gecko
Phelsuma standingi
40
three-eyed lizard
Chalerodon madagascariensis


New this afternoon in the Tulear arboretum and in marshes near Ifaty

Mammals

99
grey-brown mouse lemur
Microcebus griseorufus

Birds

926
Sakalava weaver
Ploceus sakalava
927
Madagascar nightjar
Caprimulgus madagascariensis
928
green-capped coua
Coua olivaceiceps
929
Kittlitz’s plover
Charadrius pecuarius
930
Madagascar buttonquail
Turnix nigricollis

Reptiles

41

Tracheloptychus petersi
42
spiny-backed chameleon
Furcifer verrucosus
43

Trachylepis aureopunctata

2012 Totals
Mammals: 99
Birds: 930
Reptiles: 43
Amphibians: 15
Fish: 11

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