A toilet frog and a bird on a rock

6^th November

At Ampijoroa in Ankarafantsika I was using a guides' block shower. Each night there I was joined in my shower by a handsome treefrog who on one occasion was brought into song by the pseudo-rain from the shower-head. A singing treefrog in a small concrete stall is quite a noise. Because of recent taxonomic changes it’s taken a day or two for us to confirm the identity of this frog, though Claude at once said, ‘Ah yes, that’s the toilet frog’. A few years ago my frog would have been Boophis tephraeomystax but this species has now been split, leaving frogs in the west, including my shower companion, as Boophis doulioti. My frog therefore, slightly tardily, joins my list as the seventeenth amphibian species I have seen this year. Incidentally, he was visited one evening in the shower by a Madagascar hog-nosed snake, a species which commonly eats frogs. His designs on my Boophis doulioti were, I suspect, less pure than mine.

In other news, today I was mighty chuffed to find a single Madagascar pratincole on a rock in the Mangoro river. This is a subtly pretty bird which undertakes fascinating migrations and, let's face it, every pratincole is a good pratincole.

New, in a shower a few days ago and on the rocks of the Mangoro river today

	Birds
981	Madagascar pratincole	Glareola ocularis
	Amphibians
16		Boophis doulioti

2012 Totals

Mammals: 118

Birds: 981

Reptiles: 66

Amphibians: 16

Fish: 12