FROM THE CUCKOO’S NEST OCTOBER 2017

Primates.

We have seen chimps only a few times this month, which is unusual, but hear them most days.

Red-tailed, blue, and black and white colobus monkeys seen often. I have met groups of baboons  quite often in the last 2 weeks on the boundary path, separating our land and the forest.  I think they are interested in the millet, grown by one of my neighbours.

Birds

Notable sightings during the last month include:

• Blue-headed sunbird
  Yellow-eyed black flycatcher
  Red-faced woodland warbler
  Black-faced rufous warbler
  Yellow-streaked greenbull
  Red-tailed greenbull
  Yellowbill
  Red-headed bluebill
  Speckled tinkerbird at very close range
  African broadbill
  Grey-headed sunbird
  Mountain greenbull
  Mountain masked Apalis
  Buff-spotted woodpecker

Still plenty of Black cuckoo-shrikes around, and long-crested eagle semi resident.

Fruit of the Land

We are picking some avocados.  Fruit of next guava tree is about to be ready, if the local children and the mousebirds don’t get to it first.

In the garden, we have plenty of salad veg lettuce, Chinese cabbage etc and are also harvesting  leeks, cabbages, lettuce, carrots, pineapples and celery amongst others.   

Trees

We have labeled some of the trees on the forest boundary, with permission from UWA ranger.  Have planted some mulberry and some flowering shrubs, with impressive pink flowers, which I discovered just outside Kabale.

Philip