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| Bertine -- In Guide Garb |
I’m ending today on the hotel veranda overlooking mountains of rainforest with a brilliant full moon lighting scattered clouds….in a sky that is completely unfamiliar to me. When I was doing my binoc research before coming here, one person suggested that the litmus of good binocs is what they can do with the moon, so I pulled mine out, focused on the moon, and hit the stabilizer button. WOW! You can see craters with the lines radiating away from them as clearly as with a telescope. For the 20th time today, I’m glad I bit the bullet and got these binocs before coming. (Thanks for the advice, C&L!) Sitting here on the edge of Ranomafana rainforest looking at the moon, I’m glad I came.
After yesterday’s sauna hike, I got up earlier today and met Solofo for breakfast. On the veranda, of course. Since the park didn’t open til 7:30 or 8, we did a tour of the hotel grounds with our binocs. All the birds were loud at 6:15 am, but by the time I got out and finished my big, American breakfast, things were quieter. We were just killing time.
Really glad we did. We had killed a few minutes looking at little, twittering grey things when a spectacular bird popped out of the forest and landed on a tree at the edge of the hotel property, facing us with the sun at our back. It was a big bird with a white body and dark wings, and after it sat there like a king for a spell, it turned so the sun caught it full on the side, illuminating an iridescent pink patch that ran the length of wing. I’d never seen iridescence on a bird much bigger than a starling, but the patch on this Madagascar Cuckoo-Roller looked like it was about a foot long and six inches wide. The queen soon came up (as though there were any doubt about the identification), and the two went back into the forest. One of the best birds of the day. The Crested Drogo, with a long split tail and crest swinging forward over the bill, would have normally been a highlight for me, but I still had afterimages of that shining pink patch when the Drogo flew into view.
We realized we were running late, so we cut the hotel garden short and headed to the rainforest. There, we met Bertine, who again impressed me with his professionalism when he ran off to change into his “guide” clothes from his “sales” clothes. I was so leery of guides after the Alphonso experience that I told him I’d pay him after we finished, and he seemed quite comfortable with that. Confidence, I thought. A good sign. And we were hardly 15 minutes into our walk before I knew this was going to be a great day – by that time, he’d already shown me a chameleon, a spider half as big as my hand, an orchid and a walking stick.
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| Baby Golden Bamboo Lemur Doing What They do |
There were many highlights to our walk. It’s Madagascar, so even though lemurs weren’t the focus of the hike, we saw three different kinds. We found ourselves in a group of Golden Bamboo Lemurs again, and I would have been happy to spend the day there watching them and walking with them. They’d chew on a hunk of bamboo awhile (the little ones chewed on twigs), then they’d jump off across a couple of trees and tear into another bamboo. They weren’t very interested in us; we were all there in the middle of the forest with chomping going on all around. Bertine talked with them by imitating their calls, and they called back.
We also spent some time with a troop of Red-Bellied Lemurs and Brown Lemurs. The Red-Bellied looked like they were getting into a huddle to go to sleep, but they started grooming each other and calling. We soon realized that a young one and its mother were close by, and those two came over to join the group, pooping on the guides below. These animals have such a great sense of humor.
We saw several interesting plants, too, the most interesting being an orchid with no roots or leaves. It looked for all the world like a string of Spanish moss with a big orange bloom on it, and Bertine picked it up to show us it was independent. We also found a big, shiny-black snake, which was mostly interested in leaving. I was all for pulling it out of the bush it was going under so I could take a picture, but the guys weren’t so big on that idea, despite the fact they assured me it couldn’t be poisonous. We also found a few toads and a largish flat gecko that was so well-disguised I could hardly see it, even when Bertine pointed it out. And a horned chameleon.
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| The Flat Gecko |
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| The Chameleon |
Bertine was good with birds, too, and took us way down into a thicket to spot some. There were lots. He had a lot of bird calls on his cell phone, so when we were near a group, he’d say it was a blah-blah-blah and play the song, bringing the birds in to us. Great idea! I’ll have to try that, too, but I will try to avoid having to beep through 20 menu selections to get to the call I want. Of the birds we saw there, I most liked the Madagascar Paradise Flycatcher, with its showy black-and-white plumage, its crest, and it’s two-foot tail. There was also a cheeky little Madagascar Magpie Robin that hopped up to us while we were looking at lemurs. I think all the birds with “Madagascar” in their name are endemic.
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| Unknown Interesting Plant |
After all this, we wrapped things up, and I indeed paid Bertine, who’d certainly earned his money. He mentioned again that he was surprised I hadn’t had a good experience with Alphonse since the latter had been a guide for nearly 28 years and had, in fact, trained Bertine. However, Solofo said he heard some of the other guides saying that Alphonse had started drinking (honestly, a thought that had crossed my mind). Sad.
So we had lunch, and I had a nap. Bertine was booked for the afternoon, so I decided to have Solofo drop me off on the part of the road that runs through a section of Ranomafana so I could walk along and look at birds. There were a ton, but my favorite was the Madagascar Coua. This is another big bird with a mean-assed face and bright white streaks running from its beak back along its brownish body. If I were a bug, I’d hate for that to be the last thing I saw.
It got dark as I was watching a group of Madagascar White-Eyes, and Solofo showed up with the car to head back to the hotel and the terrace.
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| Toad (Photoshop-ed for better viewing) |
:-)
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