[Posted by Chuck Almdale]

Femi Faminu, who frequently birds with (and without) us at Malibu Lagoon, is back in the West following barely a week of birds and food, plus food and birds, in western Ghana. The African rain forests are so jam-packed with species, genera and entire families of birds utterly foreign to American birders [imagine that, foreign birds in Ghana] that making several trips is a reasonable approach.

Ghana is about the size of Oregon but with eight times the human population. It is well known among birders as a great place to bird, with Atlantic seashore, the southern edge of the Sahara and forest reserves in between, and it is perhaps the best place in the world to find one of the two Picathartidae species, the White-necked Rockfowl. [Spoiler alert: It is neither rock nor fowl.] But it also hosts three other very small and limited-range bird families. Femi managed to see both species [aka all the species] in one of these families on this trip, and I have never (and probably will never) see either. [I’ll let her guess which family.] Ghana has over 770 species of birds; for comparison, California has 685 including birds than blew in once, decades ago, never to be seen again.

So…birding is good in Ghana. Good place to eat, too, by the looks of it. And lots of interesting insects.

Femi’s film also features a potto, an arborial primate in the Lorisidae family, and a kusimanse, related to the mongoose.

At the end of the video is her phylogenetically-sequenced trip lists which includes 246 species, 138 non-passerines and 106 passerines. Ten cuckoos, seven hornbills, eleven kingfishers anyone? Fourteen greenbuls? The mind boggles. Her all-too-brief YouTube photo & video film is as enjoyable as always.

If you go here https://www.youtube.com/@femif9792 you can see her other films.