Tacugama

Category: Chimpanzee, Education, Tacugama | Date: Mar 09 2009 | By: tacugama

This is a new initiative at Tacugama to raise awareness of the natural richness of the Western Area Protected Forest Reserve that the sanctuary helps to protect and at the same time to raise some funds to help cover our running costs.

In the last two months, Kenneth Gbengba, a Sierra Leonean ornithologist who has led many international birdwatching tours, has been training our staff, Willie Tucker and Michael Tommy.  Together they have been compiling a list of birds spotted around Tacugama. So far the list has reached 85 different species of birds - including several endemics - and the list is growing with each survey walk.

Kenneth (left) training and surveying with Willie and Tommy.
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This Saturday saw us hosting our first “Birds and Breakfast” guided walk for paying guests with Kenneth in the  lead and Willie and Tommy supporting. The guests enjoyed learning about birds, recognising the different songs and foremost seeing Kenneth imitating the bird calls! They were able to spot 38 different species of birds including two more  to add to our growing list.  (Overall there are well over 600 different bird species to be found in Sierra Leone.)

The bird watching group in action!

Our guests loved being in the forest in the early morning and walking up the river bed jumping from stone to stone.  The experience was heightened by a great local breakfast that we served halfway through the morning.  All in all we were very pleased with the opportunity the walk gave us to show people that there is more to Tacugama than they might expect.  We’re hoping to host this kind of activity on the first Saturday of every month and spread the word that protecting chimpanzees and their habitat has many benefits for the environment and other creatures.

On the river bed
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Tags: bird-watching, Chimpanzee, sanctuary, Sierra Leone, Tacugama, wildlife