Having missed the Red Owl the previous day, today it was absolutely our top priority to find. Unfortunately, the only real strategy that we had was to check the same roosts we had failed to find the bird in yesterday. So we set off to check the various spots, and once again we failed to find anything. Fortunately, our guide, Loukmann, had sent two other students to check other roost spots in the forest to speed up the process, and they actually did find a Red Owl. The views were extremely terrible, looking up at the silhouette of the bird inside a rotted tree, you could barely see anything but you could see enough at least.
With that target seen, we breathed a sigh of relief and accepted our fate of not seeing the Serpent Eagle. Fortunately, this meant we had seen eight of the ten species we had needed to find here, and remarkably we found number nine shortly after when we bumped into a small roving flock of the unassuming Grey-crowned Tetraka, a species we had somehow missed out on at all the other forest sites we had visited. The flock it was part of also had a couple of smart male Common Sunbird Asity.
With that sorted, we headed back to the camp to pack up and begin the long road down from the reserve. The journey took a solid nine hours, although an hour of that was spent literally digging the car out of a muddy rut that we had got it stuck into, leaving us absolutely caked in earth. We finally arrived back in the town of Antsohihy just after nightfall, exhausted but pleased that this long and difficult stretch of our itinerary was done and behind us.
Benamevika: White-faced Whistling Duck, Meller's Duck, Red-billed Teal, Madagascar Pochard, Madagascar Grebe, Madagascar Blue Pigeon, Blue Coua, Malagasy Coucal, Madagascar Cuckoo, Madagascar Flufftail, Common Moorhen, Madagascar Buttonquail, Western Cattle Egret, Madagascar Harrier-Hawk, Madagascar Buzzard, Red Owl, Cuckoo-roller, Pitta-like Ground Roller, Common Sunbird-Asity, Common Newtonia, Tylas Vanga, Hook-billed Vanga, Crested Drongo, Madagascar Lark, Madagascar Cisticola, Malagasy Brush Warbler, Long-billed Bernieria, Spectacled Tetraka, Grey-crowned Tetraka, Rand's Warbler, Mascarene Martin, Brown-throated Martin, Malagasy Bulbul, Malagasy White-eye, Madagascar Starling, Madagascar Magpie-Robin, Madagascar Stonechat, Souimanga Sunbird, Nelicourvi Weaver, Forest Fody,
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