Despite not getting our evening meal till around 22:00, we were up at 05:00 to be back in the field for dawn. For the last several years, I've carried a metal coffee press, ground coffee & an insulated mug on foreign trips. This has been great, but it's dependent on being able to get hot water from hotels: on many days in the past this hasn't been possible. I've gone one step further on this trip & also packed a small travel kettle. So the typical morning routine has been to allow enough time for Phil (my room-mate on the trip) & I, to boil enough water for decent coffee to take into the field. The travel kettle proved its worth on this trip & will be another thing I have to fit into my bag on future trips.
It was about a forty-five minute drive to return to the area we had been Birding the previous afternoon in the Damengola Forest. This name is very misleading as the Damengola Forest has been completely logged and the only trees left are those with little or no commercial value. It is a real challenge to find even the smallest patches of surviving trees. The Birds we found were those who were more tolerant of secondary habitats, while the true forest specialists will have gone.
Our first stop was on the main road a few miles before the tracks into the remains of the forest. Here there were a few large trees next to the road, where we saw African Pied Hornbills, Piping Hornbills, Western Bronze-naped Pigeons, African Green Pigeons, Green-crested Turacos and a selection of Barbets & Tinkerbirds. A Gabon Coucal mocked us from the dense secondary growth, with lots of calling, but no sign of this sought after Tick.
As the traffic increased on the main road, we carried onto a different ex-logging track into the forest from the previous afternoon. We drove for many miles along this dirt track, in the hope of finding a reasonable pocket. But we had no luck with any remaining decent forest. We encountered a small village quite a few miles along the track. We found many similar villages throughout the country, along every track we drove. These villages resulted in more miles of surrounding slash & burn subsistence farming which further degraded the remaining habitat. We saw many examples of the locals cutting trees for firewood and shooting the few Mammals, and on occasions the larger Birds, for bushmeat. No wonder, we only found some poorer secondary patches along this track and the Mammals & Birds were often shy.
The problem with having distant large trees and dense secondary bushes by the track was it wasn't easy to get photos of the Birds we were seeing. It was worse as they were constant mocking calls from many Little Greenbuls in these bushes, all of which refused to show themselves. Fortunately, they weren't a Tick for any of us. At least, the Insects were a lot more cooperative.
Eventually, we gave up on that track and headed off to a lake near to the main road. This proved productive and we saw our first Black-collared Bulbul: a stunning looking Bulbul.
After checking the lake, we headed back to the track from the previous evening as they was slightly better remnant patches of forest along that track. We tried walking various stretches before returning to check a small patch of forest that had been left as shade for coffee near the start of the track. Here we saw a family party of Rufous-vented Paradise-flycatchers. This area was one of the better patches of trees.
At the end of the day, we headed back to the roadside patch of forest we had started the day in. As we were walking out of the forest in the afternoon, I flushed the only Gabon Coucal we were to see in Angola. Unfortunately, Phil was behind Niall & missed it. We hoped the individual that was calling at the start of the day would show itself. While Niall & Phil were occupied trying to see the Gabon Coucal, Richard & I had an equally unprofitable search for a couple of calling White-spotted Flufftails. They came close, but wouldn't show. Despite a number of attempts over the trip, we had no joy seeing another Gabon Coucal or a White-spotted Flufftail.