It was another 05:00 alarm call. We were a few minutes late leaving the hotel, due to Richard knocking on our door with an urgent request to make some coffee using our hotel room kettle. He had filled their kettle, only to find the water pouring out of a hole in the bottom. Another example of a posh-looking hotel not keeping to appearances. Still half of the hotels we stayed in didn't provide kettles at all.
We drove for about an hour to the Tombingo Forest. Another poor name given the forest had been heavily logged and we were Birding along a very wide dirt track, which was easily wide enough to create a UK dual carriageway with safety bars. The result was we were not close to any habitat and what habitat there was, had thick secondary cover which made it impossible to get off the dirt road. It proved to be a frustrating site to visit as the Birds we did see weren't close to the road. To add to the frustration, it was another morning with overcast conditions and poor light for photography. The Avian highlight for the day was seeing my first Grey Tit-flycatcher: a species I had missed on my South African trip back in 1990 & the only Tick of the day for me.
We could heard several Gabon Coucals, but no matter how hard we looked, they remained hidden in the dense secondary cover. We also tried for two calling White-spotted Flufftails. Like the ones near Uige, they came close but they wouldn't show themselves. After about three hours we decided to give up on this site as the forest was just too far away. As we were leaving the area, we saw this Ayres's Hawk-eagle, that was sitting in a distant tree.
Our next stop was a bridge over a river which we were visiting in the hope of seeing a White-throated Blue Swallow. We spent a fair bit of time looking, but we had not luck. Part of the problem with looking for some of the species in Angola is most Birders seem to visit between September and November, so there is no certainty that some of the species are present in June.
The bridge passed over a sizeable river with Angola Swallows and Wire-tailed Swallows present, but we couldn't find any White-throated Blue Swallows. We met the only Birder we saw in Angola here. He was a South African Birder who was carrying out survey work for a potential dam the government was thinking of building. He confirmed he hadn't seen any White-throated Blue Swallows in the area during his surveys.
Next to where we parked, I saw a sign saying there was a large patch of land for sale along the river bank. Then a few minutes later, I saw some other signs for a Testing Area and for Metal Collection. Then I noticed Vanessa, a mine clearance vehicle close to where we had parked. Perhaps this land wasn't a great place to buy if it had been mined during the civil war. It was the only time we saw clear evidence of the problems & the continuing risks of mines in Angola. One advantage of the large numbers of people we were seeing where we were Birding, was plenty of others had probably already walked on the same ground we were visiting & therefore, it was unlikely there were no mines in those areas. However, this site was a location where keeping on the road was the safer option.
Eventually, we gave up on the search for a White-throated Blue Swallow & headed back to the same valley we had visited the previous evening. We drove further into the valley in the hope of better forest, but we couldn't find any.
Finally, the light started to go & we returned to the hotel in N'dalatando. It had been another long day in the field. Sadly, it hadn't been very rewarding on this occasion.