8 February 2012.
After having seen the Egyptian plover, we continued our journey in the Gambia to the east.
17:40: we arrive at a quarry, providing housing to a colony of red-throated bee-eaters.
A hoopoe flying near the colony.
We continue to the ferry to Janjanbureh.
This is a video about the surroundings of Janjanbureh.
More precisely, about Baobolong camp, our final point for today.
8 February 2012.
In our last report about the Gambia, it was the beginning of the afternoon in a savannah area north of the Gambia river.
Here, we continue the story.
Four beautiful rufous-crowned rollers land in two tall, almost leafless trees.
12:58: we have crossed the border to the Gambia’s Central River Division.
13:00: a brown snake eagle on a tree.
We arrive at a sizable lake; important for birds in this dry season.
An African grey hornbill in a tree.
A collared pratincole. Close to it, a blue-cheeked bee-eater; see photo here.
A tawny eagle and a grasshopper buzzard flying.
A hamerkop on the opposite bank; an African jacana on the bank to the right.
Lots of Namaqa doves, drinking at the lake shores, and in the trees.
14:00: red-cheecked cordon-bleu, drinking at the bank.
Long-tailed glossy starlings in a tree.
Two yellow-billed shrikes on the ground.
In a tree, a cut-throat finch. A photo of cut-throat finches and Namaqua doves is here.
Two cattle egrets.
A fork-tailed drongo on a stick.
In another lake, not far away: African spoonbills flying. Black-winged stilts. Great egret and little egret. Grey heron.
Senegal thick-knees. Spur-winged plovers.
A marsh sandpiper, flying and calling.
We continue to the east. Àn African hawk-eagle on a tree near the main road; see photo here.
Then, something special near Njau village.
An Egyptian plover. Rare in the Gambia, especially in February.
At first, the Egyptian plover was near two spur-winged plovers. It soon flew away. A bit later, it landed near a common sandpiper. About that common sandpiper, see here.
An oxpecker on a village cow.
A bit further, common moorhens with chicks.
From Wildlife Extra:
First gannet of 2012 lands on the world-famous Bass Rock
Breeding season begins at the world’s largest single island gannet colony
February 2012. This award-winning Scottish Seabird Centre, North Berwick, has just celebrated the landing of the first gannet in 2012 on the world-famous Bass Rock. The gannet was spotted on the five star Discovery Centre’s interactive live cameras.
½ million seabirds
This sighting is a significant milestone in the start of the nesting season on the Firth of Forth islands. The area is of international importance for seabirds and over the coming months it will be home to around 500,000 seabirds including puffins, kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars, shags and terns.
150,000 gannets – The world’s largest colony
By summer the Bass Rock, just 4km (2.5miles) from North Berwick’s shore, will be crammed with over 150,000 gannets making it the biggest single island gannet colony in the world.
The Bass Rock will now start to change colour as more gannets return, eventually becoming completely white due to the sheer number of these amazing brilliant white birds. Gannets are Britain’s biggest seabird and they usually return to the same mate and nest each year: established pairs reunite and new partners bond with ceremonial displays of bill-fencing. The gannets travel great distances to return to the Bass Rock with many coming from as far as the west coast of Africa.
Tom Brock OBE, Chief Executive of the Scottish Seabird Centre, said: “The first landing is a few days later than last year, with our first sighting on 15 February in 2011, and we now look forward to more and more gannets returning to breed. Our visitors can zoom in on all the action on the Bass Rock Zone cameras in the Discovery Centre and our boat trips to the Bass Rock and the Isle of May will start next month.”
Centre’s webcams are here.
How to visit The Scottish Seabird Centre: here.
Bass Rock facts
• The Bass Rock was formed 320 million years ago and is the remains of one of many active volcanoes in the area
• It has had a role in many parts of Scottish history – a religious retreat during early Christianity; fortress and prison in the time of the Covenanters and Jacobites; and a strategic stronghold during the times of the Scottish and English wars
• It has been owned by the Hamilton-Dalrymple family for the last 300 years
• There is a lighthouse, built in 1902: the last keepers left in 1988 when the lighthouse was automated.Gannet facts
• First records of gannets on the Bass Rock date back to the 15th century
• They are Britain’s largest seabird, with a wing span of over 6ft
• In winter many travel to the west coast of Africa
• Gannets can live over 30 years
• They have such good eye sight that they can spot schools of fish below the surface of the water and dive at speeds of up to 100kmph.
This video is called Koran Burning at Bagram Air Base Draws the Ire of Thousands.
Three thousand Afghans rallied outside the US military base in Bagram today following reports that personnel station there had burned copies of the Koran: here.
Photos are here.
Afghanistan: Dozens Wounded In Demonstrations Over Quran-Burning At NATO Base: here.
USA: Last Friday, 87 House members sent a letter to President Obama stating support for a plan to accelerate the end of combat operations in Afghanistan (as announced by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta earlier this month): here.
Tens of thousands of families are priced out of a warm home in winter because of spiralling energy costs and a lack of regulations to stop companies profiting from fuel debt, children’s charity Barnardo’s warned today: here.
Ken Livingstone pledged today to set up the capital’s first ever state-owned energy co-operative to tackle soaring fuel bills for Londoners: here.
Wednesday 8 February.
After our arrival in Tendaba, a night’s sleep there (with a frog in the bathroom).
Today, from Tendaba to Janjanbureh, formerly called Georgetown, more to the east in the Gambia.
8:03: hooded vultures on a parking lot near the ferry across the Gambia river. The ferry is too small for the long queues of waiting lorries.
Beautiful Abyssianian rollers, common birds in the Gambia, are present.
On the bank of the Gambia river, great egret, grey heron, western reef heron.
On the boats on the bank, hamerkops and a squacco heron look for fish waste.
The ferry brings us to the northern river bank at last. Antlion pitfalls in the sand.
An Abyssinian roller on this bank as well.
A brown-necked parrot flies out of a tree.
This is a sea snake video.
From the University of Queensland in Australia:
New species of sea snake discovered
February 21, 2012
(PhysOrg.com) — Scientists have discovered a new species of sea snake in the Gulf of Carpenteria, northern Australia, which is unique in having raised scales.
The finding published in Zootaxa today by Associate Professor Bryan Fry from The University of Queensland’s (UQ) School of Biological Sciences and colleagues from The University of Adelaide, will provide important clues about evolution.
Associate Professor Fry said that Hydrophis donaldii had evaded earlier discovery as it prefers estuarine habitats that are poorly surveyed and not targeted by commercial fisheries.
“Weipa really is one of the last sea snake ‘Serengetis’. We can see over 200 sea snakes in a single night’s hunting, whereas sea snake populations have really crashed elsewhere through over-fishing removing their prey and also the snakes drowning in trawling nets,” Associate Professor Fry said.
Associate Professor Fry said the findings extend beyond simply discovering a rare animal.
“All venomous animals are bio-resources and have provided sources of many life-saving medications, such as treatments for high-blood pressure and diabetes.
“This reinforces why we need to conserve all of nature as the next billion dollar wonder-drug may come from as unlikely a source as sea snake venom.”
The snake has been given the scientific name Hydrophis donaldii to honour Associate Professor Fry’s long-time boat captain David Donald.
“Quite simply we would not have found this snake without Dave’s unique knowledge of the area. I told him we wanted to survey as many distinct types of habitat as possible and he guided us to the perfect spots,” Associate Professor Fry said.
The snake has been given the common-name ‘rough-scaled sea snake’ to reflect the unique scalation.
“We don’t know why it has been evolutionarily selected to have such unique scalation, but we will next study its ecology to learn more about it.”
India’s largest communist party called on the government today to press neighbouring Sri Lanka to probe widespread allegations of war crimes committed by the military during its sustained assault on Tamil separatists in 2009: here.
Britain was condemned today for continuing to supply arms to Sri Lanka despite evidence of appalling atrocities committed by the regime: here.
Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished shows horrific scenes of the closing days of the campaign against the LTTE and the thousands of civilians caught up in it: here.
Colombo-New Delhi relations have been strained since India voted for a US-backed resolution on human rights abuses in Sri Lanka: here.
Opposition to the Sri Lankan government has intensified after the killing of an innocent fisherman protesting against IMF austerity measures: here.
Hundreds of thousands of workers demonstrated in 57 Spanish cities on Sunday against the latest labour reform passed by the right wing Popular Party (PP): here.
This is a male red-billed firefinch, photographed at Brufut Woods, the Gambia, 4 February 2012.
Such a beautiful bird deserves a blog post of its own.
The photograph was at a place where there had been a fire.
In the background, one can vaguely see a female red-billed firefinch.
This video from Britain is called Bahrain: Human rights and arms sales.
From Code Pink in the USA:
Arab Unrest: Bahraini Children Reportedly Stabbed & Gassed
Feb 20, 2012
By Tighe Barry
As part of an observer delegation in Bahrain with the peace group Code Pink, I visited the village of Bani Jamrah with local Bahraini human rights activists.
In one of the many horrific cases we heard, a 17-year-old boy Hasan, his friend and his 8-year-old brother left their home to go to the grocery store. As they were entering the store they noticed some other youngsters running. Fearing the police would be following them, they decided to wait in the store. The 8 year old hid behind a refrigerator. The police entered the store with face masks on. They grabbed the older boys, pulling them out of the store and into the street.
Once outside the shop the police began to beat them with their sticks and hit them on the head, shouting obscenities and accusations. The police were accusing them of having been involved with throwing Molotov cocktails, asking over and over “Where are the Molotov cocktails?”
The four policemen, all masked and wearing regulation police uniforms, took turns beating the boys while one was instructed to keep watch to make sure no one was video taping. They seemed to be very concerned that there be no witnesses. Quickly, they forced the boys into the waiting police car. Inside the police vehicle was another youth about 18 who appeared to be “Muhabharat,” or plain-clothes police thugs associated with many dictatorships in the Middle East.
As the car sped off, the boys were told to keep their heads down “or we will kill you.” Soon they arrived at an open lot away from possible onlookers. As the two boys were being pulled from the car, the policeman who seemed to be in the charge shouted, “Make them lie down.” Once they were face down on the ground, the policemen took out their knives and stabbed both boys in the left buttock, leaving a gaping wound. The police thugs continued their “questioning”, using profanity to scare their victims. They threatened the boys that they would go to jail for 45 days for “investigation” and that they would never go back to school or get work.
When the thugs realized that they had no choice but to leave these victims, since they had no knowledge of the Molotovs, they searched them to see what they could steal. They took the boys’ mobile phones and asked them to hand over whatever money they had. When they discovered that the boys only had 500fils (about $1.50US), they kicked one of them in the raw wound, laughing as they left them bleeding.
“Who are these masked police and why would they do such things to children?”, you might ask. The boys said they were Syrian immigrants, part of a mostly foreign police force imported by the government and paid to inflict pain on the local people to dissuade them from protesting for their rights.
I asked if the police checked their hands, or smelled their clothes to detect the presence of petrol, since they were accusing the boys of carrying Molotov cocktails. Hussan, laying uncomfortably on his stomach, still in his bloody pants, answered, “No, they made no investigation. These police don’t investigate, they only accuse and punish. We had no contact with petrol, we are students.”
In the corner of the room was Husan’s aunt, holding a little baby that looked very sickly, the red hue of its skin almost burnt looking and its tiny eyes sore and red. I was straining now in my inquiry, like having to push words out my throat. “How old is your child?”, I asked. “Eight months old”, she replied. I knew about the nightly raids in this community, as I happen to be staying less than 200 meters from there and can see the light show each night as hundreds of teargas canisters are shot into this tight grip of middle class houses.
“How do you stop the teargas from getting in the house and affecting your baby?”, I inquired in a pained voice. I, myself, although not in village, feel the effects of the massive clouds of poison that pour over the entire area at night.
“Well, sir, wet towels, we place them each night under the doors,” she answers, as she lights down on the couch near a large flat screen television. “But, sadly, sir, this does not stop the gas. The baby suffers. I try to cover her face with a cloth but she does not like it and cries at the gas and the cloth at the same.”
“One way to stop the gas is to put plastic over the air conditioning unit,” she continued, “but the policemen always cut off the plastic and the gas seeps back inside quickly.”
They showed me a homemade video of those white-helmeted terrorists, using the very same issued knife that they used to cripple the boys, systematically, methodically removing the plastic that was placed to prevent the venomous gas from entering the house. Once removed, they can now shoot the gas, knowing that it will enter the house and poison all inside, especially the kids.
And so it goes in the Kingdom of Bahrain. So it goes in a world so addicted to oil, money and power that children can be stabbed, kidnapped, tortured, terrorized and gassed with nary a word from the outside world.
Are we, in America, so addicted to oil and beholden to powerful Saudis that we will block our ears to the cries of these Bahraini children? Or will we help them grow up in a world where they can know the joy and security that we all want for ourselves? The choice is ours.
Detained activists arrested on 14 Feb in Bahrain at risk of torture and other ill-treatment: here.
