Wildlife spectacles in Ghana
12 spectacles through the year, ordered by when they peak. Open Ghana in the interactive calendar for the map and listening times.
Elephants at the Mole waterholesElephants splashing, rumbling and trumpeting at the waterhole, baboon alarm barks off the escarpment, hyena whoops after dark, and a savanna dawn of helmeted guineafowl, hornbills and doves.
Sacred-grove monkeys at Tafi Atome and Boabeng-FiemaMona monkeys' booming male calls and chattering troops moving through the sacred grove, the deep rolling roar of male white-thighed colobus at dawn at Boabeng-Fiema, and a village waking up underneath.
Bobiri forest: four hundred butterfly species on a May morningMostly a visual spectacle: clouds of blues and swallowtails on the wet road, charaxes crashing into fermenting fruit. But the forest at dawn from the guesthouse veranda — hornbills, greenbuls, the whistles of the forest robin, cicadas at first light — is a genuine Upper Guinea chorus 30 km from Kumasi.
First-rains frog chorus in the Upper Guinea forestLayered choruses of reed frogs and Afrixalus at 3–5 kHz over the clicking of Kassina and the low honks of Leptopelis, from every pool and swamp along the forest roads, with crickets and katydids filling the gaps.
Amansuri wetland by canoe: Ghana's largest swamp forest and the Nzulezo stilt villageA paddled dugout through blackwater swamp forest: kingfishers, the yelps of monkeys, hornbills, herons lifting off the raffia, frogs along the channel and the drip of the forest canopy — then the open Amansuri lake and the sounds of a village on stilts: children, chickens, paddles.
Humpback whales off Cape Three PointsBlows and breaches from the headland; with a hydrophone from a canoe, song from singing males in the breeding season — the reason to come. Above water this is mostly a sighting.
Tern roosts and Palearctic waders on the Keta and Songor lagoonsThe rasping, screaming mass of a tern roost settling at dusk, spotted redshank 'chu-it' and godwit chatter across the pans, and whistling ducks passing overhead at night.
Fruit bat colony on the cliffs of Wli FallsA high, ceaseless chattering from many thousands of bats hanging on the cliff face beside the upper cascade, then the rush of wings as the colony peels off at dusk over the pool, all against the falls.
Upper Guinea rainforest dawn chorus — Kakum & AnkasaGreat blue turacos bubbling from the emergents, the far-carrying wailing of white-crested hornbills, yellow-casqued hornbills' whooshing wingbeats, chattering monkeys, cicadas switching on with the light and the screaming of tree hyrax at night.
Baboons, bat caves and savanna dawn at Shai HillsBaboon barks echoing off the inselbergs, stone partridge and helmeted guineafowl at first light, and the squeaks and wing-flutter of bats streaming from the Sayu caves at dusk.
Straw-coloured fruit bat roost at 37 Military Hospital, AccraA continuous shrieking, chattering wall of sound from the roost trees over the hospital and the 37 lorry station, wing-slaps and squabbling as bats jostle, then the rushing of the evening emergence over Liberation Road. Pied crows and a few raptors work the edges.
Wechiau: hippos on the Black Volta at duskThe Black Volta's hippo pools: the stacked laughing grunt of a bull answered down the river, blows and splashes as the pod surfaces, then at dusk the heavy walk of hippos leaving the water to graze a few hundred metres from the Talawona camp. Egyptian plovers piping on the sandbars, fish eagles, carmine bee-eaters in the dry-season colonies on the banks.