Wildlife to see in Ghana in May
3 spectacles at their peak in Ghana in May, and 3 more still going on. Wild animals only: no zoos, no wildlife parks, no hunting. Open Ghana in May in the interactive calendar for listening times on the day you pick.
At their peak in May
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.
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.
Also going on in May
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.
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.
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.